The Emerson School of Sculpture offers a flexible programme of one to three years to students who have attended the foundation year at the College, or have an equivalent anthroposophical background. The complete training can lead into professional artistic work. This may be connected with the task of teaching or it may be extended into the realm of artistic therapy.

The Visual Arts Course is the first year of the three-year Sculpture Training. Students from all three years share the studios and facilities and have meetings and activities together.

The Visual Arts Course aims to lead participants through a year-long process of artistic discovery to awaken new faculties of perception, explore the inner world of feeling impressions and to find secure ground for individual creativity.

The content and intentions of this course grow out of an understanding of the human being, our relation to the worlds of nature and spirit and our place in evolution as described by Rudolf Steiner. Steiner’s own achievements in the arts of architecture, sculpture, painting, drawing, and the many lectures and indications he gave on these subjects provide a concrete starting point and clear paths for our own artistic development in the world situation of today.

This course is part of a world-wide movement to re-enliven the arts out of anthroposophy.

First term

The first term leads students through guided exercises into the essential elements of each art form.

• Clay modelling allows an experience of the world of three dimensions and the qualities that inhabit the different directions of space. We will explore the interplay of sculptural elements and discover the expressive language of form.
• The work in painting is based on Goethe’s Colour Theory, first by exploring the qualities of each individual colour, then progressing to colour combinations and complementary colours. These explorations are done with watercolour on both wet and dry paper, allowing the colours to move and breathe.
• In drawing the task is to bring alive the dynamics of line, tone and texture, slowly exploring and experiencing these elements before building up to the representation of the three-dimensional.
• Woodcarving provides the opportunity of working with a substance formed by a living tree. Gaining skill in the use of tools, allows a creative dialogue to arise between the student and the material, out of which a sculptural form can arise.

Second term

The second term leads students more deeply into the world of creative processes. Working individually and for a longer time on one piece allows each student to create out of their own personal experiences and to become aware of the creative journey that every art work goes through.

• In clay the work is to make a large abstract relief, exploring questions of composition – form and space, energy and direction, movement and rest – to achieve a dynamic, harmonious piece.
• In painting the work is on a larger scale using watercolour, gouache and egg tempera on paper and board. The power of colour to express inner feelings is explored through inner landscapes and free compositions.
• History of art lessons trace the evolution of art from the earliest cave paintings and standing stones to the present day. By observing and copying works of art it is possible to enter into the creativity of artists from the past. We can begin to sense how artists have felt in relation to the world of nature and spirit, and how art served the needs of their culture. With an overview of these vast and varied artistic endeavours we can then begin to conceive of our own position as artists in today’s world.

Third term

The third term takes students into the realms of nature with the inner gaze of the artist.

• In clay modelling, the work is with the principles of metamorphosis – becoming inwardly mobile to experience the qualitative changes that take place as forms evolve and develop.
• In painting and drawing, using exercises and methods of Goethean observation, we follow a process to create an open situation in which we can have artistic insights and intuitions into nature.
• The ancient art of stone carving brings us into contact with one of the oldest and hardest substances of the earth. We can feel a kinship with sculptors throughout the ages who engaged in this archetypal act of chipping away substance to reveal hidden inner form.

To work sculpturally is to explore more deeply the genesis of form through movement. It enables us to develop a clearer understanding of the formative processes at work in nature and in our own organism. It also provides the artistic basis for creating man-made objects in craft and industry. Through studies in morphology and fundamental creative exercise, the basic language of form is learned. This language lives not only in single forms, but between them. One of the most important tasks it to learn to work with the relationship of one form to another, and with rhythmic sequences of forms.

The studies of such sequences bring an understanding of the laws of metamorphosis which reveal the inner realities in the forms of the living world. To grasp these formative laws, the artist and observer must awaken a more dynamic inner activity, from which a whole organic experience of the world can arise.

First Year

As the first year of the Sculpture Training the Visual Arts Course offers a rich introduction to different fields of artistic work and can be taken independently. As an independent artistic year it can be fruitful for all those who want to work with their artistic experience and understanding of formative processes.

In modelling a sequence of exercises in relief as well as in three-dimensional form opens up the basic sculptural questions of movement, form and space and form-development. Practising form-observation plays and essential part in the process of “learning to see forms”.

The basic sculptural materials like clay, plaster, wood, stone, metal and casting techniques are introduced.

Second Year

The second year is necessary for those who want to go into professional artistic work. The experiences of the first year are deepened and differentiated through intensive work with Michelangelo’s four allegorical sculptures from the Medici chapel in Florence. The study of these figures leads to an exploration of sculptural gestures on four qualitatively different levels.

Individual themes are developed and further capacity for working in different materials and techniques is attained.

Third Year

In the third year concentrated work is continued with metamorphic sequences inspired through those given by Rudolf Steiner in the detailing of the Goetheanum buildings in Dornach, Switzerland. The three-year training finishes with a final project which is individually chosen and developed by the student and is presented to the College community in the form of an exhibition and presentation.

Rudolf Kaesbach trained in Dornach, Switzerland and taught sculpture at Marburg Steiner School. He has carried the three-year sculpture training at Emerson College since 1981.

Summer Courses

Green Woodwork 19th – 25th July, 9th – 15th August and 19th – 21st August 2009

Life & Portrait Drawing and Painting 19th – 25th July 2009

Open Blocks

(Blocks that are part of the Visual Arts Course, but may be taken independently.
Please contact the college for further details.)

Introduction to Felting with Lilo Marburg 16th – 28th May 2010

History of Art with Richard Heys 18th January – 18th February 2010, 2pm-4pm Monday – Thursday

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