Artists notes:

Michael Ray Charles – An illustrator who is commenting on blackness in America who is trying to replace the classical bad images of blacks with more modern ones, trying to change views a little at a time.

Maya Lin – Yale educated architect who won the opportunity to create the Vietnam War Memorial and survived the controversy over her plan as well as her gender and ethnicity. She has continued to design earth works, with one project at the expansive Storm King Sculpture Park in New York State that created hills in the shape of waves made with bulldozers and planted with grass. She also won the competition to design the sculpture at the second Charlotte Coliseum that was composed of a series of giant Holly spheres that looked as though they were rolling down a hill. Her pieces embrace nature in its simplest form.

Mark Dion – Has taken a giant hemlock tree that fell in a forest and transported it to Seattle along with some of the soil, plants, even a bird’s nest surrounding the tree. He has had a glass building constructed around the dead tree and created an environment that mimics that which would have occurred had it been left in the forest. Dion has brought the forest to the people so they can experience and learn what they might not otherwise have been able to experience.

Ursula von Rydingsvard – Has brought her past to create angry looking structures made of cedar along with graphite to express the agony she lived as a child. She has now made those pieces into pieces that now act as comforting caves and sort of whimsical places to play around. We have one of her sculptures at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh.

Andy Goldsworthy – His connection to the earth is palpable as one watches him build sculptures out of ice, sees how water carries leaves on a voyage down a stream,  I have loved his work from the first time I saw them four years ago. His meandering stone wall at Storm King Sculpture Park in NY state is an amazing work that embraces the stone of the land, seeming to cross through a pond, coming out the other side and zig zagging organically between the trees of the forest. It’s one thing to see it on film, but to walk along its path is an experience not to be missed.

Mel Chin – His projects include Revival Field that seeks to recover land that has been previously damaged with toxic waste or chemicals. His plan to plant plants that can absorb the toxic parts of the soil and recover it to usability shows his love for the earth as does his project to create self designed dollar bills to bring attention to the problem of lead in our environment that affects our health and learning ability.

Nan goldin – Goldins use of the snapshot to record her life and those of her friends and family in all the bare and raw reality of life is shocking, but her style of telling it like it is is her way of showing us something that most all of have observed or experienced but may not have readily admitted to. She talks of “the diary I let people read” and “creating a history by recording a history”. She continues her work by reflecting on the memories of her conections.

Shirin Neshat – Iranian by birth, she now lives in the US, but comments in her film Rapture on the universality of many aspects of the human condition. The movie was accepted on the one hand when she produced it and then after 9/11 it took on a different meaning for its viewers. The fact that the movie shows men and women in stark Iranian dress and in bleak locations that would indicate a situation that would serve universality no longer serve that purpose after the bombing. Neshat now lives in a world that is a composite of many cultures and lines that separate us are becoming blurred. Not so the culture of her birth.

These are class notes for Wed., Sept. 24. Mapping Day: Wet, overcast, annoyed, angry because it is so hard for me to get places with my balance and mobility issues. Ten things I noticed during the walk to and from Atkins: 1. Wet, overcast 2. Not able to keep up with supposed partner 3. Bricks around Belk bell tower need repointing.4. Carpet in Atkins is beige (what designer would pick a color like this for a high traffic area, not an experienced one!) 5. Carpet is extremely worn in high traffic areas. 6. Elevators are hidden and hard to find as well as too small. 7. There is lots of construction going on on campus. 8. Many of the shrubs along campus pathways are in the Holly ( ilex ) family, probably good choice because of their thorniness that limits the desire to make “cut throughs” and they are a hardy plant. 9. Pain and age are pretty challenging on a spread out university campus. 10. At least I know how to get to Atkins Library now and where it is.

Project # 1: Play

Our first project was to be on the subject of play that I believe we were able to interpret in any way we chose. I decided to pick an area I had always loved. As a child I spent much of my free time out of doors in all seasons reacting with and to nature. Whether ice skating in the Winter, finding new emerging plants in Spring, playing with my dolls and cars under shrubs to keep cool in the Summer, or jumping in the leaves in the Fall, I played sometimes quietly, many times loudly with friends, but so much of our time in the fresh air. When I had children and after they were grown had grandchildren and later sitting for young children we spent as much time outside as well playing and talking about nature and everything involved with it. I also had a small business making grapevine wreaths and baskets that kept me the woods and fields too. It was easy to know the subject of my "Play" project, nature. Something came to me one morning during my awake but not able to go back to sleep time, a nest! Since I could make a wreath with my eyes shut and as I seem to  save everything, there were plenty of found objects to "fill" the nest To make this nest somewhat contemporary since we are working to know the hows and whys of todays artists, I decided to give the nest a light coat of white paint and to fill it with an assortment of bright and neon colored feather dusters and various spikey and smooth balls made of rubber also in wonderful hues. The nest was now complete and full of its new inhabitants ready to make its debut in Concepts Studio!

Critique: What fun to see all the projects in one place and find out what form the critique would take. We learn so much from others no matter what their age and as we toured the room looking at all the pieces and later during the discussion, I realized something I would have done with my piece. Primarily make the sculpture interactive, the balls and the dusters being colorful and looking as though they would be fun to touch would have engaged the audience in a playful experience that would offer tactile and visual enjoyment.

Critique for fellow teammates:

Steve: Your play house with furniture was immediately clear to me and I was impressed with the attention to detail you used. I like the all natural look of the project and only wonder if there might have been something a bit humorous or wry in there to give it a little jolt of attention. Good job.

Jessie: the origami pieces you made were so nice and a neat way to play. I think I might have given them a punch of color by using the patterned origami papers or even bright hued card stock Fun idea, I love playing around with origami.

Ty: It is fun to see all the different ways that people play, and your wrestlers were so realistic in the picture except for the objects in the background. that was one of the things we talked about in class as you know. I think one other aspect I would have covered is the way the wrestlers were presented in the classroom itself. It would have been appealing to have found a way to either have them in a more dynamic pose as they were "on the ground" or to have a way to stand them up with arms raised in readiness or in another dynamic pose.

Project Play Photos