Their hands are covered in papier-mache as they manipulate chicken wire, multi-colored plastic wrap, hot air blowers, cheesecloth and aluminum. Whether it be to mold, polish, dry or build, the 22 students enrolled in Francisco Perez’s sculpture class have their hands full and their eyes riveted on their creations.

Sculpture 1, the entry-level sculpture class that meets twice a week in Studio 184 in the Fine Arts building, is very hands-on. However, it requires students to use not only their hands, but their heads as well in an effort to familiarize themselves with the discipline as well as with different materials, Perez said.

For their first assignment of the semester, Perez said the class was asked to create something from the biological or microbiological world that they don’t normally see in their day-to-day life and to duplicate it in sculpture, using a form that was new to them.

While some went by the book, applying the instructions literally to create a cricket, an eel, a jellyfish or a spider, others like Jesse Dicarlo-Wagner and Ema Jimenez decided to dwell into the abstract, letting their imagination and creativity run wild.

Dicarlo-Wagner, a liberal studies major, explains that she is making a giant colon with cancer spreading in the middle using cheesecloth, chicken wire, papier-mache and a rope—for the aesthetic aspect. She said she is already thinking of how she will use some other material to melt so it will have the look and color of mold.

“It’s fun, but it’s hard!” she said.

Jimenez, 25, a former business major, is making a virus. “I’m taking the class because I have to. It’s kind of hard. The materials, connecting the wires…” she said, while continuing to work on her piece.

Sculpture is indeed all about problem-solving, Perez said. Having an idea and being able to come up with a creative way of bringing it to life using sculpture can be difficult, he said.

“They [can] have problems visualizing all the way through,” Perez said of his students, for most of whom the class is a general education requirement, and art isn’t necessarily their major.

More than one student in the class seems to be struggling with the concept of visualizing their piece all the way through.

“I really don’t know what I’m doing,” said Ruth Halo, 21, about her yet unidentified creation, before bursting into laughter. “I’m just trying to make this thing stand up,” the art major said, before adding, “but I’m enjoying [the class].”

This biology-related project for the class is also about form and gravity, and Perez said he aims at teaching his young apprentices how to build support and structure for whatever form the students will be creating.

Jimmy Gormley, an art major with an emphasis in drawing and painting, said if he is still up on the air about the class. For the project, he is making a banana using steel rod, chicken wire, plywood and cheesecloth.

Regardless of the humor some find in the class, sculpture can be a challenge, Perez said.

“It has been described as one of the funniest classes. But it’s a lot more difficult than they think,” Perez said of the course. “And I tell them right from the beginning.”

Head of SF State’s sculpture department, Perez has been teaching this sculpture class — as well as two other upper level sculpture classes (Sculpture 2 and 3) — since 1986.

An artist and sculptor himself, he is aware of the reputation that art classes have gained over the years.

“‘I’m gonna take an art class! Easy A!’” he said, invoking a common perspective among non-art majors. “But it ain’t no easy A.”

Whether the students are general education students or art majors, Perez doesn’t play favorites, treating everybody as if they were art majors. Considering that they are all in the same boat, he teaches them what he feels a sculptor needs to know.

And, he explains, because a majority of his students have never held a sculpting tool in their hands before the class, they are challenged in new ways. He said he believes some students would feel more comfortable having him looking over their shoulders and telling them what to do.

“But you have to learn when to walk away, otherwise they won’t pick up on anything,” he said.

Aware that most won’t end up being sculptors or even attend Sculpture 2 and 3, Perez said he is just “loading up their tool belt,” notably to prepare them for their two other large scale projects.

The class will next focus on how the form can work in service of content. For their last assignment, the class will take a walk around campus, looking at ways that content relates to public space. They will then be asked to generate a piece and contextualize it, finding how to connect it to space.

Contextualizing, formalizing and visualizing, according to Perez, are only the hard parts of what he considers to be one of his favorite classes. The fun part?

“It’s when they finish and [say] ‘Holy cow! I did this?’” he said.

Preferring the word “creative inventions” to “art,” Perez explains that art isn’t all about objects. Art—and sculpture—is a process, he said, a way of seeing the world.

“For me, anybody can be an artist. Creativity is like a muscle. You exercise it, it gets stronger,” he said.