Art to Go: Museum Caper

Liz and Maddy like Buddha. I like quarters to buy soda later.

Spent a lot of time at the museum this week. A fella named Jason, whom I had a class with last semester, is one of the red-shirts there. I think he’s a history or religious major or something, because he knew everything about the stuff in the West Gallery, a.k.a. the Creepy Religious Room. He was a lot of help, and gave me all kinds of information on the Marten De Vos panels, pointing out all of the little details that I otherwise probably wouldn’t have picked out. He told me a good story about Saint Catherine that I’m going to include in my tour script. She was sentenced to death on the torture wheel after converting the Roman Emperor’s wife to Christianity. However, Catherine was so damn holy that the wheel itself broke, so they chopped her head off with a sword instead. Apparently she wasn’t too good for that.

Also, we pitched to the museum folks. It went really well, I think, and gave us a much better idea of what they’d like to see on the website. I was happy to hear them say that they’d like to steer away from the production aspect and see more focus on the interesting stories behind the pieces. Like that kid that got painted over. And why is Mao’s face blue :) I don't like messing around with secret codes and trying to figure out what someone's really trying to tell me, so their bluntness about the dislikes was much appreciated. Saw both Carl and Tania the next day, and they told us that we pitched like total champs.

Art to Go, Week 4

Our site has a name! I don't know if we're going to keep it, but for now we're calling it Art In Sight. Not as cool as the Dirty Rick Experience, but I can deal with it.

Our groups have selected the objects we're going to be featuring on the website. A lot of thought went into our selections. For Visual Strategies, we had to come up with pieces that fit the topics covered. So, for the Production aspect, we had to find a sculpture for sculpting, a photo for photography, and so on. For the VTS section, we just had to find stuff that we was interesting enough for us to come up with a bunch of VTS questions. The Tour group had to find works that were not only interesting, but far enough into their respective rooms to make the visitor walk by all of the other rad stuff. Next week, we'll begin researching these things and getting our rough drafts written.

I'm starting to think that maybe the funny voices and such might not really work out for the audio tour. Even if we pull it off really well, I can imagine a lot of people being turned off by it, thinking it's either silly or insulting. Sure would be a lot of fun to make, though.

Also, we went to see the art class that's going to be looking at our website. The teacher--I feel like an ass, I forget his name--was an awesome dude, and his class was a lot of fun. He had the class, and us, draw wrong-handed, eyes closed, and both at the same time. Most of my drawings were pretty crappy, but this one, which I did right-handed, wasn't so bad:

Jawa on Stool by Rick Henry

Art to Go, Week 3

We saw TomKat

Read a book called Getting It, which is mostly about helping uninformed dudes like myself keep from making asses out of ourselves when confronted by art that, at first glance, doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense. Despite some Jim Goad-esque lapses into oddball analogy lists, the book was a good read and taught me how to look a whole lot less stupid.

Our groups put together some outlines for the website. We now have a basic idea of how things are going to work, I think. It's good to see a sort of blueprint for what we're doing. The more things come together, the less worried I am about the end result.

We went on our field trip this week. Dammit, that was fun. Kind of like a vacation. The staff at both IMA and Dayton were way cool and had a lot of great questions and advice. At folks at IMA were eager to show us their museum and to get our feedback on the way they had done certain things, as well as expanding our understanding of VTS. Members of the Tour group tried out the cell phone tour at the IMA. I'm glad we were able to experience that, as it gave us an idea of what works and what doesn't on an audio tour. Dayton had a really nice kids' room that sucked us in for a good long time with all of the activities available. And the Jellybean people were awesome.

The documentary is coming along great. The "Too Hot for TV" version is going to be something else.

Art to Go, Week 2

This week we broke into groups. I'm doing Art Interpretation (now called something else that I already forget), Tour, and Documentary. Each group put together a mission statement and a time line for the semester (except for the documentary group--we don't know what the hell we're doing). I feel a lot better about this now that we're making plans. I can't get anything done without a due date to eat at my conscience every time I get distracted by the internet, beer and VH1. I think everyone's freaked out by the amount of work we have ahead of us, but with all the work so spread out our individual responsibilities really aren't too out-of-hand. We're all going to have to spend some time learning new things--computer programs, art terminology--but at least it isn't Spanish. Blessed Baby Jesus, at least it isn't Spanish.

The real fun this week came when we began filming the documentary. I was watching the rival team filming with the fancy-pants camera all last week and worrying about them beating us, but now that we, too, have used the uber-expensive HD camera to film ourselves being cut-ups and goofballs, my confidence is up. Our group has way more angst and substance abuse. We will have the superior reality show.

Michelle showed me how to use both of the cameras available to us and gave me a basic idea of how to light things, which is awesome because I have zero access to this kind of equipment normally and have yet to take a class about this stuff, so I was clueless. The big camera has a lot of buttons, but isn't too complicated. Didn't they make the Revenge of the Sith with one of these things? What this place needs is more green screens.

Proof That I Like Art

Look at this L O S T print I ordered a few days ago:

It's limited to 300, like the Spartans. It was made by this 21-year-old British kid named Olly Moss. His website has more of his stuff. I like the Films In Black and Red.