Professor Craig Wedderspoon and his sculpture students were featured recently in a Desktop News story about the unique benches they have built and installed at Hill Hospital in the west Alabama town of York.
The benches, made from pressure-treated pine and steel, were designed by recent interior design graduate Rebecca Miller. The design Miller came up with will seat every patient in the small 36-bed hospital, and the bench can be rearranged into different, smaller configurations.
Wedderspoon met with hospital officials to explore design possibilities and find out what would work best in the space. “It’s more interesting when you can collaborate with communities to make something that they are interested in and that you are interested in so that the entire project is a collaborative effort,” Wedderspoon told Desktop News. “It is an opportunity to be part of a community that is doing something original and unique, that can go out into these communities and give them ownership of their own things.”
Along with providing a service to the community, Wedderspoon used the project – and the many other public art projects he has led – as a teaching tool for his students. Not only do they learn how to work with the materials first-hand, but they also find out what it’s like to create public art.
For more information about the programs in the UA Department of Art and Art History, go to this page or contact the department at (205) 348-5967.