Composing Spaces

Very quickly, from The Chronicle of Higher Education (some comments later in the week when I have a chance to relax a bit):

I strongly recommend the Chronicle Review’s Architecture Issue (March 9, 2008), with which I am just getting started.

I was reading the latest issue of Smithsonian Magazine this morning and found an article called "Aerosol Art" which details a fascinating new exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery called RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture (runs through October 26, 2008). The exhibit includes portraits and paintings of Hip Hop artists, film, poetry, and the one medium that really caught my attention: the graffiti art of taggers Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp. Jobyl Boone, the exhibit’s guest curator, argues that

graffiti tags function as self-portraits. "We want to present the notion that individuality and portraiture might not be someone’s face or body," she says. Conlon agrees: "Graffiti is based on choosing a name and making it as prolific as possible."

Two of Conlon and Hupp’s tags:

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My old friend who is an art teacher in the town where I grew up (and I blogged about here) is having her students design advertisements based on the iPod theme. Students come up with their own poses to communicate a certain meaning. My favorite is by joseph318:

I am constantly amazed by the work her students are doing–especially when I think back to what I created in that same classroom space: papier-mâché everything—a memory my sister also shares. Their understanding of technique, theory, and form suggest that there is something significant going on in their minds and in her classroom. When I first saw the pieces I immediately thought of Janet Emig’s The Composing Process of 12th Graders, wondering if there is a composing process that can be identified for K-6 art students.

While in Rochester, NY, over Labor Day weekend for my cousin’s wedding, I had the opportunity to go to the George Eastman House gallery. It was the final weekend of an Ansel Adams exhibit. I had seen one of his exhibits when some of his work was displayed at the Harry Ransom Center on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin. The exhibit in Rochester was bigger and more thorough than the one in Austin and, as always, it is great to see master photographs up close.

The images that stuck with me from my time at the Gallery, however, were by Robert Polidori of Chernobyl after the nuclear disaster and New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. What struck me of these large-scale photographs was the similarity of the decay–and how the decay has completely redefined the spaces themselves:

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Today, as part of International Day of Peace activities, Rowan University’s College of Fine Arts hosted an exhibition of Pinwheels for Peace (1 of 4 such exhibitions in Glassboro, NJ) on the lawn between Science and Westby Halls.

This non-political organization aims to provide an alternative to the violent images that bombard children via TV, video games, and the movies. The organization web site says that it is their “hope that through the Pinwheels for Peace project, we can help the students make a public visual statement about their feelings about war/ peace/ tolerance/ cooperation/ harmony/ unity and, in some way, maybe, awaken the public and let them know what the next generation is thinking.”

I walked over to the exhibition with Sandy Tweedie, expecting to take a few pictures of it for an old friend who is an elementary school art teacher, and then be on my way to the Amish market in Mullica Hill. I didn’t expect there to be a table outfitted with markers and pastels so that passers-by could make their own. Some of the pinwheels were exceptional–amazing colors, wonderful patterns–and clearly took a lot of time and thought. On the other hand, my pinwheel (front and back):

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