Releasing the MacGyver in all of us

Wednesday at 5 p.m., Rose students and area middle school students gathered in the Kahn room to express their artistic creativity using duct tape.

Mariah Walton, a junior chemical engineer/chemistry major, and Melissa Walker, a junior mechanical engineer, were working on re-creating the painting ‘Scream’ with the twist that the person would be a sculpture. “I’ve never used duct tape for art before,” mused Walton.

Students were able to choose from black, grey, white, red, blue, yellow, and green duct tape as well as poster board to create their work. “This isn’t that thick, hard to tear stuff,” commented Art Curator Steve Letsinger. The tape was vinyl duct tape, which tears more easily and is less sticky that conventional duct tape.

Younger members of the community came by as well. Luke Peoples, 11, and Jacob Dispennett, 13, were building a sky scraper scene, with New York City in mind. “It is fun to do this,” said Dispennett. Peoples thought it would be pretty easy, but “It’s harder than I thought it would be.”

“When I saw the e-mail for the duct tape art contest before break I thought ‘hey, that sounds interesting’,” said Rebecca Waltz, a senior chemical engineer, who was building an umbrella. “When we showed up in the Kahn room, we didn’t remember the rules of the contest, so we just started building. It was fun to do something artsy and to see the creativity of the other contenders,” she commented afterwards. Waltz was sharing a table with Noah Desch, a senior electrical engineer, who was making a soda can, and Andrea Leichtman and Adam Georgas, a senior computer engineer, who was making a Boeing 747, to scale.

Caroline Carvill, head of the HSS Department, was disappointed with the turn out. “We’re working on finding the optimal time,” she said, noting that it was important to fit the timing in the students’ interest. “We’ve done writing and art and photography and had good turn-outs…Our goal is to create one creative expression event a quarter because creativity is a very large part of engineering and science and we have very creative students.” Carvill would like to find events that students enjoy at a time that is good for them to help them develop this creativity.

“If students have ideas for creative projects we could sponsor, we’d love to hear from them.”

The event was sponsored by the Humanities and Social Sciences department, the Elsie Pawley fund, and 3M. The HSS department sponsors other events that students find interesting. “The HSS department has brought me to two operas and a ballet,” said Waltz.