Education and Community Programs » Susan Rotilie

Writing through Art

Susan Rotilie — Thu, 14 May 2009 22:21:37 +0000

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….”

Show and Tell: The New ArtsConnectEd

Susan Rotilie — Fri, 08 May 2009 20:48:32 +0000

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

Yoko Ono Stories

Susan Rotilie — Fri, 02 May 2008 20:13:44 +0000

Last week, I was giving a tour to a small group of artsy academics in town for a meeting. One of my usual tour stops in the Permanent Collection galleries is at a small work by Yoko Ono in Gallery 2 titled Painting to Hammer a Nail. I like to talk about Yoko Ono as a musician, an important conceptual artist, and her role in the Fluxus movement, etc. But this time, in the middle of my Ono spiel, a woman in the group mentioned that she had been Yoko’s roommate in the 60s. She went onto tell us how it was John Cage who first encouraged Yoko to meet the Beatles because they were composing music in non-traditional ways. She also mentioned that she had given Yoko her first Beatles album as a gift and told the tale of the two of them spotting Paul McCartney on the street, chasing after him, but never catching up. Fact or myth? Who knows? But we all had a very Yoko-esque moment imagining how the world might have been changed if Yoko had met Paul before she met John.

Finding Picasso

Susan Rotilie — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 19:40:17 +0000

Last night was the last Target Free Thursday Night before the Picasso and American Art exhibition closes on Sept 9th and people were coming in droves to see the work of the master. We had decided not to give Picasso tours that night because the galleries were too crowded, but it was clear that the people in the lobby were there to see Picasso, and so we came up with a quick Plan B (or “ Plan P” as it were…). So we gave the 40 or so gathered folks a choice: Go on a tour of contemporary paintings in the permanent collection as a prelude for seeing the Picasso exhibition (about 10 chose that option), or stay for a brief overview of the Picasso show before heading up to the special exhibition galleries.

What to say in five minutes or less to help people make sense of the exhibition, which is really about a handful of avant garde American artists who felt compelled to react to the inventive styles of Picasso? We came up with “ Find the Picasso.” As you enter each section of the galleries, look first for the embedded work by Picasso. Then compare and contrast that work with the works by American artists surrounding it. You remember “ compare and contrast” from your art history 101 course, right? Look for how American artists pulled strategies for abstraction, riffed on subject matter, paid homage to Picasso, and took it to the next level. You will impress those around you with your insights and pithy observations. And who knows? You might wind up being an ad hoc Picasso tour guide on your own.

No ‘Passive Viewers’ Here

Susan Rotilie — Fri, 11 May 2007 19:34:31 +0000

I didn’t want a completely passive viewer. Art means too much to me.

– Kara Walker

It was almost a year ago that Minneapolis Southwest High School (SWHS) signed on to craft a partnership in conjunction with the coming exhibition Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love. I knew Kara Walker’s work was not for all high schools, but I also knew that SWHS has a history of integrating the arts and engaging students in a deep exploration of their own creativity. The school decided to include two groups of students: 11th graders taking the integrated Annenberg U.S. History and Art class, and juniors and seniors in the Advanced Fine Arts Seminar. We hoped it would spark students in this diverse community talking about race.

In the end, the students did much more than just talking — and their responses to Kara Walker’s work were anything but passive. They went deep into issues of race, identity, sexuality, violence, and the power of art.

This spring, each class came to the Art Center for tours of the Kara Walker exhibition. Then, with the support of principal Bill Smith and guidance from several teachers including art teacher Cecily Spano, history teacher, Nonie Kouneski, theatre teacher Chris Fisher, dance teacher Colleen Callahan, and teaching artist Leah Nelson, the students were invited to create art pieces responding to and expressing their experience with the work of Kara Walker.

The Walker invited them to return to the galleries to share their pieces with Kara Walker’s cut paper murals, paintings, and films as inspiration and backdrop. This happened on two nights. On April 26, the Annenberg history students invited their families, teachers, other students and friends to the “ response”. On May 8, the advanced fine arts students did the same.

Some of what I remember:

A puzzle placed throughout the galleries that when assembled listed the range of stereotypes one student had experienced….a spoken word dialogue about what is–and isn’t–power…a drummer providing jarring staccato…shadowy photographs depicting conflict. And on the second evening… a reading from a history textbook about slavery that ended with a strangled scream…a deceptively graceful dance to Billie Holiday’s haunting Strange Fruit…a frightening poem and performance reenacting rape….and much more. Listing what they did is insufficient to describe the power of what they created and what we all experienced together.

Both evenings closed with lively and moving discussions between the student performers and the audience which underscored for me why partnerships like this are an important part of my work at the Walker. The impact of Kara Walker’s work on these students was obvious and their courage in sharing so much of themselves with others will stay with me for a long time.