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The CSC Eagle Newspaper – Chadron, NE
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The CSC Eagle Newspaper – Chadron, NE
Tiffani Roelle, 21, senior of Columbus, squirts yellow dye onto her tie-dye project during “Art 437: Creative Crafts” Tuesday morning. Art 437 meets twice a week and allows students to explore a number of projects in the applied arts arena. –Photo by T.J. Thomson
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Art department moulds new course

Eagle Staff
Tiffani Roelle, 21, senior of Columbus, squirts yellow dye onto her tie-dye project during “Art 437: Creative Crafts” Tuesday morning. Art 437 meets twice a week and allows students to explore a number of projects in the applied arts arena. –Photo by T.J. Thomson
Tiffani Roelle, 21, senior of Columbus, squirts yellow dye onto her tie-dye project during “Art 437: Creative Crafts” Tuesday morning. Art 437 meets twice a week and allows students to explore a number of projects in the applied arts arena. –Photo by T.J. Thomson

Tjantings, mandrels, and harness looms; dye projects hanging from a clothesline traveling across the room; soft classical music playing in the background: vibrant colors everywhere; this is the environment of the Creative Crafts class taught by Richard Bird, professor and department chair of visual and performing arts.

This class isn’t just for art majors. About a third of the class is composed of English majors, communication majors, and others. During the course of this semester, 18 students are exploring five different areas of crafts; weaving, fiber arts, papermaking, jewelry, and glass work.

Within the first ten weeks of the class, each student completes at least one project in each area. “A lot of what we are doing is experimentation,” Bird said about the approach he and the students take to the class. After exploring each of the areas, students then choose two areas in which to create a final project.

Student Rod Clause said, “Every one of these [areas] could be a class by itself.” Clouse, a former student of Bird, has returned to Chadron State College in order to earn his BS degree in Art Education. He is Bird’s right hand man in the classroom. I found them boiling a student’s dye project in order to remove the wax used to create the design on the cloth.

The students work on their array of projects at different stations in the room. Along one wall, students melt brightly colored glass rods onto a mandrel to form glass beads. A mandrel is a steel rod that has one end covered with graphite; this is used to create the hole through which the beads are strung.

At a different station, students are dying T-shirts and other pieces of cloth. A wide variety of designs cover the surface of these fabrics including; abstract patterns, a frog hiding in the leaves of a tree, a multicolored owl, and even the blue police box of The Doctor from the television show “Doctor Who.”

Along with these pieces, Bird ordered about 150 pounds of old musical instruments from a South Dakota instrument repair company for students to use in their projects. Clause has already made use of one of the instruments by attaching it to a welding helmet. Clause commented that the instrument still made noise, but that it sounded like an elephant. Many of these instruments will be taken apart and used for creating jewelry.

“[This class] is different from a normal class because there you are all doing the same thing, but in here everyone is doing something different,” Bird said.

An Open House at the end of the semester will display the students’ final projects, as well as some of their beginning projects. Bird and the class will also provide demonstrations and explanations of the processes involved in creating their projects.

The class hasn’t been offered for students since the fall semester of 1989. Bird was finally able to offer the class again when space became available in Burkhiser. The Creative Crafts class will also be offered again in the Spring ’14 semester.