MixedMedia

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]

One of the fun pieces of work for the last couple of years is participating in the Green Mountain Film Festival – as an Operations Committee Member, a film viewer and as a participating artist. This year, working with two friends/colleagues who are both gifted – one is a clothing maker/costume designer and the other a wood worker and set designer – we are creating a large window installation for the festival that is a play on one of the early scenes from, “The Seventh Seal.”

In our scene adaptation, Death will play the festival’s mascot this year – a nubian goat that graces our poster, program and other advertisements – in a game of chess. Supposedly for the unlucky chevre’s soul, unless he proves the trickier master.

At the moment, my task is to create a likeness of the goat. Have developed a wireframe form that I sheathed in screen, and am now applying a layer of impressively-fast-drying plaster gauze. Once this is completed, I will tear up about a dozen pages of New York Times movie review add into strips which I’ll curl and apply as goaty tufts of fur. Its really fun!

Mine is the bottom right. The “cloud” text says,

Children of the earth
moulders of clay, movers of rock.

In making the tile, I was struck by how well the lighting worked between the girl and the cloudy background I’d painted. That was a pleasing result. The concept continues my interest in the representation of “fundamental” materials: stone, mud and clay, metal, wood, fibers, etc. Materials as archetypes of both process and meaning.

Had a just lovely workshop with 32 AmeriCorps/VISTA members (these are young people typically just out of university who are spending a year volunteering in a community. Many in this group are working on environmental education and with at-risk populations, which is to say young people who are disproportionately likely to drop out of school, abuse drugs and alcohol, etc).

Since I have done workshops for AmeriCorps before, I though it was a great opportunity to share the “facilitation” role with their full-time staff. So I basically just introduced the program and the process, and Amanda, my amazing artist-cofacilitator for the day, gave more explicit instruction around the theme (“What is the change I want to make in the world?”) and debrief/discussion.

(more…)