Spot Collaboration: Private and Public Art

Earlier this semester, we talked in class about notions of "public" and "private" art and writing. For public art, we looked at several examples, including Robert Montgomery's language-and-light sculptures; Ted Prescott's The True Vine; Walt Whitman's "America" and Elizabeth Alexander's "Praise Song for the New Day"; some of Banksy's incursions into public space; and the Statue of Liberty (including Emma Lazarus's accompanying poem, "The New Colossus": 'Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...').

Turning to the idea of private art, we began by considering Frank O'Hara's stated aim in his mock-serious "Personism: A Manifesto": Making poetry that is "at last between two persons instead of two pages," a result of which, he says, will be the "death of literature"--"Literature," here, being what we might call the institutions and industries that say "this text, and not that one, matters." At any rate, we talked about how, for artists and writers sending work out to curators and editors overwhelmed by visual and alphabetic information, making work for one, particular person--a friend, a loved one--instead of "the public," might feel liberating. We looked at O'Hara's "For Grace, After a Party"; one of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's letters from prison written to his best friend, Eberhard Bethge; a work of art made by one friend for another, as a gift (see image below); and a few other examples.

After our discussion about some of the ideas surrounding "public" and "private" art, students were put into collaboration groups and given about an hour to make something using the following instructions:

Collaborate with your group to

1. Make a text piece (Poem? Recipe? Driving directions? Something else?)
                                        OR
2. Make a visual piece (in reality or as proposal/mock-up)
                                        OR
3. Make a visual + text piece (in reality or as proposal/mock-up)

The piece you make should address a person whom all three of you want to address, or whom one of you wants to address (with the other members of the group helping to shape the expression). Or, the piece can be made to serve as memorial to an idea or a people.

If primarily a visual artifact, the piece should be site-specific. If primarily alphabetic, consider the mode of transmission.

Below are some of the pieces the students made. (At least one piece, documented by the students who made it, has not been included because it was so privately intended it felt inappropriate to share here. That's a kind of success, given the aims of the project.)

 Irene Paek, Claire Jacobson, Micah Hickerson:

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Brendon Sylvester, Kyol Shorack, Katherine Sherlock:

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Bethany Foster, Hannah Strandberg, Lydia Meyerdirk:

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Micayla Jones, Esther Hedin:

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Caylie Smith, David Giles, Rachel Ji:

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Shell Grizzard, Olivia Blair, Andres Ramirez:

Field Trip!

A few weeks back, we took at trip to the Hammer, in Westwood, to check out a retrospective of the work of conceptual artist Allen Ruppersberg. Much of what students in VVP do is consonant, in spirit, with Ruppersberg's endlessly inventive and often quite comic work. An example is the piece above, called The Singing Posters, which is comprised of a couple hundred brightly colored commercial posters printed with a phonetic transcription of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl." Other installations (there were so many!) included comic books hanging on strings we were invited to peruse, and a hall way created to resemble one from the high school Ruppersberg attended, complete with classroom doors through which, if you pressed your ear close, you could listen to the teachers lecturing on philosophy or science or what have you. Absolutely worth an afternoon.

After the students scattered around Westwood for lunch, we reconvened at Upside Down, a new coffee and art gallery space. The remarkable photographs of recent Biola phtot grad Lu Zhang were hanging on the walls.

It was, in short, a wonderful day--a reminder of what's right at our fingertips here in L.A.

Cross-Genre Project #1, Spring 2019

In this project, students had an hour to fabricate (and document) works that referenced (or responded to), in some way, the poetry of Marianne Moore and the boxes of Joseph Cornell. The aim was for artists to try to respond to the writer (Moore) and writers to respond to respond to the artists (Cornell). In some cases, students responded to particular pieces by the Cornell or Moore. In some cases, students incorporated both Cornell's and Moore's work in their pieces.

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For Juan

Who said that parrots were pretenders
or that this world smiled when he did?

You...
custard-lipped Bramante,
perched on your notions of ‘would’,
when will you learn
that digging your maltodextrined talons into
the of mutability of man
will only give rise to a cake of stares?

Who cares,
that you of all people
help the apprentice see potential in parchment
and that by brandishing your beak on what’s finished
you crack the case of constriction?

I do.
That’s who.

- Amy Struthers, in response to Cornell’s A Parrot for Juan Gris

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- David Giles

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- Fae Naughton

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How to Make A Home in the Wilderness


In the hollow nest

We’re still learning

How to make a home
In the wilderness—
Here, it’s still anyone’s guess.

Do I take cues from the ocean,

Whose open and fluid grasp
Lets far too many enter—
Come and go as they please;

Slip through its grasp.

Or the books who teach

That every word, every comma, every faded ink-spot,

Every object has meaning

Beyond my reach?

Do I embrace the entrapment?

Take comfort in the box that stifles

But keeps secure—
These ponderings aren’t trifles,
But act as a lure.

How to make a home in the wilderness:

Strike a match,

Light the hearth,

Take your comforts where they are

The wilderness is out there,

But the fire keeps it far.

- Megan Bass, box and poem made in response to Cornell's Paul and Virginia

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Bleeding Rainbows

You tell me I don’t bleed—not when you hit me.
You tell me I don’t bruise either, because, apparently
I don’t have that “red stuff” deep down in my veins.
I am no longer human to you, but I’m very human to me.
I’m human in my tears, you know, those things
That you screamed at, falling off my face—
That was my humanity.
Clear, wet humanity.
And maybe that scared you,
Maybe that’s why you don’t see them anymore.
Clear, the color of purity, the color of nothing,
Nothing more than salt and water circling together.
But then, yesterday, when I tried holding back that salty sin,
I saw the sun glint off the corner of it,
Watched the rainbow slide and glide down my cheek
Till it ran off the edge of my boney chin.
It hit me,
I don’t bleed red, I bleed rainbows,
Clear, pure rainbows that no one else has ever been angry at.
How can you be mad at something so beautiful?

- Olivia Blair

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- Caylie Smith

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- Kyol Shorack

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My Moon
No matter where I am, there you are with me.
The world seems so dark without you,
so there you stand to guide my heavy heart.
Through planets, universes, and galaxies,
you stay constant.
Oh so wonderful, you bring me peace.
I want the sun to remain asleep
because I want to dance with you forever
and love you with the stars.

I want to see what you see.
I want to be where you are.
I want to grow with you.

My moon, please promise me one thing:
Stay with me forever.
Through the oceans crashing against my walls,
Through fire burning in my lungs,
Through the absence of life,
remain with me.
I will love you more than the stars who dance at your feet,
more than the wishes people make to you.
Hold me under the light
and dance with me until the end.

- Irene Paek, in response to Cornell's Untitled (Celestial Navigation)

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- Marijane Fasana

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The Moon to Your Earth
I am the moon to your Earth;

not a sun or the bright stars.

When I collide with your Sun,

it ends with an eclipse,

where I am still overcome

by the Suns’ bright flares.

I am the moon to your Earth:

I am only a black pinhole

in the glowing canvas.

Don’t stare at me when I

block your favorite star;

save yourself from sightless.

I am far away from you, Earth.

Yet, we see each other

from where we stand in this

universe; until the end,

one thing remains constant:

I am the moon to your Earth.

- Andres Ramirez

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- Brendon Sylvester

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I Wish to Fall

through
The ground
When I’m walking.
One step –
My feet, ankles, knees, hips, stomach, shoulders, neck and head
Vanish
Loyally following
One after the other
Through the ground.

I tumble through a
Damp dark sky
Beneath my
Old floor –
Grab a tuft of cloud
On my way down –
Unraveling it,
Unraveling it
As I fall,
As I fall
Until
It stiffens to wire
And I – stuck hanging
Like tacky bait
Glued onto Van Gogh’s canopy –
Take the starlight
As my own.

People below
I fool.
Millions of miles
Below.
Necks craning upward,
Mouths open wide.
They wish to fall through
The ground, too
And join my
Constellation of
Wire and scales.

- Hannah Strandberg, in response to Cornell's Verso of Cassiopeia 1
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- Micah Hickerson

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- Erica Mahnke

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- Claire Jacobson, in response to Moore's "The Steeple-Jack"

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- Rachel Ji, in response to Moore's "What Are Years?"

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To Shoot, a Mystery
Red, blue, yellow hues
feathers and splatters
Shattered. Imperfection at the center.
Glass splits, carving trenches
through pristine perfection.

Down in the trenches, boys become
men in an instant, their eyes trailing
the blood red stain of life leaving the body.

A paint stain. Mommy will wash it out with bleach
and we will shoot again.
Little boys squawking, flapping parrot wings
to get away, never leaving the ground.
Paint for ammunition, numbered targets
and hideouts.
A field, splotched in primary colors.

- Bethany Foster, in response to Cornell's Habitat Group for a Shooting Gallery

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- Aidan Acone-Chavez

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- Katherine Sherlock, response to Moore's "The Fish"

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 - Micayla Jones, response to Moore's "The Fish"

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- Lydia Meyerdirk

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- Cameron Bascombe, in response to the Joseph Cornell box Untitled (Tilly Losch)

Extended Collaboration #1: Privileging the Picture Plane

For this collaboration, students worked in collaboration (in groups of three) to make an object that incorporated both alphabetic and non-alphabetic visual information. The students were instructed to privilege the "text" plane, meaning that the objects should be in the form of those sites traditionally used for alphabetic information: Books, letters, parking tickets, what have you. Below are the results.

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Esther Hedin, Olivia Blair, Lydia Meyerdirk:

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Marijane Fasana, Faeln Naughton, Micayla Jones:

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Kyol Shorack, David Giles, Hannah Strandberg:

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Amy Struthers, Irene Paek, Katherine Sherlock:

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Erica Mahnke, Rachelle Grizzard, Rachel Ji:

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 Aidan Acone-Chavez, Bethany Foster, Caylie Smith

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Micah Hickerson, Brendon Sylvester, Megan Bass:

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Cameron Bascombe, Claire Jacobson,  Andres Ramirez: