MixedMedia

Great looking announcement that was passed along today. The sponsors, PBS and the creators of the television show Design Squad, are looking for some sport. Hook up with some yung’uns and pitch in – looks like fun!

Click here to download the Trash to Treasure Flyer

Today I’m headed to Ithaca, New York to give a talk, run a workshop and in other ways participate in Earth Day celebrations that take place there each year through the Center for Environmental Sustainability (CES) which will sponsor,”GREENING THE ARTS.”  They’ve asked me to be part of an informal panel on Friday morning exploring the questions, “What IS ‘green’ art” and “Why is it important”?

Other panelists will hopefully include Liesel Fenner, Coordinator of Americans for the Arts’ Pubic Art Network; Sam Bowers, founder/director of greenmuseum.org; 2 local Ithaca artists who have curated ‘green’ art shows; and the director of Cornell University’s art museum. After the panel session, folks will be invited to form lunch groups to come up with their own definitions – and then to return for an afternoon Open Space aimed at generating action plans both for local next steps and for the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. We’ll also do a Peace Tiles workshop that Saturday.

This should be really cool. There’s only one glitch, which is that I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly “green” artist, neither in outlook nor technique. Put differently, this is not the standpoint from which I approach my artwork, although I can see many intersections. Which is why I’m excited: the connections to sustainability, development, and important frameworks like the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Now these I can get excited about.

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There’s an interesting model of neighborhood-based social networking evolving in Vermont called the Front Porch Forum. I was recently struck by its connection to broad, national concern about the loss of local news coverage. But before I go further, I have to confess some skepticism about the recent sense of malaise around the media. Here’s why:

Just about everywhere you turn, you are bound to read omphaloskeptic writing about the sufferance of media – its consolidation, how it is biased, how there has been a turn from the local, and certainly the absence of an “alternative” voice. At its finest, some have even called Viacom-produced shows like the “Colbert Report” “independent” news sources. This all plays up the general state of disarray and incoherence out there – but not, at least to me, a state of crisis. And perhaps part of the equation lies in some of the unique qualities of a state like Vermont: small, northern, rural, inconsequential, largely and often overlooked. Perhaps this has allowed something other than the dominant narratives to play out among our bonny green hills.

One of those is the healthy ecology of small town newspapers. Right here in the northern piedmont we have more than a dozen local papers serving a disbursed population of roughly 70,000. Which are all complemented by the circulation of the larger area papers – the Times Argus, Burlington Free Press as well as out of state ones, including the Boston Globe and the New York Times.

So why the health of so many local papers?

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During the weekend of April 11-13, more than a dozen Twinfield staff, parents and students helped to sort, record, and mount the more than 450 “Peace Tiles” that would compose a new mural in the school’s cafeteria. The Peace Tiles – individual collages on 8-inch square wood panel – each responded to the question, “What is my place?” When combined into a mural, they produced single image representing the Central Vermont landscape where they live – a theme selected by the 2008 graduating class.

While the mural represents one of a few large works in the school, there is some concern that students will find the mural a ready target for vandalism. I am not so certain, for two reasons. First is that each student has a piece in the mural: everyone contributed to it, and as a result I would expect that it feels more “owned” by the entire student body. The second reason is that the mural should have some longevity: every student, from pre-K up to the graduating class, contributed to the mural – which means it could be up to 12 years before that bit of school history graduates. In my mind, that’s a pretty lengthy bit of time for a story to circulate. Both aspects of the mural I hope will garner students’ delight and respect for many years to come.

In any event, it was a pleasure to work with everyone at the school, and I certainly learned many good lessons for how to take the Peace Tiles mural project “to scale.”

[In the picture lower right, a Twinfield student places the last tile of the school mural]

Had my first workshop with seniors in “twintown” – that’s our name for the combined towns of marshfield and cabot. about 15 people showed up, all of them women. turns out the group is a “homemakers” club that gets together every other week. so they know each other pretty good.

this gang had a terrific sense of humor. they took each others’ ailments in stride (health was a source of quips and caring updates alike) and also shared alot about each others’ work. it was interesting to see how much they asked each other about their memorabilia – much more so than in other groups i’ve observed. i also noted that many of them expressed much stronger doubts about their creative capacities. i am not sure what was the source of this, but i suspect basic health – for example eyesight – played a significant part.

one of the most popular themes in this group was family, in particular small children – grandchildren to be exact. even though each secretly seemed to know that they were kin to the sweetest little one, they gave each others’ equal care and attention. it was really fun to work surrounded by the bouyant humor – some of it even risqué and surprisingly brusgue! – and sharing in a few of their memories.

one of the most poignant tiles was made by a woman who’s husband’s parents had once owned a farm. she found a picture of a barn, painted in a beautiful sky and landscape for it complete with clouds and a tree and then, in a pure twist of collage abstraction, placed two different calendar months floating in the sky, slightly overlapping. on a particular and different date on each month she had marked the day with a tiny glass bead. these were the birthdays of her parents-in-law (“My husband loved them very much” she explained). Also floating in the sky was a quote which, paraphrased, read: “Journeying together to the undiscovered country.” Just beneath it, a tiny locket in the shape of a heart with a tiny key on the same chain.

Very sweet. A lovely combination of fine painting skills, mixed media, and kitschy items combined to make a lovely memento.

At the end of the session, which lasted about an hour and a half, we had a chance for everyone to hold up their tile and share what it was about. Everyone jumped in, no one held back. It was nice to see them sharing stories with each other that might not otherwise have come out.

[Photo courtesy of John Cameron: Global Issues Peace Tiles workshop in Salt Spring, British Columbia ]