JUNK BOATS
BY ANDREW MCCORMICK
Discover how
one art teacher
uses his pirate
sensibilities to
combine
engineering and
art to create
functional
floating vessels.
I’m not entirely sure I remember when my fascination with
boats as a site for artwork began. More confounding, I’m not sure
I can even tell you why I’ve fallen for this project. I’m not a
particularly nautical kind of guy. I’m terrible at fishing, I rarely go
out boating, and I literally can’t swim to save my life. But this
project seems like a great confluence of form, function, meaning,
all wrapped in a great cross-disciplinary package. Through boat
making, and to be more specific here… junk boats made out of
found objects, my students’ artistic sensibilities would bump up
At left: building the boats out of found objects. Top: testing the waters.
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