Students take advantage of opportunity to practice sculpture techniques with visiting artist

Northwest Missouri State University students gained insight into the work of award-winning sculpture artist Kris Kuksi while crafting statues of their own during a series of workshops in conjunction with an exhibit featuring Kuksi’s creations in the Olive DeLuce Art Gallery.

Inside the sculpture studio at Northwest’s Fire Arts Building, Kuksi led a construction workshop on Jan. 29 – giving students tools, materials and a behind-the-scenes look at his artistic process – and then a surface workshop on Feb. 5, where students learned how to use an airbrush and detail their work.

“I sort of gave them the guidance of ‘Do something with this pedestal,’ but just about everybody went above and beyond and did something bigger,” he said.

Based in Lawrence, Kansas, Kuksi practices a technique of assemblage that distorts classical and religious imagery into sculpture. His choice of materials includes plastic model pieces, accessories associated with dollhouses and railroad kits, and plastic sheeting.

In sharing his process with Northwest students, he provided a plethora of varied figurines and vehicle parts to feed inspiration and creativity. He encouraged the students to collect any combination of the random pieces spread out on the studio worktable and combine them into interesting compositions.

“It’s all about using your imagination, building something – this very basic, rudimentary, make something,” he said. “One student told me that this was very therapeutic for her, which I think is great. It’s what art should be.”

For Gwendelyn Alvares, a senior studio art major from Higginsville, Missouri, the workshops were an opportunity to learn directly from an artist whose work she has studied.

“He’s a big inspiration to some of my 3D work,” Alvares said of Kuksi. “I was very fascinated with it, so I was very excited to partake in what he does on a smaller scale.”

The sculpture Alvares created began with a single figurine on which she attached multiple limbs and wings, surrounded by birds and other ethereal pieces.

“I wanted to do a human figure, but I like twisting the human figure and making it into these majestic beings,” Alvares said. “I was kind of going for a biblically accurate angel figure … or maybe like a forgotten god of war.”

Alvares will graduate from Northwest this spring and wants to pursue an art career. With that in mind, she says she is grateful for the opportunity to learn a different art form and try Kuksi’s sculpture techniques.

“I’ve never done this type of 3D assemblage work before, so it was very fun to get that experience and see what it’s like to build these types of things,” she said. “There’s really no right or wrong answer. You just kind of go in and do whatever feels right, and then you come out with a product that you are really happy with.”

At the same worktable, Curtis Pestel’s creation appeared on a pedestal like a weathered statue. He outfitted a male figure with gears and armor and posed it gripping the head of a much smaller figure in a running pose. Additional smaller figures stood at the feet of the statue.

Pestel, a junior graphic design major from Glenwood, Iowa, said the workshops tested his skills outside of his interests in graphic design and printmaking.

“A lot of my work is digital, so being able to put pieces together that are like ready-made and assembling it together was something out of my comfort zone,” he said. “It was really cool to experience that.”

Meanwhile, Cleo Wills, a junior graphic design major from Ashland, Nebraska, created a sculpture symbolizing a power struggle between a man and woman, with the male figure holding a female head at his waist. She also created a second sculpture of a female figure – a bit shorter and lighter in color. Both figures have mismatched body parts. 

“A lot of the things that I do are kind of centered around feminism or social issues, so that's kind of just what I was thinking,” she said. “I really liked these little pedestals, and I thought having a different (height), that would kind of make it more dynamic.”

While Wills specializes in collage, mostly with paper, she enjoyed transferring her skills to the three-dimensional form Kuksi demonstrated.

“I thought it was really interesting because I really like the process of searching for things,” she said. “I was just kind of looking for things that I thought were interesting, and then I brought them all over and put something together.”

By spending time with classmates who participated in the workshops, Willis also said she gained a deeper appreciation for the collaborative nature of working in art.

“Something a lot of my professors talk about is making connections, because that’s a huge part of the art field,” Willis said. “Maybe you're making something and you knew someone in college and you reach out to them. I know most of the people in this room and so just talking to them more. Now I know (Kuksi), and I can reach out to him if I ever need anything. So I try to go to all the things because I want to make sure that I know people when I get out of college.”

The workshops culminated with the students’ sculptures being placed in the DeLuce Gallery alongside Kuksi’s pieces. Kuksi hoped the students gained a better sense of building composition and spatial reasoning.

“It’s sort of starting from a core shape and then ballooning outward and just seeing what the possibilities are,” he said. “They’re just working off their imagination.”

Financial support for Kuksi’s visit to Northwest was provided by the Missouri Arts Council. For more information about Northwest art programs and upcoming events, visit www.nwmissouri.edu/finearts/art/.