About the Workshop

What Shouldn’t Be is an all-levels sculpture workshop focused on combining materials that traditionally don’t belong together. Students will learn armature construction with cardboard, wire, and mixed media, along with mold making, casting, stitching, and adhesive bonding. We will explore quick approaches to working with concrete, plaster, delicate media, and transformed everyday materials. Participants will develop self-directed projects, while also contributing to a collaborative class piece used for demonstrations and hands-on practice. Students will experiment with found objects and unconventional pairings. The workshop builds confidence, technical skill, and creative curiosity for sustaining a sculpture practice beyond the course.

Refer to the Materials List for materials students should bring to the workshop.

About the Instructor

Chiffon Thomas (b. 1991, Chicago) is an interdisciplinary artist working across sculpture, collage, drawing, performance, and installation. He creates immersive, site-specific environments and forms that explore the adaptability of identity while interrogating systems of power. Drawing from his lived experience as a queer trans person of color, Thomas examines embodiment and social positioning through contorted figures, fractured compositions, and historical references. His assemblages merge abstraction and representation, combining anatomical fragments crafted through hand-building and life casting with reclaimed materials such as iron, glass, concrete, silicone, and fiber. His work portrays identities in flux, navigating intersections of race, gender, queerness, and spirituality.