Trivium Prep’s Sculpture Artists Explore Three Dimensions

At Trivium Preparatory Academy, students in the 12th-grade studio art class have embarked on a new medium that has taken their artwork into a whole new dimension.

Debra Foley, the 12^th grade studio art teacher, is helping her creative senior students transition from the two-dimensional art of drawing and painting to the hands-on work of clay sculpture. “This gives them a process where they can use their science and math skills,” explained Foley. “My background is architecture, so I love the model building process of having to think, not only of the front of something, but the top, the side, and how I’m going to formulate a piece so that it’s not going to wiggle and wobble, and actually be a worthy piece of art.”

“Up until this point, they’ve worked primarily in two dimensions,” explains Foley. “But when they move into three-dimensional art, they’re challenged to think differently—to consider the front, top, side, and structure of their pieces. My background in architecture gives me a special appreciation for this process. I love watching my students embrace the complexities of creating something solid, balanced, and enduring.”

The students’ sculptures are inspired by poetry written by their peers through a collaboration with the academy’s poetry class that combines literature with the fine arts. The process begins with selecting three or more nouns from a chosen poem, which then serve as the foundation for their sculptures. “We get to try and create or convey those ideas that they’re giving us,” shared Gavin Lopez, a senior art student.

Lopez explained that he found inspiration in a poem about an orange. “When I was reading through the poems, there was one about an orange. And whenever I was trying to think of how I was going to depict it, I was thinking of a still life or some sort of painting.”

“But after I started looking at some of the adjectives… the orange was described as elegant, and beautiful, and glistening. I thought, ‘Well, it kind of sounds like it’s describing a person. So that’s kind of what inspired this piece,” explained Lopez, pointing to a clay bust of a woman that he was creating. “The face was definitely one of the biggest challenges. Trying to have it look symmetrical, how I kind of had it envisioned in my head. But it really is just a lot of trusting the process and taking your time with the details and just trusting that it’s going to work out in the end.”

For senior Katelyn Broadwick, sculpture provided an opportunity to explore new territory. “This is kind of challenging myself to see if I can explore 3D instead of 2D, which is my main medium.” Broadwick chose to challenge herself with a sculpture of a shark. “With 2D, you’re only focusing on one side… but here you have to do everything,” she said as she explained how she used wire within the clay to keep the form from “flopping” over.

Persephone Preciado took a surrealist approach, drawing from a poem about an eclipse. “It described the vibrancy when [the sun and moon] had first collided,” she explained, speaking of the joy that the poem evoked, which inspired her color choice for her mixed-medium piece, using clay for dimension on a canvas. “I used magenta, cyan, and yellow because those colors always end up so much more vibrant… and I used the clay in a way to kind of pop out the moon and the sun rays.”

Foley finds Beauty in the entire process of these projects, from start to finish. “They bring back their inspiration photos to me, they combine all these images, and they make something beautiful themselves,” she shared. “There’s something about them actually observing that makes them slow down and think about the surroundings they’re in. So, I think that’s really important that we take time to observe what’s already been made beautiful

Foley’s sculpture class offers a refreshing return to manual creativity. It challenges students to think critically, experiment with materials, and transform abstract ideas into physical forms. At Trivium Prep, the art of sculpting explores the potential of human hands and minds.

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