Off Center

 

 

"Abstract painting of spoon with a Cheerio on top." Vanessa H. age 4

We had a most excellent response to our “What’s On Your Spoon?” blog!  Kids were asked what they would like to see on the Spoonbridge in place of the cherry while it was removed for repair.  Many of our friends from the highly imaginative and sophisticated 12-and-under scene sent in their suggestions.  Because of the overwhelming response, we regret that we are not able to post all the great ideas here.  After much consideration, we present this selection of drawings and written responses.  Enjoy!

First off, let’s acknowledge some of the written responses:

“A big hunk of ice cream!” –Brandy

“Um, a big Cheerio?  Or maybe some yogurt.” –Vanessa (age 4)

“A birthday cake so everyone can go visit on their birthday” –Hannah, Grade 1

Food-based responses were definately the most popular.  Lots of smart kids immediately recognized the connection between the spoon and eating, and suggested many variations on this theme.  These kind of problem-solving skills will save us all in the future.  Great job, kids!  Keep it up.  Some unique responses worth noting:

“A spoon full of puppies!” –Zachary

“I say nothing goes with a spoon better than a FORK!” –Kim

Intriguing.  See more responses here.  Now, onto our visual learners:

"Pickles are good and green sticks out." Meher Ali

"A snake...I know every kid will like it." Wendy Q.

"They are so prity, soft, cool, small, smart, creatov." Ayana L.

"Lots of people eat cereles." Brisa C.V.

"Frank Gehry's Sculpture" Anonymous *editors note: Spoonbridge and Cherry was designed by Claus Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen in 1988.

"It could be the first gold fish sculpture." Charley

 

"...if the Jonas Brothers' pic was on top of the spoon, grownups will maybe think it will be kind of funny for them." Anonymous

 

"Milk for the water...and on the spoon will be Cookie-Crisp cerele." Paris

 

"Monkies are AWSOME!" Zachary

 

"Our state bird...Maybe it could even become a monument." Cailin K.

 

"It will have a good look in replace of the cherry." Islam Z.

 

Much thanks to the Columbia Heights 5th Grade ELL class!  Keep posted for more calls for kids submissions here on the blogs.

 

 

 

 

 

Broomball:

A Canadian team sport resembling ice hockey and played with sticks and a ball. (via)

Lumber Baron:

…a partially informal term used to refer to a person who has reached a prominent place in a particular industry (or set of industries) and whose wealth has been derived primarily therefrom. (via) The occupation of T.B. Walker, founder of the Walker Art Center.

The 2009 Lumber Barons. Top row, L to R: Rebecca Yaker, Justin Heideman, John Vogt, Joe King, Ashley Duffalo, Dawn Fredericks. Bottom row: Megan Leafblad, Brian Lesteberg, Peter Eleey, Gene Pittman, Jess Durant.

For the past several years, the staff of the Walker Art Center has formed a Broomball team. Being sequestered indoors for the 6 months of winter isn’t a lot of fun, and broomball is the only team sport left if you can’t ski or skate. I’ve played for two years, and we’ve yet to win a game (yes, this is sad). We’re working up to it.

Each year, a team member designs a new logo for our jersey. Here are two of them:

Logo for the 2007 Lumber Barons

The 2009 Lumber Barons

Games are played outdoors and are only canceled if there is a windchill below -40 or temperature below -15. Each year, it seems as if we end up with one game that freezes the hair in your nose and another game where the ice turns into a lake. How cold is that? Here’s a photo that explains:

Here’s a sample of our dominating gameplay:

In response to the public outcry over our recent removal of the Cherry from Spoonbridge and Cherry, we would like to invite artists and creative thinkers ages 12 and under to share their ideas of what they would place on top of the spoon while the cherry is on vacation. We will be posting selections from these entries here on the Education and Community Programs blog. 

Please submit your drawings and concepts to:
The Hypothetical Spoonbridge Commission
Care of Elena Vetter
Walker Art Center
1750 Hennepin Avenue S

Minneapolis, MN 55403

Or via email to:
joseph.rizzo@walkerart.org

Deadline: March 20, 12 pm 

Update! March 27th, 12 pm

I’m a big fan of Make Magazine (even though I’ve made roughly zero things from the mag). I already had my Twin Cities pride tickled when Make started producing a TV show with TPT here in the Twin Cities. But now they’ve gone and one-upped everything and are having a “Make Day” at the Science Museum of Minnesota. It’s not quite a Maker Faire, but about as good as we’re going to get in Minnesota in March.

Here are the details:

Make: Day celebrates the ingenuity and inventiveness in our community. Building off the success of Maker Faires and the American Maker events, Make: Day will give local engineers, artists, tinkerers and inventors the opportunity to showcase their DIY creations to Science Museum visitors.

Festivities will take place on Saturday, March 14th, from 10 am to 3 pm throughout the Science Museum’s exhibit galleries. The event is included in the regular admission price and free to all members of the museum.

• Here are some of the things you’ll find:
• Dozens of other local talented Makers, several of which appear on the first season of Make: television
• All of the Maker Workshop projects including the Burrito Blaster and the DTV Antenna
• Demonstrations from Makers and musical performances emceed by our very own William Gurstelle

Tons of hands-on activities for people of all ages

I hope to see some mnartists there, too.

Walker alumni were tapped last week to fill key museum posts on both coasts. In L.A., Douglas Fogle has joined the Hammer Museum as its chief curator and deputy director of exhibitions and public programs. Fogle got his start here as a curatorial fellow in 1994 and went on to work as a staff curator until 2005, when he moved on to the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh; you probably remember many of the Walker shows Fogle curated, including exhibitions with Catherine Opie and Julie Mehretu, as well as Andy Warhol/Supernova: Stars, Deaths, and Disasters, 1962-1964 (2005) and The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography 1960-1982 (2003) (which traveled to the Hammer). (Fogle’s new home and the Walker’s 1970 building also share an architect: Edward Larrabee Barnes.)

And as Fogle arrives in SoCal, veteran curator/director Richard Koshalek is leaving the area for Washington, D.C., where he will fill the director’s post at the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden that was left vacant more than a year ago when Olga Viso joined us here. Wisconsin native Koshalek also began his career at the Walker, working here from 1967 to 1972 after graduating from the University of Minnesota. More recently he was director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles for nearly 20 years (before its recent troubles), and then president of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. The Washington Post’s story has a more detailed overview of Koshalek’s career, as well as noting his bid “to reposition the Hirshhorn as an international leader in its field because the new administration has acknowledged the role of arts and culture.”

Modern Art Notes’ Tyler Green gives a nice shout-out to the Hirschhorn’s choice of Koshalek in his post today, and brings up a couple of other interesting points with a particular relevance to the Walker. Listing a number of new bosses that have set up in the past year at American contemporary art institutions, he speculates that “This will mean something for those museums and how the public interacts with and experiences contemporary art.”

Green didn’t include Viso’s arrival here last January (granted, it’s been a tad more than a year), but I’d add that between Viso and chief curator Darsie Alexander’s arrival last fall, the Walker is indeed well-positioned to offer some fresh thinking in our galleries and public spaces – and not least, with our public and our permanent collection. Just one sign of that is the major re-installation of our collection coming this November, something that many on our staff are excited about.

That leads me to item #2 from Green’s list of “Five things I think I think.” To wit: “When art museums use their collections and their curatorial staffs to intelligently engage with the present, they do something extra-important: They reach beyond the art ghetto to new audiences, they make the case for why art matters, for why art isn’t just a feature story.” Exactly!

I asked a few people yesterday if they were attending the flashmob outside the Walker, and the response was a pretty universal “People are still doing those?”. Yes, Yes they are. For those that don’t know what a Flashmob is, Wikipedia helps out:

…a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief time, then quickly disperse. The term flash mob is generally applied only to gatherings organized via social mediaor viral emails, rather than those organized by public relations firms or for a publicity stunt.

The call for this flashmob went out on craigslist and was spreading around Twitter and Facebook. The instructions were simple:

The general idea, for all of those who don’t know, is to dance for 3 minutes to your iPod/MP3 but no music is allowed to be played out loud (just in your headphones). 
The point of this is that it has no point. Total pointless, random fun! 

At 8:00 PM on the dot neon colored poster board will be held up-that is your queue to start your tunes and start dancing for the cars driving by. You must silently dance to your iPod. Simple! 
At the end of 3 mins the signs will go up again, this is when we all calmly walk away from our “dance floor.” 

There were about 50 people at the event. Most in the crowd seemed to be around high school or college aged, making me feel old. Most people had iPod earbuds in during the dancing, so there was not much interaction between participants, unlike the pillow fight, but everyone was smiling. As total pointless, random fun, it did the job. 

Waitingline also posted a video:

I saw about ten other people there taking pictures last night and talked to a few of them. If anyone has photos, adding them to the Walker Art Center flickr group would be swell.

Lee Siegel in the Wall Street journal has a thoughtful overview of Elizabeth Peyton’s portraiture in the context of the Live Forever survey that opens Saturday at the Walker (or Friday, if you attend the After Hours preview party).

She includes a brief history of portrait painting, looking at more recent portraiture in terms of an “American artistic wrestling with the human face in the teeth of photography, movies, television and now the Internet.” Painters like Picasso, she notes, broke down the human visage early last century, no doubt the result of any number of complicated responses to the popularization of photography; later, artists naturally brought about a return to realism — or some semblance thereof (see Alice Neel and Chuck Close, two relatively recent surveys at the Walker).

Siegel asserts that in contemplating at one of Peyton’s portraits, “You suddenly realize that you are not experiencing a person, but a puzzle woven around a person, a social and psychological riddle that is also made up of art-historical allusions, from Antoine Watteau’s wistful youths to Pierre Bonnard’s haunting ellipses. This is not so much the image of a person as a person’s ideal image of himself.” Or, as she states later, perhaps it is Elizabeth Peyton’s ideal image of that person – or Peyton’s own ideal image of herself. Before things get too convoluted, I’ll just close by noting that painting a likeness of somebody, rich or poor, famous or obscure, ultimately does little service to reality. Instead, it opens the door to all kinds of mysteries, not just about the subject, but about the painter herself.

Speaking of mysteries and portraiture, a figure known as “Least Wanted” has a fantastic Flickr collection of that most nefarious form of portraiture: mug shots, – which, whhen you think about it, might be one of the most neutral forms of portraiture. Among the dozens of wide-ranging sets on LW’s account is a quartet of arresting (ha) females from Minneapolis (the images are copyrighted, otherwise I’d show one here). (Thanks to Hrag Vartanian.)

Below is a longer version of an interview that appeared in the Jan./Feb. issue of Walker magazine; it was conducted by Walker editor Kathleen McLean as jewelry designers Tia, Amy, and Alice were preparing for the Walker Shop’s Jewelry Mart last fall. And we’re quickly coming up on the spring Mart on May 9, which will feature all local designers. In the meantime, browse the online Walker Shop to see jewelry by this trio and other designers you might wish to meet at the Mart — or better yet, come by the brick-and-mortar Shop.

Bling? No. Good design? Yes. Custom jewelry you both want to wear and can afford? Yes. Three designers whose work is currently featured in the Walker Shop — Tia Salmela Keobounpheng, based in Minneapolis, daughter of architect David Salmela; Alice Roche, based in San Francisco, daughter of architect Kevin Roche; and Amy Torello, based in Mexico City — talked briefly about their designs and creative processes.

Who do you design jewelry for-who do you see wearing it as you create it?

Tia Keobounpheng: Throughout my life I’ve made jewelry for myself-I would whip something up with the materials I had around the house. When I first started making this line of jewelry, I suppose I continued to design for myself, but it also became an exploration of form, material, and technology, translating concepts from my environment into wearable forms. . . so I don’t necessarily “see” anyone specific wearing it while I create it. Ultimately, I want my pieces to be practical, easy to wear, and provocatively simple so that they can be everyday pieces and/or worn for special occasions.

Amy Torello: Basically, I design for myself and my friends. That is to say, young or young-at-heart gorgeous women who are dynamic, individual, hard-working, and in love with their lives and want to show it off to the world.

Alice Roche: The person I make jewelry for is someone who appreciates and wants jewelry that is well-designed and contemporary-something that stands out because it is unusual. I try to make a range of work that maintains my design aesthetic but pushes the boundaries at one end and is quite simple at the other end. This way, those who are drawn to the jewelry can find a piece that is within their own comfort zone.

If you couldn’t make jewelry, what would your creative outlet be?

TK: Over the course of 15 years, I have found outlets in photography, drawing, weaving, book-making, and block-printing. I currently supplement my creativity with knitting, sewing, pastel drawings, digital artwork, and graphic/promotional materials for my jewelry, in addition to working in the architecture/interior design world.

AT: If I couldn’t make jewelry, I would dance. Maybe salsa, or flamenco . . .

AR: In my spare time, I draw, paint, and take photos. I find that these things constantly feed my jewelry design process, whether I intend them to or not. My favorite outlet that isn’t directly tied to jewelry design is cooking (though the process seems so similar). When I was younger, I thought I would become a chef, but decided I wanted cooking to become a pastime I could share with family and friends.

What is your process like?

TK: I work part-time for my father doing architectural-based work and also a bit with my husband. I am also the mother of a three-year-old boy, and while we maintain a regular schedule of Grandma day-care that sets a “workday” routine, I find myself working at all hours of the day. Inspiration can hit while I’m out on a run or just before I fall asleep or while I’m sitting at my work table in the middle of the making process.

AT: I definitely don’t have a work week. When it comes to developing new ideas, my brain is always mulling things over: concepts, colors, shapes, textures. I will take a trip, maybe to the beach, maybe to a new and foreign place, or just go on lockdown in my house, during which time I will just sketch and make notes, getting the preliminary ideas onto the paper. Seeing things in the solid form of the silver really allow my mind to run with a concept, bringing many elements together for the final product. The sketches always feel a bit one-dimensional until I can actually hold the piece in my hand.

AR: I do have a workday, like a regular 9-6 job, only I suspect much more fun! The first four years I was making jewelry, I was also working 30 hours a week for an architect, so I was forced to be very efficient when I was in my studio. For the past year I have been making jewelry full-time. As with most creative people, running the business is the hardest part, but I have to run the business, too, so I try to split my time between design development, production, and business development. I think I am always designing in my head; ideas can come at any time-so I jot them down when they do. Sometimes my design process will happen inadvertently when I am making a piece of jewelry, and it will just morph into something else. This is a great way for me to get ideas and to branch out a line.

When you’ve finished a piece, how do you know it’s “done”?

TK: I know a design is done when it feels balanced with just enough “action” and “calm” to be intriguing, when it physically works from the construction end of it, and after I have felt good wearing it for at least three days. I suppose a specific piece (in a particular color or material combination) is done when it is purchased and worn-but the design itself is always flexible and open for reinterpretation or adaptation.

AT: Mainly, I know a piece is done when I achieve the overall quality that I am looking for, and when there is a sense of harmony and movement amongst the various elements involved in the design, i.e., texture, color, movement, shape. How do I know when this has been achieved? I think it is something very subjective, a feeling. When I look at something and it makes me smile from deep inside, that’s when I know it’s done. Usually there is this feeling that I didn’t create the piece, but that it exists and has existed in its own right and that I just sort of facilitated its manifestation.

AR: I’m not sure a piece is ever really done. I think that’s what deadlines are for! Even so, when something feels right, I stop messing with it.

What question(s) do you wish you’d been asked?

TK: Perhaps what designers/people inspired us. I am a huge fan of Hella Jongerious from the Netherlands, who masterfully balances art, design, and craft without ever losing the edge or the refinement. Her work ultimately addresses the notion of “craft” pushing the boundaries of being a woman, and being “crafty” while also being high-design. It is so exciting! I find myself straddling the lines between art and design and craft in my own work-particularly because I need to work with my hands to feel truly satisfied. But I have been surrounded by architecture and products that have also revealed the magnificent results of an idea being worked through thoroughly before actually becoming a reality.

AT: Maybe you could have asked why I have chosen to work in the materials I have chosen, which for me specifically would be enamel, and more generally, color. The answer would be that there is something so ancient about enamel, and so counter to this rapid, modern world. I really love this feeling of dedicating myself to a relatively dying craft, something very “old world” and unpredictable and a bit hard to manage on the large, commercial scale. Each piece needs to be painted and fired individually, and there is always a margin of error that can not be foreseen. Also, I find the quality and luminescence of the enamels over the silver to be mesmerizing. Color is sort of the package that life is wrapped up in, and each separate hue defines a mood or conveys an emotion..

AR: I guess you could have asked how we got started making jewelry. For me, I needed to take some sort of class to balance my AutoCAD heavy days when I was working as an architect. I wanted to do something very hands-on to counterbalance sitting at a computer all day. So I took a jewelry class and was hooked form the start. I loved the relation to architecture, and the best part was that I could complete a project in a matter of hours rather than years. I think the process of building something with my hands is the easiest way to explore and ultimately express my ideas.

Amy Torello (Mexico City)
http://www.amytorello.com/

Alice Roche (San Francisco)
http://www.aliceroche.com/html/collections.html

Tia Keobounpheng (Minneapolis)
http://silvercocoon.com/profiles2.htm

As we all know President Obama is taking on challenges that have faced America for years. His plate is full of responsibilities that as a citizen I cannot even begin to comprehend how long his “to-do” list is for the next four years. I would venture a guess that his Microsoft Outlook calendar is triple-booked from now until 2012. So taking on a new challenge or debate on whether or not he should appoint a Secretary for the Arts has become increasingly strong. Quincy Jones or rather “Q” as he likes to be called has taken it upon himself to start a petition to encourage President Obama to support and develop such a position. Of course, as an arts administration student and a person employed by an arts organization I find this idea to be fascinating and exciting. Is it idealistic? Yes. Could it become a reality? I hope so.

The direction that such a position could take in this country could change the entire arts community. This person would advocate for arts funding and arts education on a federal level. No longer would this type of advocacy be left to large organizations. Although this is not necessarily a bad thing but putting a face to the cause of the arts would hopefully make the need for funding more evident to those who do not understand the necessity of the arts to our country. Yes, I am biased. I will argue the benefits of the arts until the day I die but unfortunately I don’t think they would hire me being that I am no “Q”.

If the arts can become a front-running topic during the infancy days of President Obama’s administration I fear that they can be pushed aside too early on. However I also feel the sooner that arts advocates reach out to the President the better chance they have of adding the cause to his to-do list. As the arts try to find their way during these unpredictable economic times having a representative on our side could make us a feel a little more confident about our future in this country.

I applaud Q’s efforts, I just hope that they will lead to success or if not that then a continued discussion on arts support in this country outside of the arts organization’s walls.