April and May saw a tumbling, busy schedule of events, projects, and people to wrap up a successful semester of the Swarthmore Makerspace. We saw intense coursework projects crunch through on deadlines, extracurricular (and hilarious) activities take over the space for production, and some of our long-running makers and workers graduate and say goodbye. Here’s some of the fun from the last month:

In academics, several sculpture courses lead by profs Jody Joyner and Topher Gent had production runs on their final assignments, making heavy use of the Makerspace woodshop and some of our digital fab equipment. Students created challenging physical constructions, pushing the limits of our space in terms of both materials and concepts. These art students are frequently a benchmark of the scope of work that can come from the Makerspace, over an entire semester. Well done all!

In an extracurricular flurry of hustle, craftiness, and slightly strange tradition, a gaggle of boat builders descended on the Makerspace for a week to make their racing vessels for the annual Crum Regatta — in which intrepid explorers set sail down the mightiest, Crummiest creek on campus. Friendly competition aside, it was an amazing show of teamwork, creativity, and thrift as the nominally ramshackle but actually nice watercraft came together.

Finally, helmed by Swat’s own and indefatigatble Stacy Bomento, the Makerspace and Whitter Hall transformed into a campus community celebration for pARTy: our annual showcase of Art student work and staff-faculty cocktail hour. Not only did visitors get to see the amazing breadth of studio art created over the year (and over four years for seniors!), they were treated to live music, karaoke, on-demand advice and answers from philosophy majors, Federal Donuts, and food trucks with some of the dankest tacos outside Philly.

Thanks to everyone who made this a great semester in the Makerspace, and we look forward to seeing most of you, and many new faces, again in the Fall!