Our faculty and students work on several projects throughout the year that move outside the classroom and into the public arena. Very often, these projects encourage community involvement or are especially designed as community events.

Empty Bowls

Ceramics classes + hunger and food insecurity issues? It may not seem like a natural match-up, but the UMPI Art Program’s Ceramics students have tackled those very issues with the Empty Bowls events they’ve held in Presque Isle. The basic premise is that the Ceramics students (as well as local ceramicists and high school students) create hand-crafted bowls. Community members then are invited to an event where they can purchase the bowls and enjoy a helping of soup donated by local businesses, with the proceeds benefiting a local soup kitchen.

Cardboard Boat Regatta

As part of our Design Foundations course, the UMPI Art Program organizes a community-wide event that takes place in our Gentile Pool.  Students and community members are challenged to create boats from corrugated cardboard that can support two people and be raced.  The regatta puts participants to the test to see who will sink and who will swim!

Curatorial Projects

The UMPI Art Program creates opportunities for students to create their own exhibitions in either of the two campus galleries. Students experience a ‘real world’ application to their studies–from concept to execution to public presentation–resulting in a professional exhibit shared with campus and community. The exhibitions Human Form and Crooked Knife are just two recent examples of that.