The budget for the Art Department was never big. With the impending budget cuts, the Art Department has had to redouble its efforts to get materials. Scavenging and asking for donations has been a preferred method of students and professors alike to gain cheap materials.

Bruce Howdle, a professor in the art department, has been helping students reduce the costs of their art projects by asking for donations of materials from local businesses.

“Students have the ability to enhance their portfolios,” Howdle said, “I’m working for the student.”

The latest donation to the art department was more than 1,000 pounds of scrap steel given by Universal Silencer. The company’s headquarters is located in Stoughton, Wisconsin. According to universal-silencer.com, “Universal Silencer provides engineered acoustic, emission and filtration solutions for power generation, oil, gas and industrial markets.”

Joshua Trumm, a sophomore mechanical engineering major, said that his father, Ken Trumm, who works at Universal Silencer, mentioned that his company had made donations of scrap metal to other local schools in the past.

“I asked him to look into if they would donate to the university,” Joshua Trumm said, “They got a pallet of scrap together and we drove out there to pick it up.”

The donation will enable students to use free materials to build projects for their art classes.

“Instead of having students worried about where they will get materials,”  Joshua Trumm said, “they can focus on their projects.”

One project Richard Moninski, a professor in the art department, has his students do is make useable chairs out of cardboard.

For the project, Moninski gets corrugated cardboard from Weygant’s Appliance, a company based in Platteville.

“They are friendly and supportive of me scavenging cardboard,” Moninski said. “We do a lot with a little.”

Not only are materials donated to the art department, but also most of the equipment that students use to create their works of art. A UV-exposure unit was donated by Woodward Printing Services, Miller Electric donated a plasma cutter for working with the steel and one of the lathes was also donated.

“We try to get as much as possible in donations from the business sector,” Howdle said. “We work hard at getting materials to reduce students’ costs.”