Pecha Kucha Night - Mark your calendars! Invite your friends!

If you don't have it on your calendar already, please mark down the date and time for our Pecha Kucha night:

Friday, December 9th
3:00 - 4:30pm
Beam Classroom, VAC

And it begins...

Marlo Pascual, "Untitled", 2011

I plan to drive to Portland a little early tomorrow so I can arrive by about 6pm. Please try to arrive as close to 6:30 as possible so that we can curate the show as a class. Bring all of your work with you so we can lay it on the ground in front of the wall and figure out where everything should go. Please coordinate rides by emailing the class list (vart390). Carpooling is strongly encouraged! If anyone needs me to reserve a Bowdoin car or van, please email me ASAP.

Also, please consider titles for your work, because I will be collecting that information from you as you install tomorrow. And don't forget to bring your own special tools or hardware if you require them.

Kate Doody - Visiting artist lecture on Monday, 11/28

Don't miss the last visiting artist lecture of the semester! Kate Doody is a talented young artist and an excellent public speaker. I know you are all extremely busy and overwhelmed by the amount of work that needs to be done for the exhibition, but this event should not be missed.

Kate will be visiting our class later that night to do studio visits and help you all troubleshoot for the exhibition. Let's show her some respect by showing up to her lecture. Unless you have a prior obligation, I expect to see you there. (In other words, PLEASE COME!)

Exhibition publicity materials, check!

The postcards have been ordered! We should receive them on Tuesday morning. And the posters will be sent to press on Monday, so if anyone notices any errors or would like to request any changes, please email me ASAP. Thanks again to Chelee for her hard work!

(Postcard Front) 

(Postcard Back)

(Poster)

Thinking ahead...

In preparation for a discussion at the beginning of class on Monday, please have a good look at this floor plan and at the pictures below, and think about the following questions:

- If your work is going to be site-specific (Nick, Sadie, Tariq... anyone else?), where were you thinking it would go?
- How much floor or wall space will you occupy?
- Should we intersperse the work, or allocate space for each of you individually?
- Should we purchase vinyl lettering so we can put the exhibition title and your names up on the wall? If we want that text to take up wall space, which wall would be best suited for it? The wall directly to the left of the front door (which is about 4 feet wide), or something larger?
- Where should wine and refreshments go?

Please let me know if you plan to work in class, in Portland, or elsewhere during class time on Monday. Kate Doody, who is giving a visiting artist lecture on Monday at 4:15, will be in class to do studio visits  with those of you who are interested.

Entrance

View of space from front door

View of front door from center of space

Back of large column

Back left corner (bathroom not shown on floor plan)

Back right corner (back door)

Should artists be entertainers?

An excerpt from a recent post on Alec Soth's blog, Little Brown Mushroom:

"I like to say that there are three levels of artmaking.

1) Entertainment: This, for me, is essential. If the work doesn’t pull me in, I’ll go elsewhere. And doing this and this alone is one hell of a challenge.

2) Education: After being entertained, maybe I can learn something too. While watchingThe Social Network, maybe I’ll learn something about Facebook or frat boys. But before this learning takes place, I want to be entertained.

3) Change: After being educated and entertained, once in a while a story changes your life. But as an artist, this isn’t something you can shoot for. Otherwise you’d just write self-help books and advice columns."

Jeff Badger visits Senior Seminar tomorrow, 11/7

Things I Have Cut In Half, 2007

Jeff Badger is a multimedia artist based in South Portland, Maine. He has exhibited his drawing, painting, sculpture and installation work nationally in solo and group exhibitions, and he records and performs original music in a variety of collaborative projects.

Jeff holds an B.S. in Studio Art and English from Skidmore College and an M.F.A. from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. He is on the faculty of Southern Maine Community College where he serves as Department Chair of Fine Arts.

Balls, ink on paper, 9.5" x 8", 2011

Art & Time this Spring

Would you like to learn how to shoot and edit video? make art that moves or changes over time? collaboratively construct a Rube Goldberg machine?

If you answered yes to any of the above, please keep the following in mind as you begin to look at the course offerings for Spring semester:

For the first time this Spring, Art & Time (VART 283) will be taught as a multimedia course. The class will explore the theme of time through various media - drawing, video art, photography, performance art, and kinetic sculpture.

Please see the attached poster for more information, and contact Alicia if you have any questions. And please, spread the word!

Karen Gelardi at Portland Museum of Art this Saturday

Date: Saturday, November 5th
Time: 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Price: Free with Museum admission
Location: Great Hall at the Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine

Portland-based contemporary artist Karen Gelardi will bring the art of Gather Up the Fragments: The Andrews Shaker Collection to life for families and children of all ages. Help us transform the Great Hall into a fun-filled art workshop. Experiment with a variety of art materials, to draw, cut, stitch, and tape things together. Everybody will create unique fabric patches to take home and also help the artist create a very large work of art! You’ll be inspired, as the artist is, by nature and the beauty of the Shakers’ simple design.

Success

Group Critique Scheduled for Wednesday, November 16th

Most of you admitted that you need to pick up the pace and start producing more work in the second half of the semester. In order to encourage that, I've decided to schedule a group critique at the 3/4 mark as a way of checking in. The critique will also give you a chance to talk about each others' work as a class. It's important that you not only encourage each other, but challenge each other to work harder and think more critically about what you've been making.

You should use these next three weeks to work hard and make 2 or more new *finished* pieces (the equivalent of approximately 30 hours of studio time). You should install those new works somewhere in the classroom before class on Wednesday, 11/14. Your presentation of the work is as important as the work itself, so please don't wait until right before class to consider it. If you'd like to reserve an area of the room in advance, please talk to me about that in class. If you plan to exhibit your work outside of the classroom between now and then, please inform the class about it so your peers can try to see it in person (email vart390), and prepare to show photographs of the installation at the critique.

Let's do this!!

Printmaker and Public Artist, Tomie Arai - Lecture today at 4:30!

Please join us and spread the word about an artist's talk by New York City printmaker and public artist, Tomie Arai, this Tuesday, November 1st in Beam classroom of the VAC. Tomie Arai will be visiting campus throughout the week for the Fall 2011 Marvin Bileck Printmaking Project.