A Final Goodbye

As I quickly rush off to visit colleges, I wanted to leave you with the final product of my work.

Below is the link of the presentation that I will be giving on May 7th. I hope you can come and see it as well as the rest of the amazing projects!

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1fMYMfAhNz7U4B-uXBiGpdoF4kIbOg5Y4vGpbbdIFoIY/edit?usp=sharing


Thank you for following my project. It's been an incredibly rewarding experience!

All of this Public Art is Near My House

Hello again! I hope you've all had a great week. And now that I think about it, the conclusion to this project is startlingly close. However, even as the daunting task of presenting looms in my near future, I still am learning new things every week.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), I decided to abandon the idea of surveying a large amount of people in favor of sending out a more detailed and open-ended questionnaire to people specifically working in the Arts & Culture departments of various cities. As I wanted to stay local, I tried to get in touch with those connected to the public art programs of Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, and Tempe. So far, all of the people I've contacted associated with Scottsdale Public Art have agreed to respond, as well as those with Tempe Public Art. If all goes well, I should have their responses in the next week or two, which will undoubtedly shed a unique perspective on the role of public art in Arizona communities.

Below, I'll attach the questionnaire if you want to take a look at the questions!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZwqPnVPNl_bnwsjE24Juud0kWa3hy2s6dLHtd5xXwdU/edit?usp=sharing

(I know this is a poor substitute for a photo--sorry Russell.)

 Aside from the questionnaire, this week was spent mostly on familiarizing myself more with the art in the immediate area. In my case, this would be Scottsdale (although I technically live in Paradise Valley--a weird glitch in the Matrix). And it seems that in my day-to-day Scottsdalian life, I unknowingly pass the works of dozens of artists! For instance:

Photo by Diego Ceja

This art piece is called "Water Mark" by Laura Haddad and Tom Drugan. I pass this on Indian Bend Road all the time without ever realizing that this is itself a piece of public art! On a side note, it's also cool to see this on the rare days when it's raining, since flood waters will spout out of the mouths of the horses like an elaborate pseudo-fountain.

Another public art piece I've personally been to is a space known as "Knights Rise" by James Turrell.

Photo by Sean Deckert

Nestled within the Scottsdale Contemporary Art Museum, this piece is a cavernous concrete space with a large opening up to the sky. I actually visited "Knights Rise" a while ago with fellow Senior Research Project blogger Keanan Jenkins and was taken aback by the atmosphere presented by the quiet, grey interior. The room is all blocks of solid pure color, and espouse a sort of emotional tranquility, especially when the sky has the dramatic colors of sunrise or sunset. If you are ever seeking a quiet space to think or (dare I say) meditate, I highly suggest checking this piece out (and the rest of the Scottsdale Contemporary Art Museum while you're at it).

The last local piece I wanted to bring attention to is one that I think most Arizonans have seen in there time here:

Photo by Bill Timmerman

This is known as the "Soleri Bridge and Plaza", named after its renowned artist and architect Paolo Soleri. I remember passing this all the time on the way to Fashion Square Mall with my mom when I was younger and thinking that it looked like the smokestacks of a boat. Or maybe someone told me it was supposed to look like a boat? I'm not entirely sure, but to this day, whenever I pass this bridge I think of how lonely this boat must be in the middle of landlocked Arizona.

On that note, thank you for reading and I'll see you in next week's installment!

Lots of Pictures

Hello again to my blog! I hope you all have had a good week. Considering that I'm almost completely sans congestion, I'm on top of the world.

Physically, however, I was at the museum for much of the past week. Here are two photos from my adventures that I felt absolutely had to be shared:

I unwittingly applied blue paint to my neck. Not sure if I qualify for the Blue Man Group.

An example print I made for a tour that I particularly liked of a hypnotic octopus.

As you can clearly see, what I do there is very serious business. 

However, instead of regaling you all with more tales of my adventures at the museum (helping a girl on the verge of tears because she messed up on her drawing of a fish, fishing popsicle sticks out of glue bottles, etc.), I wanted to use this post to mention a few of my favorite public artists that I encourage you to check out further if you're interested. 

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I picked up a book about Keith Haring at the museum a while back. Coincidentally, his prolific art career sprang forth from his innate desire to create as well as a strong passion for social activism. In fact, he first sparked intrigue on the art scene by painting in subway stations in New York City in order to grasp the widest audience. From there, he began painting murals both in New York and internationally, including his famous "Crack is Wack" mural. He believed strongly that art should be accessible to all and also utilized his artistic ability to inform the greater public about issues such as anti-apartheid sentiments, AIDS awareness (which he tragically succumbed to later in life), and the crack cocaine epidemic. 

Haring's "Crack is Wack" mural.

One of Haring's more iconic images. 

Haring next to one of his subway paintings, this one commenting on the practice of apartheid in South Africa.

Haring's sculpture known as "The Boxers".

Keith Haring was a contemporary of Jean-Michel Basquiat, who also got a start in the art world by way of graffiti before moving on to canvas. 

This one is also a boxer. 

Not everyone is a fan of Basquiat's style, but he certainly left an imprint on the mind of the public before passing at the age of 27 from a heroin overdose. 

The next artist I'd like to mention is Robert Indiana, whose name is not all that familiar but whose sculptures almost certainly are. He is most known for his "Love" sculptures. In fact, we have one right here in Scottsdale! 

This sculpture is right near Old Town Scottsdale, so go take a look if you're in the area.

This is the one in Manhattan.

While this is the one in Philadelphia, which is also the "City of Brotherly Love".

A large segment of public art is the placement of sculptures in public areas, as seen by the Haring and Indiana sculptures above. Below, I'm going to show various sculptures of artists who don't necessarily work frequently with public art but whose work I like a lot. 

"Flamingo" by Alexander Calder, an artist who work primarily with abstraction and mobiles. 

"Maman" by Louise Bourgeois. Creepy but cool.

"Spoonbridge and Cherry" by Claes Oldenburg.

Anyways, I think that's enough images for now. I know there's a lot of public art out there that I haven't even touched on, but I encourage you to be on the lookout for it everyday! 

I'll see you in the next blog post.

Hello once again! I apologize for the late post this week. I've found in my many adventures at the museum that aside from being wondrously insightful, kids are also the perfect vectors for illness. As a result, I've been various stages of sick for the past week. But never fear! I managed to go in and intern near the end of the week, and was really glad I did so.

On Friday, due to an unfortunate mix up of the schedules of the gallery educators (who normally lead the school groups), one of the classes was left without a tour guide. Thus, the opportunity presented itself for me to lead a group, if only briefly. I was able to take the class through a demonstration of the tour activity, which, as mentioned before, is the printing exercise. In the tour as a whole, I am most comfortable with this station, and because I was still a bit hoarse from illness, I was grateful that I did not have to lead the whole hour-and-a-half long tour (another educator came and eventually granted me leave). However, speaking and leading a group was fun and exciting, and a definitely something that I'd like to try more.

If you're reading the previous paragraph and asking, "Molly, what does this have to do with public art?", I would like to respond with the fact that a lot of my experience at the museum deals less with the philosophical nature of public art and more with the outcome. Instead of studying more historical instances of public art, the nature of my project seems to have shifted more towards the actual impact of the art upon an audience, and more specifically children, since this is the audience that I've witnessed for the past couple months. I just wanted to address this fact as I believe that I originally set out to explore the nature of public art itself. However, it seems that the reactions to public art are both more quantifiable and more accessible for me to explore. And as an aside, I would like to add that there is a sort of wonder in the first and second graders viewing the art at the museum, especially as a means to understand greater concepts. When the kids get excited at the expertly taken photographs of sharks or the fantastical photoshopped ocean scenes, the experience for me as a guide and an intern is gratifying not only for the sake of my project but also as an art lover myself.

Anyways, I know this was more reflection this week, but as I was sick, I had a lot of time to think. I also wanted to address the slightly different direction of the nature of my project, so I'm glad that I got to mention it. Thank you for reading and I'll see you next week!