Exhibitionists, Echelman’s Nets, MRAC Deadlines, Mirman Baheer, NAME Poems and Personal Sloganism

Posted on 02 May 2012

“I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.”~ Joan Miro

Some Sculpture Park Scoop: Nam is finishing up his sculpture before he heads to another residency on Sunday, Carissa and Liz are building a sculpture with some students (more on this in the next blog post), Jesse is adding to his frame, Josh has been drilling and assembling, Sophie is busy wrapping and bending steel, I gave a presentation to the National Association of Museum Exhibition on Tuesday about Franconia Sculpture Park and we built the strongest poetry sculpture ever, Alex has a ship!!! to shape up, Ryan is almost ready to put the prisms outdoors, my poetry studio sculpture has a front bench, GLOWaBOUT is going to be at MCAD near the MIA this year and SO so SO so much more!!!!

Janet Echelman’s Nets- When you look at Janet Echelman’s sculpture installations lit up at night they seem to float and some look similar to photographs of astronomical wonders or geometric renditions of the northern lights. They’re made of nets. I think this is very humorous because the catch the light and look incredible light and floaty. They remind me nothing of fish or the sea. What do you think of Echelman’s work?

Metropolitan Regional Arts Council Deadlines- Click this link to find all the MRAC deadlines for all sorts of programs from Arts Activities to Management Training http://www.mrac.org/grants/pdf/FY13GrantDeadlines.pdf

Museum Exhibits- is Franconia a Museum and does it have Exhibits? I gave a presentation about Franconia to the National Association of Museum Exhibitions (NAME) this week where I talked about the way in which our sculptures are exhibited. A museum is defined as a building or institution where objects of artistic, historical, or scientific importance and value are kept, studied, and put on display. Franconia differs from typical museum in several ways but also shares some similarities. The sculpture park is not a building housing objects of artistic significant. It doesn’t amass a gigantic collection of all the sculpture ever shown there… imagine the size of the collection area if that were the case! If the 615 emerging and established; regional, national and international artists that the park has hosted in the last 15 years kept their sculptures at the park permanently, we’d need MANY more acres of land. Instead the sculptures rotate yearly and the sculptures that come out of the park are returned to the sculptor’s care or placed in a different location. This also gives new sculptors the chance to build on a large scale every single year. Like a museum, we encourage the community to come and study or see our display of artwork. The sculptures at the park are of varying styles and promote the public education of three-dimensional art much like a museum. An exhibit is something, especially a work of art, in a public place such as a museum or gallery. Franconia’s art exhibits are unique because they include not just the physical sculpture but the sculpture’s creation. The artists build their sculptures on site before they are installed into the park. On any given day a visitor will see sculptures in all stages of development.

Afghan Poets Risking Death- This New York Times article describes at length the drive and perils associated with women writing personal poetry in Afghanistan. After reading it… I’d love to be able to bring my Poetry Studio Sculpture and leave it cloaked in invisibility for Mirman Baheer, Afghanistan’s largest women’s literary society. I’ve imagined all sort of poets writing from atop my new sculpture not even considering that to do so they might be killed?! The author Eliza Griswold writes after meeting up secretly with a young female poet, “I wanted to give her something, but I feared that a book of my own poems might endanger her. If her brothers found it, how would she explain where this American’s poems had come from? Having nothing else, I tugged a scarf from my neck. She reached into her purse and handed me a rhinestone butterfly comb. Then she tugged the burqa’s soft grille back over her face, took her chaperon by the hand and disappeared into the crowd.” How can you give a gift (like a poetry studio sculpture) to an individual forbidden from expressing herself? And how do you accept a gift from someone like this brave young poet who has risked her life to share her poetry-?

-aRe Verse. The first poem is Raina Wirta’s, the second is a poem is mine. Then, the following poems are some of the many wonderful poems created at the NAME conference during my poetry sculpture activity! And, I hear whispers that Jesse Blumenthal might have some free verse to share with you soon.

Personal Branding- I attended a session about personal branding before giving the presentation I noted above. I thought that it might give me some insight in how I present myself and my sculpture. The presenter had us go through and figure out what our top three “unique selling points” were and then come up with a sort of pseudo slogan for ourselves. It was strange to see the enthusiasm people were putting in as they shared their “unique selling points” with the rest of the room. It was almost as if everyone couldn’t wait to let their neighbor know how they had just sloganized themselves. Most of the people in the room were museum professionals looking for ways to move up the ladder… in which case personal branding might help out I admit. Our instructor told us that we had to be consistent with this message and that every last detail of our lives should match this personal brand- our car, our clothes, our demeanor, etc. He told us his own personal brand several times along with “make sure you give me a great review when you fill out the survey for this session.” After the hour concluded, I folded the blank survey into a square without filling it out, put it in my bag and left very content in knowing that I would not be branding myself into a slogan anytime soon. I am very happy as myself and I’ll stick with my own name.

Thanks for reading. I really enjoy writing this blog. Come to the 3D symposium @ Casket this Thursday night from 7-10pm. This weekend I hope to get some cable up for my roof, fill in the other side of my stairway and work on the upper levels floor. Stop by and say hello if you make it up for a visit. Do you think I might get three days of sun? Oh this rainy spring weather….