VVP class of 2015

Final Collaboration Project

In this final Collaboration Project the writers and visual artist were teamed up and given the charge to create a single work that would be located somewhere on campus other than in the Art Department. The work had to combine text and image in anyway the collaborating artists determined. In addition, the team could not spend more than $10 total on the project. Here are the creations. Well done!

Zechariah, Lex, Kristin, Kaitlin:

Nathaniel, Johanna, Janet:

Marisa, Sean, Kristen:

Maggie, Abby, Amy:

Ian K., Holly, Kelly:

Adrianna, Ian H., Chris:

Jessamy, Natalie, Aaron:

Cross-Genre Conversation Piece #3

This past Thursday, students were put into twos, according to their kind (writer with writer, artist with artist), and given about 50 minutes to make a piece that responded to the last artist/writer pair whose work we looked at: sculptor Andy Goldsworthy and poet Frank O'Hara. In those 50 minutes the writers had to make a text-based piece that embodied or responded to Andy Goldsworthy's work, and the artists had to make an image-based piece that embodied or responded to Frank O'Hara's work. Below are the results. [All photographs, save one, by Chris Rasmussen.]

Abby Zilka & Jessamy Delling:

Ian Heisler & Johanna Hickle:

Marisa Lainson & Kristin Rasmussen:

Janet Diaz & Natalie Crane:

Kelly McBride & Lex Aquilina:

The picture below shows a three-person collaboration, of Kaitlin Lanning, Ian Koh, Chris Davidson. Each group member read aloud a collaboratively made poem that was culled from language they overheard while taking a brief walk around campus.

Kristen Hatakeda & Nathaniel Colbert:

 The piece pictured below, made by Maggie Hulstein & Aaron Kang, is a "copy" of the Goldsworthy sculpture, made of snow, which follows it:

[Image source.]

Amy Geiken & Holly Collier:

The following piece, made by Zechariah "Z" Liszewski & Adrianna Coe, involved putting a box on one's head while listening to a recording of Z (holding the phone) reading Frank O'Hara's "Metaphysical Poem." That poem is also the inspiration of the video piece that follows it.

Sean Rothfuss & Chris Rasmussen:

Minimalist Posters Explaining Complex Words to a Child

More here.

Class Salon

We just had our class Salon. The event took two class sessions where each student shared examples of work from their individual practice. The writers read examples of their prose or poetry and the artists selected examples of their work and displayed them through out the room. Each student shared their practice intentions and talked about how the class had informed the work(s) being presented.
Here are some examples:

Zechariah Liszewski:

Adrianna Coe:

Ian Heisler:

Natalie Crane:

Chris Rasmussen:

Janet Diaz:

Kristen Hatakeda:

Maggie Hulstein:

Nathaniel Colbert:

Amy Geiken:

Ian Koh:

Lex Aquilina:

Kaitlin Lanning:

Kelly McBride:

She never thought there was no west left

when she reached the coast, my grandmother

With bouffant hair, red Thunderbird,

newborn daughter. Orange County

was still oranges, strawberry fields,

and besides her husband was on an aircraft carrier

in the Pacific flying planes to Vietnam. 

There was always more west left to want.

 ~

Vision

There were no Mary-mother-of-God prints

on grilled cheese or sea green virgins

of tract housing paint.  As I sat on a pipeline

over a drainage ditch river, it came at me like a scream,

like the split shutter-second when your eyes and ears,

alive for once, register each sixty-mile-an-hour engine,

each headlight distinct and roaring into you.

  

Cross-Genre Conversations, Roden & Borges

In this project students were introduced to the work of artist Steve Roden and writer Jorge Luis Borges and asked to look for ways the artifacts they made (short stories and art work, respectively) suggested similarities in theme or practice. The visual art students were then asked to create work that responded to Borges or was Borges-like in some way, and the writing students were to create work that responded to Roden or was Roden-like. Here are a few examples:

Ian Heisler:

Aaron Kang:

 Adrianna Coe:

Abby Zilka:

Chris Rasmussen:

                                                     

Lex Aquilina:

Kaitlin Lanning:

Natalie Crane:

Jessamy Delling:

Holly Collier:

Johanna Hickel:

Kristen Hatakeda:

Kelly McBride:

Nathaniel Colbert:

Marisa Lainson:

Yggdrasil

An ancient with a sword of flame guards the heartwood

at the center, where the oldest trees commune

and whisper tales of snakes and thieves.

A weeping man walks the branches alone

and calls for his lost children. At the fringes

of the forest, foxes prowl like Philistines;

they snarl, rage and plot, but every one is caught.

None may feast on the fruit of the garden.

Fog clings to trunks and undergrowth,

like slow-exhaling ghosts come to rest

in this wilderness, this giant’s nest, this grove

of woods between worlds. Leaves soak sugar

from the stars beyond; the roots drink deep

the syrup of the soil, they extend through

the cosmos and void: planets hang from their ends

like drops of dew. Here, you and I look up

and hear a grief-drunk call. Before the fall,

we walked the branches, too. 

Kristin Rasmussen:

Ian Koh:

Response to: Sunrise, Sun, by Steve Roden

I Stayed for the Gentle Sun

The soft light streams by; un-seeable glory

bare to see. For momentary beauty,

my fragile eyes are shown patches

of the flying light parade,

before the glorious one stops

to give his unbearable stare.

Being only human, I warp his form.

Although I would call him a smoothie,

and hail him with a fan,

the gentle sun smiles

with his winsome face,

and lets me know there is kindness 

in his unrelenting pace.

His fierceness is a sprinkle

to the poor in sight who know him by his crumbs.

Amy Geiken: