Education and Community Programs

Sleep On It: 24 Hours of Recovery

by Witt Siasoco at 5:26 pm 2009-05-17
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This post was written by Emmanuel Mauleon, Teen Programs Intern.

After working for over 50 hours in the last four days I have to say that as I walked away from Don’t Sleep On It I was extremely tired. But I found myself wishing about an hour after it finished that I was still in that small room in the California Building creating another three hour installation.

Don’t Sleep On It was a huge success. Aside from the issue of the time-lapse video going out for 12 hours, everything went off without a hitch. This was due in large part to all of the artists, and their commitment to keep all of our participants motivated through their sleep-walking/arting.

Thanks to Erin and Brett Smith for the convenience store, Chris Pennington for the cardboard city, Hardland/Heartland for the black hole (with help from M-Deathsquads), Burlesque for the BRLSQOTHEQUE (and the wall of bass), Kristina Mooney for the misty mountain landscape, Liz Miller for the felt and burlap oasis, Scott Stulen and Andy Ducett for the couch-fort/pastel-polygon, and lastly Broken Crow for the porcupine and spray paint free-for-all. Each of these installations were amazing and surprisingly different.

I’d also personally like to thank WACTAC for their commitment to staying awake and helping remove trash and debris while everyone else was making art. Nick & Shannon, word up.

Thanks to all of our participants, sponsors and funders. There will be a slew of photos in the upcoming days, so be on the look-out for that, but for now here’s the time lapse video.

I’m going back to bed now.

Admin edit: Added the corrected, longer version of the time-lapse video.

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Writing through Art

by Susan Rotilie at 5:21 pm 2009-05-14
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It was a lovely May evening last Monday and perfect weather for a walk in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and into the Walker’s galleries with 5th and 6th graders, their parents, siblings, and teachers from Horace Mann School in Saint Paul. We gathered to hear students read from their best work after participating in the Walker’s Writing through Art Program. For the fourth year in a row, Horace Mann students have come to the Walker four times during the school year, each time touring a new gallery or the Garden, and each time doing a different type of writing as part of their tour.

Some students read poems inspired by works of art, others shared original myths or stories in which paintings or sculptures came to life, and still others became junior critics as they expressed their own points of view and opinions about art and architecture.

Here’s a sampling:

: Kenneth Noland, Cantabile, 1961, T.B. Walker Fund

A student’s poem inspired by Kenneth Noland’s painting Cantabile….
Target
Circle, Color
Pointing, Shooting, Colliding
Aim for the middle
Bull’s-eye

: Thomas Hirschhorn, Necklace CNN, 2002, T.B. Walker Acquisition Fund

One student wrote a myth about Fillipo, from the clan of Weather giants who was hired by CNN to “stick their heads above the clouds and predict the weather. They are hardly ever wrong.” He received a giant CNN necklace as a gift for his services which was given to the Walker after his death.

: Deborah Butterfield, Woodrow, 1988, Gift of Harriet and Edson W. Spencer

Another student’s favorite was Woodrow, by Deborah Butterfield.
“As I studied the horse, it came to life. I saw tall mountains, with peaks sprinkled with snow with a light blue sky in the background, as the horse frolicked in the hills of the valley.”

In a critical essay about architecture and art, a student took the stance that the Walker Art Center building is art because of how it was designed. “The exterior of the building is made out of squares of hard, metal mesh…. Each piece has dents and bumps in it but the edges still fit.”

: Roy Lichtenstein, Artist’s Studio No. 1 ( Look Mickey), 1973, Gift of Judy and Kenneth Dayton and the T.B. Walker Foundation

And Lichtenstein’s studio painting led to an interesting story that began, “One sunny Thanksgiving afternoon, Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse traveled to the Arctic….”

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Broken Crow at WACTAC’s 24 Art-Making Marathon

by Witt Siasoco at 6:46 am 2009-05-12
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In lead up to Don’t Sleep On It: 24 Hour Art Making Marathon, WACTAC did a couple interviews with some of the participating artists. The interview series continues with Twin Cities large scale stencil artist collective Broken Crow.

If you haven’t already, check out the our first video interview with Hardland/Heartland.

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Show and Tell: The New ArtsConnectEd

by Susan Rotilie at 3:48 pm 2009-05-08
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logo_ace2
After two years of work, the newly designed ArtsConnectEd launched a beta version on Monday. Kudos go to the entire team which includes the Walker and our partner, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, combining new media and education staff with project management by Sandbox Studios and funding from an IMLS National Leadership Grant. It’s been an incredible collaboration both cross-institutionally and cross-departmentally, but special credit needs to be given to the Walker’s own Nate Solas and Brent Gustafson as lead developers for this project.

What’s new about ArtsConnectEd?
Almost everything! The new site is completely redesigned as a dynamic and social Web site that empowers teachers, students, and museum educators in the creation and sharing of content and ideas in the process of learning about art.
The new Art Finder offers an intuitive and powerful interface to the combined collections of the Walker and MIA, encouraging both wide exploration and in-depth research. Users can browse over 90,000 works of art, watch and listen to more than 1,000 video and audio records, and read thousands of articles and object labels. All of these resources can be collected in Art Collector and arranged as interactive presentations for personal or classroom use, which can in turn be published for others to use. ArtsConnectEd also allows users to enhance their presentations with video and photos from services such as Flickr, YouTube, and the new ArtBabble video site.

Another milestone was reached yesterday when we got our first user submitted Art Collector sets which are now added to the 50 (and counting…) published sets. Educators from both museums will continue to build new content, and we welcome more user submissions, as we prepare for a major push to teachers in September.
Go to www.artsconnected.org , take a look, and tell us what you think. But be forewarned, once you start playing with ArtsConnectEd, it is hard to stop.

ArtsConnectEd Homepage

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Postcard from ‘Magical Mysteries’ family day

by Ashley at 1:12 pm 2009-05-07
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Families were enchanted at last week-end’s Free First Saturday by the marvelous ways artists explore time and space using science, sound, and technology in the exhibition The Quick and the Dead. The day was entitled ‘Magical Mysteries’ and was highlighted by a series of explorations led by the Science Museum of Minnesota, an instrument-making activity surrounded by cool sound stations designed by L.A.-based musician/artists Sarah RaRa and Luke Fischbeck (part of sound duo Lucky Dragons and the drawing collective, Sumi Ink Club), a magic show by G Sparks, and a dance sampler with New World Dance: New York.