Proctor’s industrial arts program offers opportunities in boat building, woodworking, metal sculpture, and metal engineering. Students learn to work with state-of-the-art lathes, planers, saws, presses, a variety of electric and hand tools, machining tools, and a blacksmithing forge to design and build pieces of art.
Exploration of the industrial arts provides students a unique opportunity to design and build practical pieces of art that can be taken out of the workshop and into the world. It can take months to complete a complex build and Proctor students gain the experience of seeing a long project through, learning to solve problems and make on-course adjustments along the way. When they finish their boat, paddleboard, metal sculpture, or machined piece, they know it was their own hands, imagination, and stick-to-itiveness that made their art come to life.
Industrial Arts Facilities
Proctor's industrial arts facility in the Alan Shepard Boat Shop houses a full metal shop with lathes and milling machines that range from early belt-driven to modern, computerized and automated models for our metal engineering program. The forge and metal sculpture workshop provides multiple areas for students to engage with a coal-fired blacksmithing forge as well as plasma cutting work stations. The woodworking and boat building programs are held in the upper levels of this same building where astronaut Alan Shepard once built a boat as part of a summer program at Proctor. That same boat is displayed in the lower level of the Fowler Learning Center. The wood shop is also well equipped and has in place safety-enhanced equipment and protection systems.
These shop spaces can be available for students to work in the evenings and outside of class for developing all aspects of their abilities in these various disciplines. Students work throughout each term in preparation for end of term art shows where their work is displayed in collaboration with both the visual arts and performing arts productions. Students are also invited to participate in annual juried art exhibitions at area universities throughout the year.
Industrial Arts
