By Jordan Darling
News Editor

If you walked through the sculpture garden the night of March 12, you may have seen three sculptures consisting of white paper and soft colorful lights floating between the trees. But had you went the next day, it would have been gone.

Under the guidance of new professor Kallen King, a 3D composition class created a pop-up art exhibit for one night only. The sculptures, made of wire, paper mache, and a light source, brought the students’ imagination to life in a whimsical way.

The art pop-up is an informal type of exhibit popularized in New York in 2007 to give artists a temporary place to show their work in a less formal setting than a gallery. Though it was temporary, the sculpture garden certainly is not. The garden is located on the west lawn nestled between the University Theatre and Lacorte Hall and has been apart of the campus since 1980, when artist Dustin Schuler’s sculpture “Death of an Era” became the first to grace the grounds. 

King said he vividly remembers the garden as a child.

“When I was a kid this was a sculpture garden and my mom taught here,” King said. “So when I was home sick I would wander around campus as an 8, 9, 10 year old and there was a ton of sculptures but they got rid of it. “[So] part [of this]was to create some visibility for the art department and re-engage the space.”

King explained the goal of the project was for students to “ choose an organic form language because the nature of the wire doesn’t really do rectangular angles very well, it does better with curves and undulations. The second part was to work together as a group … One lantern made out of many.”

One team’s inspiration came from the well-known anime “Dragon Ball-Z” and created the flying nimbus, a magical yellow cloud used by the series’ main character, Goku.

Brianna Correa a sophomore majoring in studio art, said that it was her original idea for a solo project before she realized she would be working in a group of eight. Luckily, she said when she pitched it to her group they were more than happy to work with the idea. 

She drew up the sketches and Romi Avelino, a senior in Design, added to her vision by suggesting Dragon Balls surround the cloud, it created a bit of nostalgia for any kid raised in  90s or early 2000s. 

“Other students looked to what was growing around them,” Zeyel Nash, a senior in Studio Art, said. “We were inspired by succulent plants and wanted to do a diverse range of succulents so we figured out how to structure it with wire.” 

Her teammate Kamen Hartford, a sophomore in Art Design, said, “We each did our own piece to add on to the plant, our form is kind of big so we had to find a way to get the succulents around the piece so they were the main part.”

It was a big night for the sculpting class as they were also joined by an outside artist Emily Nash and a group of visiting artists from the Netherlands.

Nash is a member of the same art collective what is the art collective as King and was very complimentary towards the little pop-up and gave insight to one of CSUDH’ newest professors saying,  

“This is a lot more in-depth than the student projects I’ve seen. Kallen as an artist has done a public arts project in the valley where he was able to do a series of lanterns like this but they were welded…Professors will get really excited about a motif and teach through that.”