Archive for October, 2012
Bookmaking at First Saturday
ASU Art Museum and First Saturdays for families are pleased to be having fine arts bookmaker Alice Vinson returning for a kids bookmaking workshop on November 3. Alice is an award-winning book artist as well as a children’s bookmaking workshop instructor for The Drawing Studio, in Tucson AZ.
Due to overwhelming response to her first workshop, Alice will be doing two sessions. The first session is from 11:30 – 1:00pm and the second is from 1:30 – 3:00pm. The workshop sessions and supplies are FREE!
There is very limited space, so sign-up is first-come, first-serve, so save your spot by emailing Aimee Leon at Aimee.Leon@asu.edu with the name(s) and age(s) of the child(ren), attending parent(s) names, a contact phone number and which session you’d like to attend.
We will be providing activities in rotating hour-long intervals. If you come for the first session, feel free to stay after. If you are in the second session we hope to see you a little early.
Photo by Tim Trumble.Notes From Underground: Fall Season Opening
Guest blogger and ASU student Veronica Rascona writes about the ASU Art Museum’s Fall 2012 Season Opening Reception:
At 6:30 on the evening of September 28, the ASU Art Museum launched its 2012 season. People gathered in the darkness at the front of the building to talk, eat and watch a performance by the mixed parkour, martial arts, dance and acrobatics group Movement Connections. The group, dressed in white, took advantage of the museum’s unique structure as they silently crawled, leapt and ran all over the walls and stairs of the Art Museum’s entrance.
In a touching moment, a little girl got caught up in the mix and one of the performers invited her to perform a stunt with him—a simple handstand, nothing dangerous. After performing a few more acrobatics on their own, eventually the performers climbed up onto the cement pillars in the front of the Museum. They performed a few stunts and then began pointing toward the façade of the museum upon which a video was being projected. It appeared to have been filmed from the window of a car and depicted an expanse of desert landscape rushing by.
The video continued to play as Movement Connections wrapped up their performance. People then began to shuffle down the stairs, waiting for the next sequence in the evening’s activities. Some ventured into the Museum to look at the current exhibits on display, while others, like myself, sat just outside the doors, taking in the array of lights that filled the underground courtyard—part of the “55: Music and Dance in Concrete” performance that would start at 7:30 p.m.
I sat to one side of the courtyard and began to notice other elements—a video of an eye opening and closing and rolling around in its socket was projected onto the back of the pillars that outlined the courtyard. Above and below the eye was the phrase, “Don’t touch me!!” projected backwards. It was somewhat disturbing,and I did not know what to expect from the performance after seeing these images. Just before the performance began, the audience was instructed as to where to stand in order to best view the performance, but were also told that the performers would be moving throughout the space alternately providing various vantage points a better view.
The crowd gathered, and from my vantage point I witnessed three of the visiting dancers, each dressed in red, black and white, slowly fill the empty space between us and the Museum. I could not see what was happening on the other half of the courtyard as it was blocked by cement pillars and benches, but this was how the show was meant to be viewed: people seeing different parts of the show, each person having a unique viewing experience. The three girls on my side slowly moved into position.
The lights changed from bright white lines filling the space to a strange speckled effect, and music composed of electronic sounds, “from 55 improvised and 55 composed pieces” started to play. The dancers began to move. Their dancing was rapid; they moved convulsively, throwing themselves at the cement walls and against the floor as the lights continued to change and pulse. The effect was alarming and intriguing. As the dancers moved throughout the space, the crowd adjusted to watch each new scene; at one point the only male dancer shut himself behind a gate while a video of him stuck in what seemed like a jail cell played on the wall behind the bars. The video cut from scenes of him in the cell, to the real dancer performing similar movements in the real, jail-like space.
The music and lights continued to change as the dancers set and reset their stage, from one side of the courtyard to the other, to behind the bars, to on top of the cement benches, to at one point taking the elevator in the middle of the space up to the second floor where we lost sight of them for a moment. The performance, meant to engage the audience in sight, sound and movement, felt like a piece about escape; the dancers’ jerking movements gave the impression that they were almost trying to break out of their own skin.
What was most beautiful about the whole event, however, was not only the performances, but the interaction between the performers and their audience. I looked over the faces in the audience and everyone’s eyes were on the performers, completely captivated. The decision by both performance groups to use the space around their audience created an atmosphere in which we were all connected. Not only did everyone get to watch a fun and intricate performance, but they were encouraged to feel like they were a part of it all.
Thanks to Sean Deckert and Veronica Rascona for the use of their photographs.
55: Music and Dance in Concrete premiered at Fort Worden as part of Centrum’s Reverberations series, in addition to premiering at the ASU Art Museum. The project received initial funding from the MAP Fund and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, as well as support from Arizona State University, and RBMA. The project is supported by the Japan Foundation through the PerformingArtsJAPAN program. The Centrum Artist Residency program is made possible by support from the Washington State Arts Commission and the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission. Additional support was provided by 4Culture Site Specific.
Miguel Palma’s Trajectory is supported in part by the FUNd at ASU Art Museum, the ASU Art Museum Advisory Board and Friends and Margarita and Willie Joffroy.
Dispatch from Helsinki: “On the road with Georgia O’Keeffe”
Our intrepid registrar, Anne Sullivan, traveled to Helsinki last month to accompany the Museum’s Georgia O’Keeffe painting, Horse’s Skull on Blue, which has been on tour, back home to Arizona. Here’s a glimpse from her trip:
Everything is about design, no doubt. Even the attractive young man dressed in black, carrying a tool kit (actually cleaning supplies), who cleans the hotel room is a stunner.
Everything is considered, the hotel has strict eco standards — very little paper anywhere — the metro has slick floor guides, called “fish,” which are stainless steel shapes on the floor that guide someone using a cane; mass transport is on-time always. Bicycles are just another transport method and everywhere. Most everyone is under 30 and dressed very hip, lots of black.
The O’Keeffe exhibition, Georgia O’Keeffe: A Retrospective, is in a re-purposed gymnasium-style building. This allowed the exhibition to be installed in a shotgun-style layout — the entire exhibition is viewable from the front door. The curator played with the aesthetics of images rather than following a straight chronology, so even O’Keeffe folks were surprised to see some pieces hanging next to each other.
Overall very nice. Darah and Dayle both here and working on condition reports. The remaining couriers (10 of us) check in on Monday with conditioning first day then packing the second.
Our painting looks to have traveled well.
Helsinki Art Museum walk-through a bit of a disappointment, about 26,000 attendance. Separating the exhibition from the main museum was for environmental reasons, but it did affect general attendance since few were willing to travel to another site just for the O’Keeffe exhibit. Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung in Munich has 60,000 attendance and Fondazione Roma Museo 30,000.
Otherwise all going well, great weather so far.
Anne
Here’s a slideshow of Anne’s photographs from Helsinki:
Here’s a bit more information about the O’Keeffe exhibition in Helsinki, from the Tennis Palace Art Museum website:
Georgia O’Keeffe
Tennis Palace Art Museum, Helsinki
June 8 – September 9, 2012
The modernist Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) was one of the most important American artists in the history of world art. She entered the New York art scene around 1916 – several decades before women were allowed to study art at American institutions. In 1946, O’Keeffe’s solo show opened at MoMA – the first ever exhibition at MoMA devoted solely to a female artist. New Mexico became O’Keeffe’s cradle of art and permanent safe-haven, which is also where she created her most famous series of works. They feature animal skulls and close-ups of flowers, painted on such impressively large canvases that the compositions become almost abstract to the viewer. Staying faithful to the themes of her paintings, the artist surrounded herself with a bitter-sweet personality, reaching cult-icon status in her own lifetime. O’Keeffe’s works are rarely seen in European exhibitions, which is why Helsinki’s Tennis Palace Art Museum is indulging their visitors by showing the first-ever Georgia O’Keeffe solo show in Finland, from June 8 through September 9. More than 60 paintings and drawings can be viewed in the exhibition, as well as a few sculptures, personal items and photographs that illuminate her career and life. The photographs were taken by O’Keeffe’s husband, the illustrious artist and promoter of modern art, Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946).
Tennis Palace website:
http://www.helsingintaidemuseo.fi/en/
And a few words about Helsinki as the 2012 World Design Capital:
The World Design Capital is an initiative of ICSID, the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design, which every second year recognizes one global city for its accomplishments in utilizing design as a tool to improve social, cultural, and economic life. Icsid owns the rights to the World Design Capital trademark.
In 2012 Helsinki is the World Design Capital together with the neighbouring cities of Espoo, Vantaa, Kauniainen and Lahti. The previous World Design Capitals have been Turin in Italy (2008) and Seoul in South Korea (2010). Cape Town, South Africa was chosen as the World Design Capital for 2014.
World Design Capital Helsinki 2012 is more than just a series of events or projects. It is about improving cities, embedding design in life. The 2012 main theme is Open Helsinki – Embedding Design in Life. Openness equals transparency, curiosity, global responsibility, and innovation. This vision extends the concept of design from goods to services and systems. It means finding solutions to people’s needs, for example in the public health care sector. In short, it’s about improving cities.
ASU Art Museum 