Mobile Making in AH563

The potential meaning-making objects spread out on the table.

PhD student Amy Braebender with her mobile.

A student shares her finished mobile.

Here are some photos taken by Professor Ann Smart Martin of her mobile making exercise in the Material Culture methods seminar, AH563.  This semester's focus is "Skilled Hands and Inquisitive Minds."  The goal of the activity was to learn about craft and workmanship, work process, and the meaning behind objects not only through seminar discussion, but through doing.

Some of the issues brought up about craft and workmanship was the balance of free creativity and the need and use of an established design or pattern, as all made the same product.  People created their mobiles with choices informed by color, shape, or theme, and it is through these choices and associations that students individualized them and made these objects meaningful and symbolic.