Smash Studio: Make / Break / Remake

Course Description

In this immersive week-long workshop, students in grades 8-11 will explore the unconventional interplay between creation and destruction in contemporary art. They will experiment with materials, techniques, and processes that challenge the traditional notion of “permanent art”; learning how to build, deconstruct, transform, and re-assemble artworks in surprising ways.

Each day introduces a new model: we start by investigating historical and modern artists who incorporate destruction into their work, discussing why erasure, ruin, fragmentation, decay, or transformation can be as powerful as the original creation. From there, students will roll up their sleeves: working with clay, papier-mache, found objects, paint, digital capture, and even simple mechanical or chemical processes, to create an original piece, then actively destabilise it (for instance, by tearing, shredding, burning, dissolving, or re-casting), and finally generate it. The result will be a “reborn” artwork that traces its own lifecycle of making, breaking, and remaking.
By the end of the week, each student will contribute to a collaborative gallery-style installation that documents not only the final object but also the stages of destruction and re-creation; showing that making does not stop at the first mark, but often happens in and through undoing. We have an ongoing partnership with the Carleton University Art Gallery (CUAG) to curate and display the students’ work in a pop-up exhibition on the final day, transforming the gallery into a living archive of creative risk, experimentation, and renewal. CUAG will also be providing us with materials, such as silk screening supplies and rubber stamps.

The course emphasises risk-taking, the mess of process, collaboration, and reflection: what does it mean to destroy one’s own work? What surprises emerge when things do not go as planned? How can destruction itself become a mode of creation? Students will leave with a portfolio of experiments, a final piece (or series of micro-pieces), and a deeper appreciation that art is a process, dynamic, messy, reversible, and alive.

Required materials (some supplied; students will bring a small selection of found or recycled objects) include protective gear (gloves, goggles if needed), basic sculpting tools, and a digital camera or smartphone for documentation. Activities will be hands-on, playful, and safe within university workshop constraints while still embracing unpredictability and transformation. No previous studio experience required; only enthusiasm, curiosity, and a willingness to get messy.