Crafting Your Weekend: Art, Craft and Fun at the ASU Art Museum

We’re sure you’ve all been eagerly wondering since the start of the school semester, ”When is the ASU Art Museum going to have another awesome art party? And when are all their cool new shows going to open?”

Well, wait no longer, for the time has come! Hope you’re resting up this weekend, because we’ve got a full schedule lined up next weekend, Sept. 26-28 at the ASU Art Museum, and we want to see your faces there.

If you’re looking for something to do between now and Sept. 26, both Christine Lee and Del Harrow will be in the Museum creating site-specific works for the Crafting a Continuum: Rethinking Contemporary Craft show.

Christine Lee, “Piece by Piece,” 2013 (detail). Wooden shims, graphite.
Photo: Elizabeth Kozlowski.

Christine Lee started today and will be working through Sept. 26. She’s become a part of our community over the past couple of years as a Windgate visiting artist; she has taught in the School of Art and lived at Combine. She studied furniture making with the legendary Wendy Maruyama, whose show opens at the Museum on the 26th, and takes an innovative approach to working with wood. And ceramic artist Del Harrow will be installing in our lobby from Sept. 24-26, adding to Cabinet #3 (2012).

Del Harrow, “Cabinet #3,” 2012. Ceramic, luster, wood. Photo: Craig Smith.

Here’s a rundown of all the happenings and can’t-miss events that we’ve got planned for the weekend of the big opening:

Thursday, Sept. 26, 2013: Kick off the weekend with what’s sure to be a great lecture from an internationally renowned artist. Jessica Jackson Hutchins will be at the ASU-Tempe campus as a featured speaker for the Jan Fisher Memorial Lecture Series, which brings established and emerging women ceramicists to the Phoenix community.

Hutchins, who currently lives and works in Portland, Ore., makes reference to everyday rituals and family life in her work, whichplaces her in the rich tradition of artists who combine the personal and the cultural. In her assemblage sculpture, she teases out notions of function and display by creating richly glazed vessels and locating them on top of or inside used furniture, such as armchairs, couches and tables, or balancing them on plinths of her own devising.

The lecture will be held in COOR 174 and begins at 7:30 p.m. It is free and open to the public. A reception with the artist will follow at the Ceramics Research Center.

Jessica Jackson Hutchins, “Venus,” 2013. Photo: Nick Ash. Courtesy the artist and Laurel Gitlen, New York.

Friday, Sept. 27, 2013: Visual artist and Arizona native Paul Nosa joins the ASU Art Museum for a  two-day sewing performance with his Solar Sewing Rover, a portable sewing machine powered by a solar panel or a bicycle with an electric generator. Nosa will create original images, which are machine sewn on fabric patches, using word associations provided by our guests. Nosa’s goal is to inspire people’s creativity and to demonstrate alternative energy sources through his performances. This performance is co-sponsored by the Global Institute of Sustainability at ASU.

Nosa will perform twice on Friday: from noon-1:30 p.m., in the GIOS Breezeway and again from 5:30-8:30 p.m., at the ASU Art Museum front entrance. His second performance will kick start the fall season opening reception, which we’d like to think of as Tempe’s art celebration of the season. The party is from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m., with a special member’s preview at 5:30 p.m. Full details here: https://asuevents.asu.edu/season-opening-reception-fall-2013

Image: Paul Nosa,”Glow-in-the-dark piano on fire.” Courtesy of the artist.

When you’re in the museum for the reception, you’ve got a lot to check out, and you don’t want to miss any of it. Crafting a Continuum: Rethinking Contemporary Craft, Wendy Maruyama: Executive Order 9066 and This Is Not America: Protest, Resistance, Poetics are all new and on view. And, if you haven’t seen it yet, be sure to duck into the Multi-Purpose Room for Plate Silk Stone: Impressions by Women Artists from the ASU Art Museum Print Collection to see a show co-curated by one of ASU’s undergraduate students and research interns, Emma Ringness.

Wendy Maruyama, “Tag Project,” full installation view at San Diego State University. Paper, string and ink. Each approximately 11’ x 2’ in diameter, 2012. Photo: Kevin J. Miyazaki.

Saturday, Sept. 28, 2013: Don’t stay too late at the Museum having fun on Friday, because the day starts bright and early at COOR 174 with the “Flashback Forward: Rethinking Craft” Symposium, which will explore and discuss critical issues facing the field of contemporary craft.  Our keynote speaker is Jenni Sorkin, with a presentation by Guest of Honor Wendy Maruyama, and lectures by artists Garth Johnson, Christine Lee, Del Harrow and Erika Hanson. There’s too much cool stuff (and it’s all free!) happening to list here, but you can view the full schedule, as well as RSVP, for Saturday’s symposium on the event page: https://asuevents.asu.edu/flashbackforward-rethinking-craft-symposium

And, if you missed him on Friday – or just can’t get enough of Paul Nosa — he’s back again on Saturday with another performance from noon – 2 p.m. in the COOR breezeway.

Whew! What a weekend! We can’t wait. And while you’re out enjoying yourselves, don’t forget to tweet and Facebook us your photos.

Jarbas Lopes, “Cicloviaéra,” 2006. Osier (natural fiber vine) over bicycle. Photo by Craig Smith.

Notes from Kosovo: Linking Phoenix and Prishtina

The relationship between Kosovo and the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts owes much to the U.S. State Department’s Junior Faculty Development Program (JFDP), which brought multi-media artist and University of Prishtina faculty member Alban Nimani (pictured below) to Arizona State University, where his faculty host was Intermedia Professor Muriel Magenta. Nimani became involved with the ASU Art Museum’s International Artist Residency Program through a chance encounter with visiting artists Matteo Rubbi, Miguel Palma and me, Greg Esser, at one of Intermedia Professor Gregory Sale’s graduate classes. The rest, as they say, is history.

On March 26, I met United States Ambassador to the Republic of Kosovo Tracey Ann Jacobson, who was at the University of Prishtina, Faculty of the Arts (Fakulteti i Arteve), to dedicate a new multi-media lab, funded as a partnership between the U.S. Embassy and the University of Prishtina. Nimani wrote and received the grant for the multi-media lab from the U.S. Embassy following his semester-long residency at ASU. Among other initiatives, Nimani is in the process of adding intermedia, public art and a volunteer component to the curriculum at his university based on his experiences at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

“There is no more important investment a country can make than in the education of its young people, its future leaders,” Ambassador Jacobson said during her remarks.

Jacobson spent time speaking with each of the students in Nimani’s class about the work they were developing on the new state-of-the-art Apple iMac computers the grant provided. Projects ranged from calligraphy to animated film to interactive video games. The facilities in the lab now rival the tools available to students in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

These new tools represent a significant advancement in the resources available to these students to pursue careers in design and the arts.

Following the ribbon-cutting ceremony, working with the new iMac computers, Nimani’s fourth-year students continued work on another aspect of Nimani’s grant and another inspiration from Phoenix, Arizona. Nimani and his students are frantically preparing for E premtja e fundit, or Last Fridays, inspired by the First Fridays monthly art events in Phoenix.

With less than three days to go, students worked to refine projects, social media and a map that locates art projects throughout downtown Prishtina, including Mother Teresa Boulevard, the main public plaza and the pedestrian mall in Prishtina, the capital city. Last Fridays, or E premtja e fundit, is supported in part by the U.S. Embassy, the Municipality of Prishtina and the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and the ASU Art Museum. The free public event will feature dozens of temporary public art projects, installations, gallery openings, local musicians and local businesses all working together to bring art outside of the gallery and into the community.

We ended the afternoon with a traditional Albanian meal with Nimani’s father, Shriqy, who founded the Graphic Design Department at the University of Prishtina. Once an award-winning singer and former director of the National Gallery, Shriqy is an avid historian and author focused on Albanian culture and influence around the world, with dozens of published books and scholarly awards. I learned that Mother Teresa, who once took me by the hands and blessed me while I was working at the United Nations, is Albanian. The main road through the heart of Prishtina is named in her honor.

As both an artist and curator, I’m excited to be in Prishtina to help shape and advise on the first event of its kind here on behalf of the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and the ASU Art Museum.

Notes from Kosovo II – Plan B

Waking up on Wednesday morning, I discovered the city covered in snowfall. Most installations have been planned for outdoor locations. With less than 72 hours before the launch of the event, we immediately embarked on contingency planning.

Amid a flurry of radio and television appearances promoting the event, Alban and I visited Pallati i Rinisë dhe i Sporteve, or Palace of Youth and Sports, to determine if it might serve as an alternative location for installations.

Built from 1977 to 1981 under Communist leadership as a public project when Kosovo was part of Yugoslavia, the structure defines the landscape of the city center and contains a massive subterranean shopping complex with restaurants. A large section of the building burned and is currently vacant, providing an ideal canvas for temporary artist interventions. As snow fell on the city, many outdoor projects were relocated to this new venue.

In the afternoon, I provided a lecture for fourth-year students on the impact of the arts in Phoenix, the ASU Art Museum International Artist Residency Program and the Desert Initiative, all of which focus on the power and impact of collaboration and the power of the arts to transform lives.

Posters promoting the event arrived at the Faculty of the Arts following the lecture, and students immediately began distributing them throughout the city. We ended the day at the National Gallery for the opening reception of a retrospective exhibition for deceased artist Engjëll Berisha, also known as Befre. Berisha was one of the early pioneers in building the arts community in Kosovo, a figure similar to artist Philip Curtis in Phoenix, who helped to establish the Phoenix Art Museum.

*    *     *

The Republic of Kosovo was established in 2008 following protracted ethnic conflict between Serbia and the largely Albanian population. Newly an independent nation with a deep history informed by numerous occupations, including the Roman Empire, 500 years of Ottoman rule (1455 – 1912) and Communist rule as part of Yugoslavia, Kosovo is today focused on a prosperous future and is a warmly hospitable environment for the first-time visitor or long-time friend.

*    *    *

The morning of Friday, March 29 arrived with cold, overcast skies and rain. At around 4 in the afternoon, the clouds broke and sunlight spilled down and began to warm the streets and buildings of Prishtina. As the workday closed, an optimism and energy was percolating throughout the city. With less than three hours to go, students, artists and musicians worked to put the finishing touches on their individual works and the overall event.

*    *    *

As with any group exhibition, the quality, intellectual rigor and execution of the individual artworks varied. Overall, the participants demonstrated exceptional teamwork, collaboration and experimentation. I was tremendously impressed by each of the students who moved outside of the classroom and well beyond their comfort range to create an event that was so much more than the sum of its parts. Works included projected animation, live painting, an interactive Twitter experience, an installation of umbrellas, dance, music, gastronomic work, an installation featuring the preparation and presentation of traditional Albanian foods, murals, a fashion piece made from black plastic bags, an interactive puzzle, a version of Tic Tac Toe with mirrors completing the pieces, transformation of a city bus stop into a representation of the future with sounds from NASA, a light and sound installation in a built environment on Mother Teresa Boulevard and more.

To get the full experience and variety of work, please visit the official webpage, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram sites for the event.

Across the street from the Palace of Youth, nine emerging Kosovo bands performed to a packed house at Punkt. I haven’t witnessed the same level of energy since the early days of the punk movement in the United States, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. There was a range of young musicians with a palpable vibrancy and the first mosh pit I’ve seen in many years.

Notes from Kosovo III – Looking Forward

The headline in Sunday morning’s newspaper in Prishtina translates to “Last Fridays designs the future.”

The story, profiling the event, describes the energy and work of the students as well as the potential for the event to grow. Again acknowledging the numerous partners that made the event possible, including the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, the story captured the impact that the students had, and will have, through their participation.

With the event behind us on Saturday, Nimani and his family graciously shared their insights on more of the region. We spent the weekend visiting the National Gallery of Albania in Tirana, the national enthnographic museum and the museum of Skanderbeg, one of Albania’s national heroes, in the mountain town of Krujë, and the seaside port city of Durres. We ended the weekend with a round of bowling at the Taiwan complex in Tirana in honor of the Phoenix art bowling group that frequently hosts ASU’s international visiting artists.

Overall, this was a beautiful journey, if too short, hosted perfectly by Alban Nimani and his family and colleagues. I look forward to returning again soon to Prishtina to see how the E premtja e fundit event evolves and watching the progress of the students who were part of this first event. Nimani, in turn, looks forward to continuing his relationship with Arizona State University and seeing the event expand to other cities in Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Europe.

When you plan your travel to Kosovo, be sure to include a Last Friday in Prishtina. It will be rewarding.

Faleminderit (thank you), Kosovo!

Links:

As part of his residency with the Herberger Institute, Nimani composed short soundtracks for YouTube videos on two projects supported by the Herberger Institute, including Valley of the Sunflowers and Desert Initiative:

Valley of the Sunflowers

Desert Initiative

And see more pictures here:

Official Embassy photos

 Photos by Greg Esser

–Greg Esser is director of the Desert Initiative, which is housed at the ASU Art Museum in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

Penny for your thoughts: ASU Art Museum Spring 2013 Season Opening Reception

On Friday, Feb. 8 we celebrated the season opening for our spring shows: Cu29: Mining for You, a collaboration between Matthew Moore (Phoenix) and Clare Patey (London); Traces of Japanese Life: Selections from the Melikian Collection; and, at the Ceramics Research Center, Born of Fire: The Pottery of Margaret Tafoya and a companion show, Re: Generation: A Survey of Margaret Tafoya’s Descendants. We also said farewell to artist-in-residence Miguel Palma, from Portugal, whose exhibition Trajectory closed Feb. 9.

Thanks to everyone who made the shows possible — to the hard-working artists, to our donors, to our magnificent staff and advisory board, and to Target and Tempe’s own Cornish Pasty, for helping make it such a great party.

Coming up on March 22: The opening of Turn off the Sun: Selections from la Colección Jumex. Be there!

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Photos by Matthew Corbisiero

Looking forward, looking back: “Emerge: Redesigning the Future” at the ASU Art Museum

We bade farewell to the Emerge exhibition this month. Here’s a look back at the show in pictures:

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Photos by Tim Trumble.

Redesigning the future with Emerge

What it means to be human is changing. Emerging technologies are transforming our minds, our relationships, everything we own and the very landscapes in which we live. What kinds of humans will we become? What kinds of humans should we become?

These are just some of the big questions that artists and scientists explored March 1–3, 2012, when Arizona State University hosted Emerge – an unparalleled campus-wide event uniting artists, engineers, bio scientists, social scientists, story–tellers and designers to build, draw, write and rethink the future of the human species and the environments that we share.

On April 10, the exhibition Emerge: Redesigning the Future opened at the ASU Art Museum. This unusual show gives audiences a chance to sample some of the futures imagined during the three-day Emerge event, and includes hands-on activities that make the viewer part of the project.

On Tuesday, April 17, we’ll celebrate the opening of Emerge from 5 to 8 p.m., at a reception sponsored by ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability. The exhibition will be up through Aug. 25, and is free and open to the public.

Many thanks to the partners who worked so thoughtfully and so hard to bring this exhibition together, and to the sponsors and partners who made Emerge possible!

Exhibition credits

Emerge exhibition team

Daragh Byrne, School of Arts, Media + Engineering in the Herberger Institute

Sarah Davies, Center for Nanotechnology in Society

Aisling Kelliher, School of Arts, Media + Engineering and The Design School in the Herberger Institute

Cynthia Selin, School of Sustainability, Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes

Lead developers of Emerge

Thanassis Rikakis, director of the ASU School of Arts, Media + Engineering and the Digital Culture Initiative in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts

Joel Garreau, Lincoln Professor of Law, Culture and Values at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law

Cynthia Selin, assistant professor, Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes and the School of Sustainability

 

Sponsors and partners

• Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts
• The Center for Nanotechnology in Society
• ASU Office of the President
• Intel
• The Prevail Project of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law
• School of Sustainability
• Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering
• ASU LightWorks
• ASU Art Museum

Image above: A moment during Immerge, a performance on Nelson Fine Arts Plaza during the Emerge conference. Photo by Tim Trumble.

ASU Art Museum exhibition lands in NYC

Intertwined banner on Museum of Arts and Design exterior

We’re very excited that an exhibition co-curated by our very own Sr. Curator and Interim Associate Director Heather Lineberry is now showing at the prestigious Museum of Arts and Design (formerly the American Craft Museum) in New York.  Here’s a bit from our press release:

“The Arizona State University (ASU) Art Museum exhibition Intertwined: Contemporary Baskets from the Sara and David Lieberman Collection has been extended to show at Museum of Arts and Design in New York City through Sept. 12, 2010.

Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) requested an extension of the Intertwined tour for their institution after it completed a successful exhibition at ASU Art Museum and national five-city tour. Formerly the American Craft Museum, Museum of Arts and Design is the leading museum in the U.S. for the exhibition and interpretation of contemporary craft. This is the first ASU Art Museum-organized exhibition to travel to a major New York museum.”

Congratulations to Heather and her co-curator, artist and scholar Jane Sauer. And much thanks to Sara and David Lieberman for sharing their amazing collection and for continuing to support ASU Art Museum in many ways. Click the photo above to go to the full release on our ASU News site, and for details on the location and hours of the show in New York.

-diane

Fundreds closing event

On Thursday, Feb. 25, 2010, we say goodbye to all of the creative and unique fundreds that have been donated by our local community members to the Fundred Dollar Bill project. The project’s armored vehicle will arrive at ASU Art Museum at 10 a.m. to pick up our fake Bennies and then continue on until fundreds from around the country are delivered together in Washington, D.C.

To celebrate, we’ll have light refreshments and live music, and special performance art by ASU students. This will be your last chance to participate at the museum, too – we’ll have everything you need to create your own fundred, provided free!, to donate to the project. (After the 25th, you can still go online to Fundred.org to download templates and mail them in. You can also go there for more information on the entire project. )

See you at the museum!

-diane

2nd Annual Street Party announcement from ASU Art Museum!

News Flash!  The 2nd Annual Street Party is official! Here are the details:

2ND ANNUAL STREET PARTY to benefit ASU Art Museum

April 10, 2010

4 – 10pm

Event location: Hoskin Ryan Consultants, Inc. property, 2^nd Ave and Indian School Road, Phoenix

*Entry is only $5 per person at the gate; kids 12 and under are free.

The ASU Art Museum Street Party is an exciting annual event that includes live bands, hands-on art activities for kids until sundown, and an on-site exhibition of work by local artists curated by the ASU Art Museum. We can now announce that self-described “Acoustic Symphony Indie Rock” band Dry River Yacht Club is confirmed to play that night!

Food and drink will be available for purchase at the event, and an Indie Chic art fair  will have beautiful hand-made arts and crafts for sale by local artists (remember the one at the museum back in December? Yeah, it’s like that! :)

Proceeds from the event benefit ASU Art Museum’s exhibitions, programs and educational outreach. Last year’s event was VOTED BEST OF PHOENIX in Phoenix New Times.

Keep watching our blog as more bands and vendors are announced!

DJ Brazilia at the 2009 Street Party for ASU Art Museum

A thank you

Thanks to Honest Tea for offering to donate beverages for our Phoenix Phundred Phinale Mardi Gras Part

-diane

Phoenix Phundred Phinale

Click the picture to print a copy of the events flyer!

February is the last month that Mel Chin’s Fundred Dollar Bill project will be at ASU Art Museum – the armored truck is coming to pick up our Fundreds on Feb. 25 at 10am.

To give everyone some last chances to contribute to the project, we’re holding three events to encourage you to come in and have some fun. All three are free and open to the public:

Feb. 9: The Arizona premiere screening of Mel Chin’s award-winning animated film 9-11/9-11: A Tale of Two Cities. A Tragedy of Two Times. Join us at 7 p.m. in the 3rd floor gallery.

Feb. 16: Mardi Gras at ASU Art Museum with a free concert by Phoenix band Peachcake! See a clip of the show The Planet Awesome, who interviewed Mel at the museum, have some free snacks, and earn beads for creating your Fundred and donating it to the project – then head out to the plaza for the concert! The party starts at 7 p.m.

Feb 25: Live music, museum tours and your *really last chance to create your Fundred before the truck arrives at 10am.

As always, ASU Art Museum is free to come in and free to participate, and is open to everyone.  You can come by the museum any time during regular hours as well, if you can’t make an event, to still create your own Fundred to donate. The project is located in our lobby with the materials you need until Feb. 25.

See you in the galleries,

-diane

(You can click on the graphic above to print out the flyer, too!)