BEN VOLTA

Tectonic Quilt: Clouds

2011-01-17T15:01:00.002-05:00

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Tectonic Quilt: Clouds
Drawing from maps that outline political boarders and from the distinct flags that emblemize nations, young artists set out to respond to an earth divided by political geographies. Their designs begin to map an initial engagement with places and a people outside of their immediate context. Our exploration of these nations has created an artwork with an imagined space where land forms, physical properties and cultural difference does not divide or separate. We have created a cumulous map of the imagination that quilts us all together in a new way.

@ the Delaware Center For Contemporary Arts through Spring 2011

HOME THAT WAS

2010-09-13T18:04:00.009-04:00

OBJECTS THAT FILL A HOME, ON THE WALLS OF A HOUSE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS

Located at 10th and Vine Streets in Philadelphia, Home That Was is a temporary artwork created during the summer of 2010. Benjamin Volta worked with a team of intergenerational artists from the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program to create wallpaper patterns that explore consumption, memory, and loss. Attached to the exterior wall of a neighboring row home, the wallpapers are installed on the thin plaster remains of a house that no longer exists.

LINK TO PROJECT BLOG

TSUNAMI CASCADE

2010-09-06T09:15:00.005-04:00

POLYGON BLOOMS @ GROVER WASHINGTON JR. MIDDLE SCHOOL

2010-06-18T16:50:00.002-04:00

ART IN THE OPEN PHILADELPHIA: POLYGON BLOOMS essay by gerard brown

2010-06-09T17:41:00.005-04:00

GETTING TO THE POINT

Since September 11, 2001, we have been obsessed with ‘connecting the dots’…and failing to do so. Conceptually, the world has become a vast array of points, and the paths and vectors that unite and direct them are beginning to form a kind of 21st century astrology understood (one hopes) by the vast security and intelligence complexes that have sprung up to interpret them.

As people, places, and events become coordinates in a grand matrix of possibility, it comes as little surprise that the paths we create as we walk through space, invisible trails we inscribe on our cities, should be of interest to us. I think of this as I meander an uncharted path through web links, browsing images of Grover Washington Jr. Middle School students tracing crystalline forms created by plotting the positions of landmarks. Distilling the messy, organic world of lived experience into the clarity and precision of geometry takes effort.

Benjamin Volta, Jerry Jackson, and their students generate complex geometric shapes from map coordinates. The students have explored a middle terrain between art and mathematics to arrive at their endpoint. They have translated these illusionistic flatforms into actual objects. In 3D space, these forms look like radio towers, electricity pylons, and they call to mind the Watts Towers. Engaged as they are with information, they belong to a genre of art and design that extends from Mark Lombardi and Edward Tufte. But – engaged as they are in the community from which they arose (an 8th grade class at a Philadelphia school) - they seem like a kind of Modernist folk art.

They look like knowledge…at once crystal clear and confounding. One thing that comes to mind is an image by designers Lisa Streusel and James Nick Sears that appeared on the cover of the New York Times Magazine on December 3, 2006. It was an immensely complicated tangle of white lines connecting names of places (New York, World Trade Center, etc.) to people (Mohamed Atta, Tawfik bin Attash) to very general nouns (flight school, place of worship, and so on). This inter-penetrating 3D bubble chart is a beautiful mess – the very image of clarity causing confusion. Anyone who hoped to connect the dots in this thicket was looking for trouble.

But aren’t these things the outcomes of any effort to structure something? Loss? An appearance of clarity where none actually exists? People want things in order. And the clarity of a diagram is seductive for how it pares away all the troubling textures of the world.

Mathematics provides a brilliant metaphor to address the complexities of adolescence. Polygons can be regular and irregular, forms closed or open. Line, arcs, and shapes may be tangent, overlapping, or exclusive. Life is made up of these things. However, once a clear but abstract message passes beyond the charmed circle of the community in which it was invented, who knows?

And is it our business to worry about such things? I doubt it. For now, the constructions blossoming in Grover Washington Jr. Middle School are arrestingly gorgeous, simultaneously simple and complex. I want to pull a student aside and ask her to explain them to me. That’s the life they’ll have – one that is carried out by communication from one student to another. That way nothing gets lost,
and all dots will be connected.

- gerard brown

gerard brown is an artist and writer living in Philadelphia

POLYGON BLOOMS created with Grover Washington Jr. Middle School for the ART IN THE OPEN PHILADELPHIA festival on June 9th, 2010.

Wednesday June 9th – Saturday June 12th
Schuylkill River Banks, Philadelphia PA
Along the Path Under the Market Street Bridge
Special Reception on Site Saturday June 12th from 3 – 5pm

ART IN THE OPEN PHILADELPHIA is a new citywide festival that celebrates artists, their inspirations for creating art, and their relationships with the urban environment.Inspired by the tradition of plein air painting, the four-day festival
presents over 35 artists working in a variety of media and styles on site, outside, along the banks of the Schuylkill River in downtown Philadelphia. Complementing this unique display of art-making-in-action will be a host of public programs presented by many of the 34 partner institutions and showcasing the vibrant community of working artists, galleries and institutions that make Philadelphia a major urban art center.

http://artintheopenphila.org/

POLYGON BLOOMS BLOG

POLYGON BLOOMS BLOG

2010-06-03T19:18:00.004-04:00

Click on image or here:
POLYGON BLOOMS BLOG

ARTS BRIDGES @ SOLIS-COHEN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

2010-05-28T20:41:00.005-04:00

Avid Eyes
These gigantic eyes reflect our exploration of artwork that hang in five galleries at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Each student created a triangular drawing that reference these great artworks from the past. Throughout the project the students’ individual drawings presented a main idea in their foreground and supporting details in their background. To create a collaborative artwork we arranged the students’ individual drawings around a central axis to form a new design. The gigantic eye design can be seen as the overall main idea, and the drawings throughout can be seen as the supporting details.

Archival Pigment Print on Stretched Canvas with Reflective Vinyl

Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership project - Arts Bridges: Building Literacy Through an Integrated Arts Collaborative Model is made possible by a grant of federal funds to The School District of Philadelphia by the United Sates Department of Education, Office of Innovation and Improvement, under the Arts in Education Model Development & Dissemination Grant Program. The Philadelphia Museum of Art is a collaborating partner.

Art in the Open Philadelphia

2010-05-17T22:14:00.001-04:00

Art in the Open Website

LOTS OF NEW POSTS AT GROVER304TAP BLOG

NEW WORK ON VIEW IN THE EDUCATION GALLERIES AT THE PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART

2010-04-09T16:29:00.015-04:00

DEFIANCE

We worked from a selection of artwork in the museum collection that depicted images of violence and attempted to dissect the conflict in each work. On the wall are black silhouettes based on aspects of the original artworks. These silhouettes were placed with digital reproductions of the works they were based on. Suspended white flags transfigure the dark silhouettes on the wall away from violence and toward a peaceful, yet fierce, resolution. To connect their new understanding of conflict resolution in art to an understanding of conflict resolution in the world, students selected quotes calling for peace and wrapped the text around each flagpole.

Benjamin Volta with Conwell Egan Catholic High School, Fairless Hills PA

Collaborating Art Teacher: JoAnne Gari
Collaborating Students: Alexandra Antonello, Kayleigh Clemins, Nicole DeFinis, Kelly DeMarshall, Christine Gordon, Elizabeth Lyman, Kelly Mott, Michael Payne, Pil Kyung Son, Guannan Wang, Sean McCarthy, and Casey Phillips

This project is part of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Art Futures Residency. This program is made possible with generous funding from the Delphi Project Foundation, Reliance Standard Life Insurance Company, Frances S. Middleton, and Business Leadership Organized for Catholic Schools (BLOCS).

Read our review in the Courier Times

Photos of our process:

Everyone is Welcome A K.O.S. Panel Discussion

2010-04-07T19:26:00.003-04:00

Everyone is Welcome
A K.O.S. Panel Discussion
Moderated by James Romaine

The New York Center for Art and Media Studies
44 W28th Street, New York, NY 10001

April 8th 2010, 7:30-8:30pm

This event is Free to the public.

Please RSVP to Janna Dyk at jad64976@bethel.edu.

New York, January 18, 2010—The New York Center for Art and Media Studies (NYCAMS) is pleased to announce Everyone is Welcome: A K.O.S. Panel Discussion. This panel will be held on April 8th 2010, from 7:30 to 8:30pm at The New York Center for Art and Media Studies. This panel is being organized in conjunction with the exhibition Everyone is Welcome: A K.O.S. Showcase, February 19th-April 9th, 2010. The exhibition features the work of K.O.S. artists Angel Abreu, Wesley Martin Berg, Robert Branch, Daniel Bocatto, Daniel Castillo, Ala Ebtekar, George Garces, Nelson Ricardo Savinon, Steven Vega, Benjamin Volta, and Bryce Zackery.

Since 1981, members of K.O.S. have collaborated with artist and educator Tim Rollins. Their collaboratively produced art is in the permanent collection of more than eighty museums and has been the subject of more than one hundred solo exhibitions. The art of Tim Rollins and K.O.S. is currently on view a traveling retrospective, organized by the Tang Museum, at the Frye Art Museum. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published by MIT Press.

Over the past three decades, many members of K.O.S. have continued to produce and exhibit independently created art. The remarkable quality and diversity of this work disproves any suggestion that there is a “K.O.S.-style.” Everyone is Welcome: A K.O.S. Showcase is the first exhibition devoted exclusively to the work of current and former members of K.O.S.

For more information contact:

New York Center for Art and Media Studies
44 West 28th Street, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10001
212 213 8052

DELPHI BUS SHELTER @ 19th and Chestnut St

2010-03-12T16:05:00.005-05:00

"TRY TO REMEMBER EVERYTHING YOU PASSED, BUT WHEN YOU GO BACK MAKE THE FIRST THING THE LAST"
Created with Russell-Byers Elementary school at The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Delphi after school Art Club.

Philagrafika blog post

HEARTS & MINDS

2010-03-08T15:06:00.002-05:00

Students created orthogonal perspective drawings over a digital print of Raphael's painting, "The School of Athens".

On the left students drew their Geo-Emblem drawings vanishing at Plato's chest. These drawings visualize the students' idea of an ideal geometric design.

On the right students drew their Contextual-Coordinate drawing vanishing at Aristotle's head. These drawings visualize the students' experiential relation to observable the world (ie Philadelphia).

GROVER TAP 304 BLOG: CHECK IT OUT

GHOSTLY GALLEON MOONLIGHT (After The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes)

2010-02-09T23:48:00.004-05:00

GHOSTLY GALLEON MOONLIGHT (After The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes)

Created with Grover Washington Jr. Middle School, Philadelphia PA.

48" x 48" Archival Pigment Print

GROVER TAP 304

2010-02-09T13:54:00.007-05:00

GROVER TAP 304 BLOG: CHECK IT OUT

OPENING TONIGHT: CFEVA-PHILAGRAFIKA INDEPENDENT PROJECT

2010-02-04T10:56:00.005-05:00

Selected especially for the Philagrafika 2010 and Fiber Philadelphia 2010 festivals, "Sweet Spot" features six CFEVA artists whose prints, sculpture, and installations incorporate printmaking and fiber in unusual and unexpected ways.

Artists:
Katie Baldwin
Julia Blaukopf
Andrea Cote
Matthew Neff
Marisha Simons
Ben Volta

Dates: January 28 – February 18, 2010

Opening Reception: Thursday, February 4, 5:00 – 7:00

Location: The Center for Emerging Visual Artists
1521 Locust Street
Lower Level
Philadelphia, PA 19102

Hours: Monday – Friday, 11 am - 5 pm
(other hours by appointment)

MIDDLESEX COLLEGE

2010-01-26T08:25:00.004-05:00

Next week I will be showing a large project created with young artists at Solis-Cohen Elementary School in a CFEVA group show in Edison, NJ. The info is below. (Edison is about an hour and a half from Philly)

Info on the project:http://www.benvolta.com/edenunderground.html

CFEVA FELLOWS at MIDDLESEX COLLEGE
Thursday, January 21 - February 11, 2010

Studio Theatre Gallery
2600 Woodbridge Avenue
Edison, NJ

Edison, NJ - Middlesex County College is presenting two intriguing art exhibitions: one highlights emerging artists from the mid-Atlantic region; the other features sculpture, shown in a darkened room, illuminated only from the artwork itself.

The exhibition is from January 21 through February 11 and is open to the public weekdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. A reception, also open to the public, will be Thursday, January 28, from 5-8 p.m. The exhibitions are in adjacent spaces.

Presenting photography, painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation, the exhibition features Maria Anasazi, Leslie Atik, Susan Benarcik, Gregory Brellochs, Danielle Bursk, Brooke Hine, Brenna K. Murphy, Diane Savona, R. Noel Shaak, Daniel Traub, Ben Volta, and John Woodin.

Seedling Nest

2010-01-25T10:27:00.009-05:00

(from the wall text)

Seedling Nest
The students at the Elwyn Seedlings School worked with Ben Volta to create multiple drawings and paper collages. The youngsters drew dynamic circular scribbles, constructed tree branch designs using cut paper, created colorful dotted patterns on Japanese paper, and ripped paper to form leaf like forms. All of the marks, designs, shapes, and forms created with the youngsters became the building blocks of this collaboration.

Ben Volta with students from the Elwyn Seedling School, 2010
Archival Pigment Print on Hosho paper adhered to stretched canvas / two-tone acrylic wall painting

This project was supported by the Falls Center / IronStone Real Estate. Continue to check out the Art At Falls Center blog as we create more installations this spring.

GROVER TAP 304: COLLAB-GEOMETRY DRAWINGS

2009-12-17T09:39:00.003-05:00

Selected COLLAB-GEOMETRY DRAWINGS with Grover Washington Jr. Middle School TAP Residency. (regular and irregular polygons)

We are just getting started. Here is a link to our GROVER TAP 304 PROJECT BLOG

ELECTRO: STUMBLE 1

2009-12-16T20:52:00.002-05:00

GOOGLE GOOGLE GOOGLE
Two images dug up by students on Monday.

ELECTRO: WEEK 2

2009-12-15T22:09:00.003-05:00

Two collaborative drawings from week 2 with the MG class at Grover.

"TRY TO REMEMBER EVERYTHING YOU PASSED, BUT WHEN YOU GO BACK MAKE THE FIRST THING THE LAST": STUMBLE 1

2009-12-11T17:46:00.005-05:00

VIA Gabriel Sim-Laramee: This gave us the title for our quilt... it is so good!

SEEDLINGS: STUMBLE 4

2009-12-11T13:31:00.000-05:00

Tape is made from trees from Conditional Design on Vimeo.

Via Gabriel Sim-Laramee:
CONDITIONAL DESIGN

"TRY TO REMEMBER EVERYTHING YOU PASSED, BUT WHEN YOU GO BACK MAKE THE FIRST THING THE LAST"

2009-12-10T23:35:00.008-05:00

Created with Russell-Byers Elementary school at The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Delphi after school Art Club. Our print will be on a bus shelter in Center City Philadelphia next March.

Click on image to see details.

SEEDLINGS: STUMBLE 3

2009-12-09T23:49:00.005-05:00

From Bruno Munari's book, DRAWING A TREE.

THE HIGHWAYMAN: STUMBLE 2

2009-12-08T20:34:00.001-05:00

"Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."
From The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes.

Kiki Smith's Moons

MOON 1997
lead paint on 83 Opal Remi glass panes, 16' x 13' x 3.5" overall

Moon with Stars I

"I See the Moon, and the Moon Sees Me" TIDAL, 1998
Photogravure, phtolithography, and silkscreen
10 1/4 x 9 11/16” boxed, 19 1/2” x 126 1/4” open

ELECTRICITY: WEEK 1

2009-12-07T22:13:00.005-05:00

Today I began a 10 - 15 week residency with Jerry Jackson and MG students at Grover Washington Jr. Middle School. Here is a link to the project BLOG

Our project will revolve around electricity in science, in art, and as metaphor. Mr. Jackson pointed us toward the amazing video below, which reminded me of the writings of Paul Virilio.

"If, according to Aristotle, “the accident reveals the substance,” the invention of the substance is also the invention of the “accident.” Seen this way, the shipwreck is indeed the “futuristic” invention of the ship, the air crash the invention of the supersonic plane, and the Chernobyl meltdown, the invention of the nuclear power station." Paul Virilio

SEEDLINGS: WEEK 1

2009-12-05T23:02:00.001-05:00

Last Tuesday I began a new project with the Elwyn Seedlings School at the Falls Center in the East Falls neighborhood of Philadelphia, PA. For the next 7 weeks I will be working with over 50, 3 - 5 yr old youngsters, to create two permanent installations at the Falls Center.

PROJECT NOTES

The circular doodles may be used to visualize “energy” inside seeds.
The doodles remind me of galaxies.
Galaxies shine bright from a dark space.
Seedlings spring out of the dark ground.

Elettrostatica exhibit at the DCCA through January 4th

2009-12-05T16:43:00.004-05:00

ELETTROSTATICA: Ben Volta with The Delaware School for the Deaf and Grover Washington JR. Middle School.

Exhibition in the galleries @ The Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE Through Jan 4, 2010

Images of the exhibit at www.benvolta.com

More info on the DCCA website

THE HIGHWAY MAN: STUMBLE 1

2009-12-05T09:44:00.002-05:00

VIA GABRIEL SIM-LARAMEE

THE HIGHWAY MAN: WEEK 1

2009-12-02T12:52:00.005-05:00

Today I began a 10-week residency with Mrs. General’s 7th grade class.

In my planning meeting with Mrs. General in November we decided to present two short narrative poems to the class and let students debate on which we would use to direct the focus and imagery of our artwork. The narratives that we chose were The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes and Annabel Lee by Edger Allan Poe.

In class today I led the students to draw and take notes while they listened to the narrative poems. We then broke the students into groups and asked each group to construct an argument to debate why we should choose one poem over the other. I stressed to the class that they must argue why the poem is a good fit for the purpose of art making, and to really start envisioning what we could create for the hallways at Grover Washington Jr. Middle School. Each group created a collaborative drawing to help visualize their argument.

At the end of the class we picked The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes

I HAVE STARTED A BLOG FOR PROJECTS AT GROVER WASHINGTON JR MIDDLE SCHOOL

HERALDS

2009-11-22T11:17:00.004-05:00

Last Spring I worked on a project at Solis-Cohen Elementary School in Northeast Philadelphia as part of the ARTS BRIDGES program made possible by The Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership and The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the United States Department of Education Office of Innovation and Improvement.

HERALDS PROJECT SUMMARY

In order to begin our project with an understanding of some of the general principals involved in designing signage, our project was initiated by comparing and contrasting reproductions of signs that appear in different areas of the world. Researching and brainstorming many different similes and metaphors observable in existing signs helped us visualize figurative language. Subsequently, each artist has designed a sign based on a chosen metaphor or simile. Each final drawing contains a central emphasis or focal point. We've then combined and layered all of our individual drawings to create a large artwork that contains multiple focal points. Within the large field of imagery, each focal point may function as a turning point for the imagination.

Ben Volta with 6th grade students at Solis-Cohen Elementary School

6th GRADE CLASSROOM TEACERS:
Anne Foti, Joanne Zastowney, Javita Little and Carole Kessler

For more information visit: www.paep.net

Distance Learning Residency with WHS and the PMA

2009-11-21T09:31:00.009-05:00

Last spring I worked on a unique project with Wissahickon High School and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In this project I met with art/educator David Miller's class via video conferencing. I introduced the students to three artworks from the PMA collection that David and I selected. Students created drawings in relation to this work and sent them to me to scan into my computer to construct a collaborative artwork in Adobe illustrator. I then sent this illustrator file back to the students to reconstruct their own collective artwork. The still image is the final artwork, the slide show contains the student iterations of my arrangement.

Here is a link to David Miller's site where he has posted extensive specs on the project: David Miller

PERENNIAL RECORDS

2009-08-01T17:32:00.016-04:00

CREATED WITH GROVER WASHINGTON JR. MIDDLE SCHOOL, PHILADELPHIA PA
CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE

TECTONIC QUILT

2009-07-26T08:57:00.006-04:00

Eden Project

2009-06-29T10:32:00.006-04:00

Eden Project created with the School of the Future: www.benvolta.com/eden.html

On Locust St between 15th and 16th

2009-06-19T09:57:00.001-04:00

If you are in Center City check out the new Center For Emerging Visual Artists Gallery space. They used the Laurel Wreath image for the signage!

2009-04-05T00:57:00.016-04:00

LITHOPHONE

Created with Ringing Rocks Elementary School in Pottstown, PA - Residency with the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts / Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership. (click images to enlarge)

2009-03-06T02:09:00.010-05:00

MIXTAPE
Uploaded by bvolt

MIXTAPE
In Gallery 167 at The Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Ben Volta with The Teen Sketch Club: March 4th, 2009

2009-02-06T21:59:00.007-05:00

Cultigen Kunstkabinett

We began by asking ourselves what does creativity looks like, and how do we make it grow? We imagined great marble sculptures growing on vines as grapes and berries and the artwork found throughout the collection growing out of the ground as vegetables in a garden. After exploring the museum with this idea in mind, we sculpted seeds. From these seeds we created drawings to help us visualize our imaginative exploration. Guided by our drawings we sculpted plants and placed them in a cabinet under a magical light. A light, which when combined with our drawings and sculptures energizes the growth of our collective creativity / creations.

Created with the Delphi Art club (6th grade) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. On view in the education galleries at the PMA for the month of February and March.

2009-01-24T09:23:00.005-05:00

Fictions and Fabrications

Our artwork draws from the narratives and imagery of the Constantine Tapestries by Peter Paul Rubens (on display in the great stair hall at Philadelphia Museum of Art), and from stills taken from the animated film Spirited Away by Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. Our exploration draws from multiple digital reproductions that were captured from the Rubens' tapestries at the PMA and from still captured as watched Spirited Away. We combined our own drawing fragments taken from digital reproductions of both of these artists work to create new individual artworks that visualize our collective exploration. Before creating our final prints, all of our drawings were scanned into a computer and each artist worked with Ben Volta to compose and colorize each individual artwork. We then interweaved all 34 individual artworks together to construct a quilt (inspired by the Gees Bend collective in Alabama, whose work we were also fortunate enough to see in a major exhibition at the PMA). Our artwork does not contain a story in the same way that the large narrative works by Rubens and Miyazaki do. However, we do hope that our artwork provides inspiration for others to imagine new stories that could be written, which is to say, we want our viewers to explore our work in the same way we explored Rubens and Miyazaki, not as a passive observers but as a creative story tellers and active participants.

Created with Grover Washington Jr. Middle School in Philadelphia, PA.

...
Our artwork is on view in the education galleries at the Philadelphia Museum of Art for another two weeks. The PMA has hung our work across from my sister Lisa Volta's artwork created with a middle school in Philadelphia. (I will post the info once I get it from her) Both projects are part of the Delphi Art Partners residency that teems artist with Middle School students in Philadelphia.

2009-01-11T20:38:00.011-05:00

SIXTH WORLD / BUNCHED UP / 4TH WORLD
Created with Vare Elementary School as part of The Fleisher Art Memorial - Community Partnership in the Arts.(Click images to enlarge and see details)

Kimberly working on 4th World

QUOTES OF INTERPRITATION
“We are combining the nations together to make i a new nation. It stands out and makes you wonder of all the problems it may cause, but you know it is something you love. The thing you may ask is how will we have a source of water? What if we have no air to breath, and how will we all eat?... and that is why we are all separated.” Jaqueeah F.
“All the countries of the world are crumpled into a ball.” James R.
“The middle one looks like the countries are dancing around.” Desire N.
“The countries are mad at each other and they moved apart.” Kalhima Y.
“The two worlds were in a war and they both fell into the sea.” Karima Y.
“It was from many small drawings that we created a whole big drawing. Our big drawing looks like a garden because it grows each day.” Ettina T.
“We weren’t just drawing the flag in the country, we were creating new patterns.” Christina R.
“In our project we used a marker to draw the country and flag with the symbol. I used a country named Portugal. Portugal looks like mountains if you look at it sideways. Henry T.
“We picked different flags from different countries and we drew the country on tracing paper. My picks were Kenya, Afghanistan, and Malaysia. I took the items on one flag and traced it on the tracing paper. When I was done they looked like a newly created flag. Hopefully viewers will think that it is a masterpiece.” Christina W.
“The artwork is about people coming together and people working together. First they were separated then they joined.” Christina R.
“The drawing looks like the earth. An earth made up of many countries, and all in different colors. One drawing looks spaced out. The other looks crowded and the countries overlap. In the first one there is a free world with peace. Then a new world formed. All the countries overlapped and caused violence. It caused people to fight and flee from their country. It also caused natural disasters like tornados, hurricanes, and tsunamis.” Christina W.
“The artwork that is bunched up together can make you think if the world was really like that what would you do? And how would you do it? How would you get water or food? You’ll have to travel across the world. But a good thing about the world being bunched up is you can see and meet different and unique people from all around the world.” Ettina T.

2008-11-26T23:43:00.011-05:00

An Expected or Projected State

Our artwork began by transforming the Pennsylvania state seal by rearranging its elements and adding 21st century imagery to create new designs. In our large digital print we combined and overlap all of our designs to create a collaborative artwork.

Created with Vare Elementary School as part of The Fleisher Art Memorial - Community Partnership in the Arts. We are in a group exhibition at The Center For Works on Paper at Fleisher. The show opens Dec 12th.

2008-09-07T02:15:00.012-04:00

Laurel Wreath

In a combined effort including seniors from New Courtland Elder Services and youth from Blair Christian Academy, The Laurel Wreath was created through the telling of exaggerated stories and humorous "tall tales" that may or may not be true. As we shared our stories, we enumerated titles of visual images that could be easily researched by means of an Internet search engine. The digital images that we retrieved helped us visualize our own stories, and from there we created a series of drawings and paintings. We went from drawings to paintings, adding color, collecting, overlapping, assembling, arranging and rearranging to create a singular, mutually reinforcing artwork.

7' x 7' print on specially prepared Japanese Hosho paper using pigmented archival inks and adhered to stretched canvas.

New Courtland Artist Fellowship with The Center For Emerging Visual Artists. Art is Ageless exhibition in April 2009.

(Click on image to enlarge and see details)

Steampunk Kosmos

2008-07-06T16:48:00.011-04:00

Created in the education studios at the Philadelphia Museum of Art during the first week of the Summer Film Program the wallpaper artworks predominantly draw themes from the art and artifacts of three distinct regional cultures: India, Latin America, and China. Our challenge was to initiate a historical dialogue between our art and great cultures that may or may not be our own. The multiple tracings and drawings loosely fit within a Victorian era European wallpaper template design. This method helped us visualize the historic tendency of our predecessors to present images of distant and distinct cultures through Western or Eurocentric lenses. In our attempt to recognize, but not capitulate to this tendency, we inserted drawings that represent our own distinct cultures in order to establish our own unique cultural lens. Basketball players, Puerto Rican and Dominican flags, water bottles, robot figures, and even a portraits of the Hip Hop artist Lauren Hill compliment and contrast with drawings from India, Latin America, and China. The designs attempt to make sense of our unique interpretation of art and artifacts of the past. The high ambition of the project was to use the unique relationship we have with our own culture, the relationship we have with each other, and the benefits that we gain from a dialogue with the art of three distinct cultures to create an exciting new beauty.

Orchestrion (graphic sound)

2008-06-30T22:58:00.005-04:00

(click to enlarge)

Orchestrion is an education based art project that inspires the correlation of sight and sound through the creation of a collective artwork. The artwork on display explores this using visual media to bridge a gap between our eyes and our ears.

When we see a familiar musical instrument we are able to remember the sound that the instrument makes before music is played. Similarly, after we walk away from a waterfall, as we reflect upon its visual beauty we are able to remember the sound even though the roar of falling water can no longer be heard. This project explored our ability to recall sounds by means of visual images, and our ability to relive visual experiences as we are prompted by sound.

In this manner we explored how the objects of our perception together with the manner in which they are perceived to constitute the reality in which we live. Thus as we learn to appreciate our surroundings from differing perspectives, we are drawn into its reality not as helpless observers (as in much of the mass media and commercial representations of "reality" dramatization), but as participants, as it were, agents of change.

Created with Grover Washington Jr. Middle School in North Philadelphia.

The Windows at The Fleisher Art Memorial Center for Works on Paper

2008-05-26T19:03:00.006-04:00

EARLY ROAD MAP

Our Artwork draws Native American family heritage into our consciousness in the form of an unfolded early road map of Northeast America, into which Philadelphia streets contribute in a major way. Many of our streets have been named after words found in Native American Nation language, complementing names derived from trees that graced the Delaware Valley with natural beauty. Our artwork colors and exalts the many routes that were taken through the woodlands by our ancestors, before there was a "Susquehanna Avenue", "Passyunk Avenue", "Walnut Street" or "Pine Street". Reminiscent of Native American and African American art, images of eyes staring out from within our artwork's tree imagery remind us of our rich cultural heritage, and how the diverse cultural landscape of our own generation had been carved out, and reflected by, the roads built and named by those who came before us.

Created with Nebinger Middle School in South Philadelphia.
The project is part of The Fleisher Art Memorial Community Partnership in the Arts exhibition Heroes Home and Me

Blood Binders

2008-03-30T14:38:00.010-04:00

(click to enlarge)

Blood Binders

In and behind the bars we show what is going on in world with religion, economy, violence, war and people. Can we still be free? Do we have a free voice, a free mind, and a free Spirit? Are we free to express ourselves? To show how we feel about life and about the world?

We say, “Red can stand for blood, it can stand for love, and it can stand for everything we have in common.”

Cynthia S., David M., and George H.

-with Ben Volta, Andrea Lyons and students at Kensington C.A.P.A. High School

4' x 6' archival dye-print on view in the education galleries at the South entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Kujenga : To Build

2008-03-14T18:52:00.013-04:00

Created with Megan Bishop and students at Upper Merion Area High School.

This project was made possible through The Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership and The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Artist in Residence Program.

Early Road Map

2008-02-26T14:55:00.003-05:00

With The Fleisher Art Memorial Community Partnership in the Arts and 8th grade students at Nebinger School in South Philadelphia.

To be on display at the Fleisher Art Memorial Works on Paper Gallery in Early May.

Lineage Lines - installation images

2008-02-15T18:49:00.006-05:00

with Grover Washington Jr. Middle School - 7th and 8th grade class

Climbing Clouds at the PMA

2007-12-08T22:08:00.001-05:00

click on images to enlarge

On view at the South entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art until January 5th.

lineage lines

2007-12-03T06:56:00.001-05:00

Preliminary work for glass artwork at Grover Washington Jr. Middle School

Ghost Clouds or "Like" Medieval Marshmallows

2007-07-30T17:49:00.001-04:00

Video of the drop coming soon.

Drop Shop

2007-07-29T11:41:00.000-04:00

Images from the studios at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We have enlarged and transferred drawings onto large white paper. On Monday morning we will launch our cut outs off the balcony of the Great Stair Hall at the Museum.

We hope to have a short video of the launch posted by Friday.

We are excited about the how the drawings look hung together on the wall. This may be included in our show at the Museum in October.

dodeca-field

2007-06-28T19:21:00.000-04:00

Created with 100 4th grade artists at Finletter Elementary School.

Proto-Press

2007-06-13T17:19:00.000-04:00

Created with 100 4th grade artists at Ferrell Elementary School.

Proto-Press II

2007-06-09T15:07:00.000-04:00

dode-deca-drawings

2007-05-25T22:17:00.000-04:00

Proto-Press in progress .. at the studio and in the hallway

2007-05-23T23:54:00.000-04:00

Proto-Press = typography modeled after puddles + 50 life size books + 1100 yards of white paper + 100 4th graders at Ferrell elementary = a play that will protest history

"Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same." Ralph Waldo Emerson

2007-05-11T09:36:00.000-04:00

Fine art silk screen clothing designed by teens at Journey Home (agricultural after school program) in partnership with the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

DODE - DECA - SPECIES

2007-05-04T10:47:00.000-04:00

+ 100 fourth graders + fresco surfaces + Ernst Haeckel = more pictures to come

from Upper Volta

2007-04-24T00:08:00.000-04:00

Title Masks: Leaf and Costumes: det.: Upper Volta

Subjet: Bobo Special Societal Groups--Tribal Africa: Bobo

Caution Combustible

2007-04-13T14:07:00.000-04:00

On view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (south entrance).

Caution Combustible - created with Mark Mcquiling and North East High School

We view our artwork as collaborations with Joseph Mallord William Turner’s painting, The Burning of the Houses of Parliament*. Our work began as simple tracings from digital reproductions of the painting, but quickly turned into something very much our own. Artists chose their own aspects of the painting in which to interact with and manipulate. We transferred our drawings onto foam printing blocks to mix and match into final compositions (printed on drywall). The incision in the wall is a combination of four drawing fragments.

Vivacious

2007-03-19T19:33:00.000-04:00

Caution Combustible!

2007-03-08T21:55:00.000-05:00

For the past month I have been working with Mr Mark Mcquilling and his students at North East High School on a printmaking project loosely based on William Mallord Turner's painting, "The Burning of the Houses of Parliament". We are half way through the residency and all super excited about how the project in progressing. We will have a blog soon ... and the work will hang in the education gallery at the PMA in April.

... we are building an online reference outline to supplement the project... does anyone have any good links that might relate to Turner's painting ... or websites that relate to fire... or burning parliaments... or whatever?

Volta Redonda

2007-02-21T00:22:00.000-05:00

Link to Volta Redonda

Pareidolia

2007-02-11T22:46:00.000-05:00

link to source

“To confer grace upon some object of ceremony.”

2006-12-29T07:27:00.000-05:00

These images are from a fall workshop with The Project Home Teen Program. Walking around the Philadellphia Museum of Art the group fell in love with the ornament from all parts of the world. Using portraiture and ornament from the past as a guide, we set out to design newspaper boxes for the Teen Program quarterly newspaper... The North Philly Metropolis.

The boxes are being finished up... they will be on corners around Broad and Ridge in North Philadelphia.

Focus on ornament is a natural and universal system of human thought... Essentially driven by line work rather than mass, space, texture, color, materiality, or portraiture, although all of these properties contribute to its visibility... However, ornament also represents things and actions that do not originate in utility; its meanings, therefore, are essentially combinational, and its figures tend to become metamorphoses… The life, the playfulness, and the fantasticality of ornament exist in the liminal or transitional space of its objects…The term ornament possesses a distinctive etymology and its practice a timeless character that sets it apart from more changeful concepts such as art and decoration even as it participates in the activities innate to those disciplines... The English word ornament comes from the Latin word ornamentum, rooted in ornare, which in a modern interpretation means “to confer grace upon some object of ceremony.” The term ornament, by most accounts, originated inside the Greek term Kosmos, which meant something like “universe,” “order,” and “ornament.” In such a Greek translation, ornament is implicated with concepts so vast that at first it may seem impossible to disentangle it from an inventory of all things... The identity of the term ornament, therefore, has always depended on the incorporation of other considerations into the fabric of practical objects – considerations that might fulfill a picture of the world in which the object is performing. That accomplishment is essentially combinational, which is to say that ornament functions as a visual system or type of configuration capable of apprehending and uniting multiple meanings. Such an act of combining may not have to be as culturally specific as it must be visually intelligible... The principal strategy required to achieve an image of combination in ornament is to present a spectacle of transformation. In that spectacle, it may appear that on thing is turning into another and vise versa. When Henri Focillon, in The Life Forms in Art, exquisitely identifies ornament as “the chosen home of metamorphoses,” he makes ornament into a habitat that allows metamorphosis... Within that habitat, the primary facts and expressions of utility, which are present and potentially visible in the construction and space of any practical object, are in the first order of things to be transformed... In fact if everything were to be admitted intact-such as the entire body of a bird rather than simply the wings or wing likeness- there would be no mediation but instead a crowd of conflicting creatures. Ornament would merely be a depository or an anarchy of distinct beings. In this respect, the realm of ornament is not just a place of gathering but is also a place in which dismemberment and combination are sanctioned. In order to mediate among things, the mechanisms of ornament must divide, transform, and reconventionalize the articles of mediation as well as the meanings implicit in the states in which they were born. This particular activity creates metamorphoses, which obey the laws of ornament.

all text taken from an unknown source... not really... I just need to return to the library because I forgot to write down the biblio.... it was a book on ornament though:)

Penn Treaty Installed

2006-12-21T12:13:00.000-05:00

click images to enlarge

penn treaty working images

2006-12-18T21:37:00.000-05:00

We view these drawings as collaborations with an unknown Mexican artist from the 17th Century. Our work began as simple tracings but quickly turned into something very much our own.

We scanned many of our drawings into the computer and used Adobe Illustrator to mix and match our work into final (de)compositions.

We are currently painting on translucent muslin fabric that will soon hang as curtains at the PMA and then permanently at Penn Treaty Middle School in Philadelphia. We should have pictures of the curtains installed by the end of the week.

John Ruskin

2006-10-12T23:59:00.001-04:00

The power which causes the several portions of the plant to help each other, we call life. Much more is this so in an animal. We may take away the branch of a tree without much harm to it; but not the animal's limb. Thus, intensity of life is also intensity of helpfulness— completeness of depending of each part on all the rest. The ceasing of this help is what we call corruption; and in proportion to the perfectness of the help, is the dreadfulness of the loss. The more intense the life has been, the more terrible is its corruption.

Modern Painters, vol. V, part VIII, chapter 1, paragraph 4 (1860)

Japan as faux log*world

2006-09-13T10:18:00.000-04:00

final images

2006-08-10T17:42:00.000-04:00

Raphael-re-Mix

2006-07-29T10:12:00.000-04:00

Our design in completed... a blog is drafted... we start painting on monday... my weekend does not exist ... less prepping the glass panels....

(click to enlarge)