(Kevin Kadooka -- The Beacon)
By Corey Fawcett, Staff Writer -- fawcett13@up.edu
At 6 p.m. every Thursday the Buckley Center art room is bustling with activity.
Professor Mylan Rakich's stone carving students don't seem anxious to get class over with. They file happily into the studio, greet Rakich by first name and disperse throughout the room to devote the next two hours to one of the world's most ancient art forms.
"This class is awesome," junior Mark Davinroy said. "You basically get to take out your aggression on a rock for two hours."
Stone carving students use different tools to shape hunks of natural stone into whatever they please. Many of them took Sculpture 1 with Rakich, but it is not a prerequisite for the class, which is listed as "Sculpture 2: Stone Carving."
During class, students flit around the room using the different equipment, pulling out finished pieces from cabinets and consulting Rakich on their current projects.
"It gets hectic obviously, but this is what it's all about," Rakich said.
Whatever direction students take their projects is left entirely up to them.
"I was handed a big hunk of rock in the beginning of the semester," sophomore Anya Bury said. "We didn't have much prompt, but I saw a leaf."
The variety of the student work is wide. Bookends, dolphins, guitars, elephants, puzzle pieces and chess sets are just a few projects the students have chiseled and sanded this semester.
Right now, sophomore Jenya Rafikova is working on a mermaid. Junior Adam Harnden is working on an owl.
"You kind of become addicted to it," Harnden, who has taken the class before, said.
The students had enthusiastic words not only for stonecarving, but for their professor as well.
"He's really involved with his craft," Bury said. "And you can poke fun at him. He also trusts us with tools like the sander."
Rakich spends much of class time giving students tips and suggestions instead of walking them through their projects.
"Mylan helps your project become real," Rafikova said. "But he lets you do what you want."
Rakich, who also teaches drawing and design at Portland Community College, has been a professor at UP for nearly three years. He got his masters of fine arts at Portland State University where he was taught by Michi Kosuge, an artist he admires.
Students, he said, also inspire him.
"The energy of the students is very refreshing. They give a fresh look on artwork and stone carving," Rakich said.
Although the classroom environment is full of activity, stress does not seem to factor in. Rakich jokes around with students, some of whom eat while they work.Nineties rap plays in the background.
"I really enjoy sculpture. It's that one class that I never stress about. It's the class I can enjoy as opposed to dread," Bury said.
For anyone interested in doing a little carving of their own, the studio is open to all students on Thursdays from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
"I wish this was a three-day-a-week class," Paja said.
(Kevin Kadooka -- The Beacon)
