Team OSilas - Lea's Weekly Blog!

 Week 9

This week at the OSilas Gallery, everything has been just fine. I read an article on feminism artwork and have decided to share a few thoughts on it. As I have mentioned in the past, our gallery is able to share exhibitions that may not be shown in other places such as our quilt show that we had last semester. I want to discuss the quilt show because forty years ago, it may not have been thought of as art. It was thought of as someone’s craft or something that a mother did, it was not thought of as art. With great artists like today, we can now consider it art and take pleasure that female artists are being recognized. In our own gallery we do have a good number of female artists, though they are not feminist arts, and I do not want to speak for them, but two of our artists have put some feminist qualities into their work. One of the artists, Michele Brody, who’s art work is the Grass Skirts shows nature mixed in with as she puts it, “feminine embodiment.” These skirts are just that, skirts. They represent nature and a feminist quality, which in my eyes could translate into a Mother Earth representation. This is my opinion and people who see it can disagree or agree with me. The other artist Eva Baskkeslett made a film Alchemy – The Poetry of Bread is about bread making. She incorporates her family traditions and how making bread has been passed down from generation. This shows culture and family influence at its greatest. These types of artwork may not have been thought of as art so I am glad to have the opportunity to work and learn in an environment that is open to all creativity and feminist influences.

 

Week 8

Alive and green, that is how I would describe the OSilas Gallery this week. It is starting to feel a little bit more like spring and our plants are defiantly feeling it. I read an article this week on architecture in museums, which led me to want to to discuss the architecture of the gallery this week. Our gallery is just that, a gallery with modern and classical features. We are blessed with gorgeous window galleries that bring in natural light but also have views of the campus. A squared shape helps give a good layout for artwork. The brick arches in the window galleries make a nice separation among the larger space. What we have not shown with our currant show are the removable little walls. There are two of them that have, in the past, been put out to hang paintings or other artwork. This is a great way to either make a space more personal or taking them away and having an open space, which is what we have now. Our window galleries give viewers a personal encounter with the art.  For example, standing with the white cedar plants is really a great experience. The high ceilings make seeing the art and putting it up, a lot better. I think our community on and off campus really helps make the OSilas Gallery special and with great designs we are all able to be thankful for the architecture. 

Week 7

After our spring break I am happy to see that our plants in the OSilas Gallery have continued to grow and live! I know I have said this in the past but this exhibit that we have, Nurturing Nature: Artists Engage the Environment really is unlike anything we have had at Concordia College. As a College, we tend to have more freedom then a big museum. We are smaller but I think it works in our favor because visitors can have a more personal relationship with the art around them. My article that I read this past week was about how college galleries are different then museum galleries. The obvious reasons are size and museums may have permanent collections but with a college art gallery, the community on and off campus can be more involved with the school’s gallery. Shanley and I discussed how we have this exhibit, which gets people around Concordia to come and view the work, and how great it has been that we had the opportunity to show these works. You normally do not get to see grass skirts or watch a movie about saving a tree but here you do and because of our gallery we are able to show what these artists have done. As students we can take time looking around and question what we see, we have the ability to come back as many times as we want and not be told what to think by museum guides, we can think of our own ideas of what things are. Our present exhibit definitely makes you think of how you can help the environment but also may change people’s mind on what they think art may be. I look forward to learning more during the next two months and am thankful for the OSilas Gallery. I hope everyone can get learn something when they view the show.

Team OSilas - Ayanda

This exhibition in my opinion has been the most unique in its nature. The fact that we have to keep everything alive is a novel idea, one I feel encourages an interactive view of art. Also it emphasizes that anything can be used as a medium for art. As long as the artist is able to convey an idea or image then then I believe we should give it a good look. This exhibition was my favorite color, green, as well as a reminder that we are all interconnected with our environment.

Team OSilas - Amber on Nurturing Nature!

It isn’t a typical exhibit that you would see in the gallery. This is because it is interactive which doesn’t happen much with art. In this exhibit there are many different types of art. There is art from a chair that you can sit in to the hand cart to the saplings to the personal biosphere. With this exhibit we are given a checklist of things to do. Some things are left for us to do and some of the things on the checklist are for the interns to do. I knew the Personal biosphere was warm and one of the things on the checklist was to water the biosphere but when I opened up the gallery I saw that the personal biosphere didn’t need to be watered because there was a large amount of dew that morning which took me by surprise at first. When I sit in the gallery at the desk working looking around at the pieces I always notice something new about something going on in the exhibit.

Team OSilas - Intern Chris!

My time spent in the OSilas Gallery has been amazing. I can not believe its taken me five years to be a part of this excellent team. Every experience here has been a great one, but my favorite part of this exhibit is one that I played the biggest role in, the window gallery. The strategic pulling apart of an endangered tree (Atlantic White Cedar) and placing them in cups to hang from the window was the game, and we, as a team, performed beautifully.  The only problem we found was that the plants were almost too healthy. The roots themselves were so full of life, and intertwined with each other, it was a finger workout pulling these plants apart. Separating plants without killing them was one difficult task but it was well worth the time and effort with the end product we got. My personal favorite part about the saplings is that I significantly helped put it all together. Coming in every day and seeing that the water level in the cups has dropped significantly makes me happy to see that our little baby saplings are going to be big strong trees one day.

Nurturing Nature: Artists Engage the Environment

Click Here to view photos from the opening reception and install

Team OSilas - Lea's Weekly Blog!

Week 6

This week in the OSilas Gallery I am happy to announce that all of our plants are growing! They’re bigger and greener, which is a pleasant surprise since, it has only been two weeks. I did a few errands this week including go around to the local libraries to spread the word on the Gallery’s Artyfacts, which is a child’s activity that Shanley does in the Gallery. I think it is great how we are able to cater to everyone from children to adults; it is a great mix of people. This past Wednesday, Shanley and I discussed the topic of corresponding with the artists. I learned that usually the curator has direct contact with an artist. In this case Patricia and the curator of this currant show, Amy Lipton, talked with artists and also directly made sure that the pieces were being delivered. Shanley helps them during this process but usually handles the pieces when they are being shipped back, when the exhibit is over. For future exhibits, Patricia handles the artists; she may tour a gallery or look of an artist’s work. We’re off for spring break next week and I can’t wait to see what the Gallery will look like when we get back!

Week 5

This week in the Osilas Gallery was our first full week of being open. Shanley made a checklist for us to follow since this exhibit isn’t like others. We have to water plants, lots and lots of plants. The 180 White Cedar plants are Chris and my responsibility. We have to make sure they have enough water in them so they can live. Also, who ever opens the Gallery has to fill the grass skirts buckets with water so the pumps can water the skirts. We had a couple of people come in who have enjoyed the hands-on pieces. I have to say that the reason why I like this exhibit so much is because Concordia has never had an interactive exhibit like this before. I think it gives people a much better and wider perspective of what the art world has to offer. It certainly did that for me. It also gives people a view into ways of improving their green footprint. The “Green Rickshaw” has a library of books and pamphlets that can help people think about ways of improving their “green” lives. Everything in the Gallery has really brought out ways to transform important issues and make them pieces of art.  Whether it is endangered species or saving a tree, the artists have made something that they truly care about into art, which all artists strive to do. I look forward to what next week will hold.

Week 4

This week in the Osilas Gallery, we had a lot to do with the show, Nurturing Nature: Artists Engage the Environment, opening to the public on Thursday, February 10. A few pieces still had to be planted and hung up. A big part of the week was delivering plants to the Gallery and then putting different roots into cups where we then put them in the window gallery. It was a very extensive process but by the time we were finished, it looked amazing. We had an artist come in and set up her piece. It was great to see her build her contraption that allowed a person or two people to hand-pump this device, which would light up little glass houses that she also built. The development of everything that I have seen in the past two weeks have been amazing part of the process to get this show together. During the reception, five of the artists came and talked about their artwork and the journey in which they took to get where they are now. It was nice to put their faces to the specific piece of art that we had been putting together. I took plenty of pictures at the reception so stay tuned for those. Our exhibit is up until mid- April and all of our plants will continue to grow. I hope people will come and see all the hard work and creativity that the Gallery and the artists put in. 

Week 3

This week at the Osilas Gallery, we are installing the new eco-friendly exhibit. This exhibit is going to be amazing! It is called Nurturing Nature: Artists Engage the Environment. Not only are there going to have live plants but there will be hands – on experiences that people will be able to engage with. Earlier in the week, we took down the high school exhibit and did a few errands. We did a lot of unpacking and I noticed the work was not just from around New York but expanded to different states as far as New Mexico. It was exciting to open different packages and then to view them and to see what they were going to become. The most exciting part of my week has been Thursday, watching the Gallery come together. There is the dirt chair, which we have been told we can sit in but I’m scared of breaking it! When I was leaving Thursday, they were putting up these life size raindrops, made from wire hangers. I overheard Patricia talking about where she was going to put certain pieces because they had to be installed days before so it took extra planning. We are going to have a bunch of different media, including books and a television monitor.  Patricia, on Thursday, went to talk with a radio station about this exhibit and with all of the mailing we did a few weeks ago, it should be a very big turn out. I am excited to see all of this be put together and cannot wait for the final result. It’s going to be a phenomenal exhibit, one that Concordia College has never experienced before.

Week 2

In Osilas Art Gallery, it was the last week of the high school exhibit so I observed people coming in. I was given an article to read by my professor, which was called The Critical Museum Visitor and written by Margaret Lindauer. The main concept of the article was to teach people of how to think critically when you go into a museum. It covered everything from the architecture of the building to how an exhibit was designed.  First, it talked about how people who set up the exhibit know that people will have their own perspective on the show and how no two people will see the same thing.  There are many different people that come to museums for different reasons, but the author makes it a point that she wants a museum visitor to come into the museum with a critical way of thinking. They should be able to pick up on visual, written and different features of an exhibit. Being a critical museum visitor does not start when you first get there, it should start before you visit. A person should think of what they expect to see or find or what they hope to find. They should think about what specific titles or names mean or why one place sounds better to them. Also, a visitor should be aware of the architecture of a building. What are the specific purposes to the building? Depending on when it was built, a person will find some answers. For example, in the late twentieth century, museums were built with specific reasons in mind, one that they were used to attract a diverse population and second because they were so unique to their surroundings that people had to find out what was inside. Margaret Lindauer, the author, goes in to discuss the Heard Museum on Phoenix, Arizona and the architecture of it.  It was first built on 1928 and embodied the houses that it was placed around; it then doubled it sized in 1999 so it could hold more. She points out the surroundings like fountains and notices the donors and wonders herself why they are so specifically outlined. She gets into the design of elements and how to notice everything around you such as the wall color, lighting, font style and how all of this influences a visitor to move around the exhibit.

She goes on to discuss the specific exhibits, or as she calls it “A Revolution in the Making.” At first, I did not like what she was saying but reading more into what she meant I started to understand and agree with her. The element she uses to make her assessment known is she dissects everything from what is shown to the text. At first she is completely overwhelmed by all of the pottery that is shown. She says that words are specifically set apart from the objects so museum visitors experience the pottery’s size, color, shape, and texture without any text to ruin the ambiance. She greatly discusses the text and unwritten meanings. An “ideal” visitor should be able to ask themselves what the text means when they are viewing it. How does a person feel when the read it, and a person should also notice the writing style and theme. The key to this is to read between the lines and figure out what specifically the wall texts mean. The word “revolution” in the title means the development in Native American pottery. But we should ask what influenced the artists who work is being shown. My favorite part of reading this was when she wrote that nineteen donors were listed, along with the eight artists, and asked the question of who is really be celebrated in the museum?  

I think in Margaret Lindauer’s case, a critical museum visitor really means that a person has responsibilities to look not just at the art but notice the way it is set up and to question who is viewing it. When viewing something, a person should think about what they may or may not be seeing. Also in order to get more insight, a visitor can get more background by doing their own research, this could be a way of really getting what a person may want to really know.

I think the main significance of Lindauer’s designation to the “ideal museum visitor” is that people should not just be coming in to see the work but to think about what it means to them in terms of cultural, historical and politically meaning.

Week 1

       

My first full week at the Osilas Gallery has been a good one. I started off on Tuesday running an errand for Shanley, when I returned I started working on programs for the next Gallery show that opens on February 10. I only got a little done but when I returned Shanley and Chris were well on their way on completing them. The following days I spent in the Gallery with Chris, I made sure all of the programs were being shipped out, which they were on Thursday. The exhibit that we have going on now is called StArt. It is different from our other exhibits because the artists are high school students from around this area. The exhibit will be open until January 30. The reception for the exhibit was past Friday, the 14^th where the students, parents and teachers came. I spoke to Patricia Miranda about why she puts certain pieces together, and in this case she said that the artists from the same high school go together but need to be able to stand-alone in the Gallery. She has the difficult task of mapping out where all of the artwork goes. I defiantly want to learn more about this throughout the semester. The artwork that is being shown is selected from the art teachers of the high schools involved and they pick their top students painting or sculpture.

            What makes this exhibit so different is the theme of the exhibit is students work, not landscape or a still life. The show offers a lot from these young artists and really showcases their talents. Because this is a high school exhibit budgeting was not a focal point, but I will cover it in future blogs. The publicity was known around the high schools and was featured around Concordia College and Bronxville.

            My professor, Lisa Payne, gave me an excerpt from a book about emerging artists. The specific title was about curating. It gave me a nice understanding about curating. It highlighted a bunch of skills that a person may need like good communication skills, decisiveness, persistence and writing skills. The chapter discusses that a person needs to develop an eye or what an exhibit should be about and how best to go about it. A person can do this by looking at other exhibits and picking up on the things they like or dislike about it, how will their concept fit with artists work and the basic question is what do you want to communicate with your audience. It goes on to discuss potential artists and figuring out whom to put in your show but also finding a venue for the show. The chapter also covers written proposals and what to include in it but also includes a list of responsibilities that a person should do. Also publicity is talked about that a person should needs to know how to do the mailing and how to distribute their press release. In addition they should know what special equipment they need and have a schedule set up of when the art will be delivered. 

            My first full week was an exciting one and I can only gain more knowledge as I continue. I already learned a little bit so I’m eager to have a hands on experience with all things Osilas Gallery.