Eliabeth Morisette Using Social Media to Construct Her Interactive Piece:

Artist Elizabeth Morisette is using a blog and asking the audience to become part of the process & a Community Arts Project, to be part of our exhibit, by allowing them the opportunity to show their work at udraw.blogspot.com/ .

...Other Than Planning Exhibits:

 FRCC Museum & Gallery Studies participants often explore  museums and galleries throughout Colorado and Wyoming in an effort to understand current operational procedures and practices.

Tomorrow we will be in the field learning about our craft at The University of Wyoming Geological Museum.

 

Museum Hours

Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Saturday, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.
Sunday, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.
Closed Mondays

Visit their website for more information:  http://www.uwyo.edu/geomuseum/

Meet the Invitational Artists

Artists presenting work in Object, No Object: Sculpture of Ideas exhibition in Fort Collins, Colorado December 3, 2010 at the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art are:

• Rachael Browning
• Keith Jentzsch
• Martin Mayer
• Elizabeth Morisette
• Amy Reckley
• Frank Stanley
• Sarah Vaeth

See our additional blog ARTiculation for more information!

Michael Fenton to Design Posters for Exhibition:

Michael Fenton has been an artist and a teacher in Northern Colorado for over ten years. He currently teaches art history at Colorado State University and the University of Northern Colorado. Michael also works in the media of drawing, photography, and computer graphics as a freelance artist.

In addition, Michael designed the badges currently being displayed on our Facebook page and on the Twitter account associated with this project.

Contact Michael at: mfenton01@msn.com

Two Blogs, One Aim

Today FRCC Museum & Gallery Studies participants met with local artists to formulate plans for our on-site invitational exhibit December 3, 2010 at the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art. During the round-table discussion with curators, artists and logistical taskmasters all in attendance it was made clear that additional virtual space was needed in order to accommodate the discourse surrounding the conceptual ideas and  pedagogical stance of each artists as it pertains to the aim of the exhibit Object, No Object: Sculpture of Ideas.Therefore a second blog.

ARTiculation intends over the next month to introduce you to the artists invited to the exhibit allowing the audience to approach the work with new insight into a variety of  individual artistic processes. Comments and questions are highly encouraged in hopes of engaging our audience in discourse related to the evolution of sculpture.

Discourse Turns From Theory to Practice:

"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see."

— Edgar Degas

The idea of sculpture has always been an interactive one; a three dimensional design encapsulating a moment of frozen imagination. Architecture, ceramics, and sculptural objects are meant to be enjoyed from a variety of perspectives both within ourselves and within our communities.  

Therefore I have listed three curatorial statements under the new tab on the blog and invite you to join us as we embark on the journey of curating two simultaneous exhibits; an online international juried exhibition and a local on-site invitational, intertwined through our use of social media as we aim to explore the evolving definition of sculpture. 

Tomorrow we are meeting with some of our local artists to discuss plans for the one day invitational while taking time to consider some of the entries we’ve received for the juried exhibition so far.(Deadline to enter is November 1st!)

Please know this is meant as an interactive experience; your comments and questions are always appreciated!

Only an Excerpt from Smithsonian's Collection Blog:

How Can I Get a Job? (Libraries, Archives and Special Collections)

Dear Readers,

I don't have to tell you that it's a tough job market out there.  The economy has been rough for everyone and museums, archives, libraries, and many other art and collection based jobs have been put through the wringer when it comes to budget cuts, layoffs, program cuts, etcetera.  If you're starting in the curiosity phase of pursuing a job and education in a libraries, archives, or special collections field it is good to be realistic when looking at what the job market looks like now, and in the future.  I have high hopes, history, and some factual based projection that the economy will continue to grow back, and the profession will continue to grow as it has been since its inception.  In fact, when looking at the Bureau of Labor Statistics 2010-2011 edition for Archivists, Curators and Museum Technicians, you'll see the profession is projected to grow a faster than average 20% by 2018.  The statistics for Librarians are also expected to grow at least 8% and job competition to be favorable to potential employees as many librarians retire in the coming years.

This post aims to educate and help provide you vital references no matter what phase of the profession you are in.

Would you like a job at the Smithsonian?  All Smithsonian jobs go through the USAjobs.gov website, where you will also find library, archives, and special collection jobs with the National Park Service, the Army, the National Archives, the Library of Congress and many other federal institutions.

See their site for more information! Excellent resources:
http://si-siris.blogspot.com/2010/10/how-can-i-get-job-libraries-archives.html

Artist Call Has Been Posted!

See our artists' call.

http://be-art-smart.blogspot.com/p/artists.html

Exhibition Location

We have just received word that the location request for the exhibition has been approved!

The site specific exhibition of Object, No Object will be at the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art www.fcmoca.org

Stay tuned for information on invited artists!

Please read some of the posts here and share your thoughts regarding your studio practice as a sculptor and what you think is important in the field at this time. We have been hearing from some folks internationally as well as nationally...let us know what is happening in your part of the world and what part of the world it is!

Another Perspective

We talked in class about audience. Curation requires a vision, but it also requires an understanding of the audience.  When creating an exhibition, which is considered first?  What brings the audience?  Knowledge of a concept, and resulting appreciation of its expression, or the presentation of a concept, and stirring the audience to look further into the concept?  One presupposes that the audience already understands the concept, the other seeks to educate, inform them.  The reasons people view art are as diverse as the reasons for its creation.  

How do we create an exhibition that speaks volumes to our audience about this concept?  If they are not aware of the crossroads elaborated on by this article, what needs to be the topic of the exhibit?  Where do we start? In and through class I am learning about current artists and the concepts they are presenting in a way I would never encounter otherwise.  It is fascinating, and definitely beyond the scope of everyday conversation at FRCC, or my dinner table (this is changing though!). 

Recently in our area, at the Loveland Museum, an artwork by California artist Enrique Chagoya entitled “The Misadventures of Romantic Cannibals” was all but destroyed by a member of the audience from Montana, on the auspices that it was profane.  I wonder if the perpetrator had any understanding of the work prior to her act.  Had she researched the artist, learned about the piece, made an informed decision, or was this a reaction to media?  Upon reflection of the article, was her act “art”?  It certainly was matter transformed by energy..AND political..What does this mean to our exhibition?

So, fellow participants, what do you see as the starting point?  How art savvy do we perceive our audience to be?  Do we want to inform or confirm?  Our personal experiences with the art world definitely color our personal point of view so I am asking for yours.  Who is our audience?  How far down the rabbit hole do we go?  How obvious do we need to make the message?  How subtle can we be and still get it across?  Or do we let each artist do this work, and we set up the exhibition and stand back?  How far does curation go?

~ Alnasl

All that glitters..... isn't all diamonds

For those of you who have been watching the HirstDamien saga. A colleague of mine who is also working with and researching social media as the part of their practice sent the following:

"I bought something from the website (total with shipping $3.55 USD) - and the payee on the account was andraz begus, who I googled of course. He is indeed an unknown Slovenian artist. So this would require Hirst to do a rather elaborate double agent type of impersonation. I just don't think he would bother with that merely to chat with the hoi polloi. He would have to be shockingly bored with his life of untold wealth and would have to be vastly different from the person he seems to be to go to those lengths... IMHO. And I think this guy has done a pretty good job of appearing like Hirst's less evil twin...."

"did a little digging on the @hirstdamien Twitter account and found out it is being maintained by Andraz Begus, who is indeed from Slovenia."

www.andrazbegus.com

www.140hours.com/artist%20bios/pages/andrazbegus.htm

Understanding the Root Discourse I

Among the seminal ideas participants in Museum/Gallery Studies should be considering…..

Lucy Lippard and John Chandler write the essay The Dematerialization of the Art, published in

the February 1968 issue of Art International.

An excerpt: “During the 1960’s the anti-intellectual, emotional intuitive processes of art-making characteristic of the last two decades have begun to give way to an ultra-conceptual art that emphasizes the thinking process almost exclusively. As more and more work is designed in the studio, but executed elsewhere by professional craftsmen, as the object becomes merely the end product, a number of artists are losing interest in the physical evolution of the work of art. The studio is again becoming a study. Such a trend appears to be provoking a profound dematerialization of art, especially art as object, and if it continues to prevail, it may result in the object’s becoming wholly obsolete.

The visual arts at the moment seem to hover at a crossroad that may well turn out to be two roads to one place, though they appear to have come from two sources: art as idea and art as action. In the first case, matter is denied, as sensation has been converted into concept; in the second case, matter has been transformed into energy and time-motion.”

New Layout For Blog:

There have been a few comments about how the blog was confusing to navigate and looking a little messy; it's now been reformatted in an attempt to make it more user friendly. Please let us know how you like the changes.

Your feedback is extremely helpful and enables us to learn about how to best maximize our digital footprint.

My Understanding & Our Progress:

The other participants in this project and I met today to discuss how to move forward with the idea of our exhibition, "Object, No Object." Given the title, it is fair to say the discussion was equally fractured; opposing and contradictory ideas spring to mind just contemplating how to properly curate a very tangible and yet completely conceptual show. Our dialogue could not progress unless we first recognized how a parallel disconnect had also emerged in the current art world(s) and art market(s).

This is also why there is another part to the title of our exhibit "Sculpture of Ideas." It is our attempt to engage in an emerging conversation of what drives interest, audience and the artist. Which is more important the product (object) or the recognition of the process (non-object)? This very question, I believe, is the crux of where the current debate sits among artists, critics and academics alike. I also believe as curators it is our sole responsibility to present the discourse, not only in a visually stimulating manner, but also without bias.

The delegation of duties and basic logistics, such as the space, were eventually hammered out. However because of the difficulty we are having trouble articulating our curatorial perimeters given the nature of how we are tackling this debate (which is in an exhibit) ; the statement, artist call and invitations will eventually develop once we all have had a chance to meditate on the various ways to approach this topic.

We are not only curating concurrent on-line and site/time specific exhibits but also hopefully facilitating a public dialogue about the very nature of contemporary art, it's direction, and the commentary it makes on a digitally enhanced, hyper-modern society.

Loveland Museum Incident Results in Arrest over Controversial Piece:

Please leave your comments about this incident. We'd love to know your thoughts...
http://tiny.cc/plwjo

Storify

Behold the future of blogging! I thought this might be an interesting way to put the story of our project on-line. Storify would allow us to include tweets, video, pictures and text all in one place and embed it into our blog or give us yet another avenue of communication. Please let me know what you think & check out Storify on-line:

http://storify.com/

Damien Hirst Responds to us on Twitter:

See how Damien Hirst (the most expensive living artist to sell at auction) responded to us on Twitter when asked about how the definition of sculpture & art appreciation has changed over the last 100 years!

http://www.facebook.com/Sculpture.Of.Ideas

...but is it real or is it "The unknown Slovenian artist Damien Hirst"?
http://tiny.cc/t5ri3