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Sculpture is the art of shaping stone, metal, wood, and other materials in a particular way, for a particular purpose, but we have a hard time distinguishing it from architecture and other arts like ceramics. We hope someone will come and enlighten us...
I would say that the distinguishing characteristic about "sculpture" and other forms of three-dimensional artistic expression would be in the functionality of the object constructed. Sculpture is more of a "pure art" who's functionality is in its mere existence. This definition works only if we are not too rigid with it. The lines separating them is blurred. But architecture is only good (I would argue) when it is functional as well as beautiful. When something moves away from the functionality, I think it moves away from the architecture and more towards the pure art of sculpture.