Fin~

Thanks to everyone for making Portable Works a great experience!! I look forward to hearing form students in the class as to how art and life are progressing beyond our summer course...keep in touch!!

Final Show

Here's some images from our final show. We had a great turn out and all of the final works looked really good in the Mattress Factory lobby. Many student's parents came and a good number of gallery goers too. Audrey Sygar's "Welcome" mural got lots of attention as did Lexi Ribar's dessert back drop and camera. Visitors looked high and low for Cash Dhanda's "Invisible Notes", and Maya Randolph's invisible theater held unlikely audiences. Ben Rutkowski's tin can telephones communicated (or didn't) the shortcomings of contemporary telecommunications and Matt Rutkowski's small diorama of a man in a burning room mourned the impacts apathy can have on an individual.

In the Classroom

I have to say, ( Ally Reeves speaking in first person here) that this class has been a fantastic experience for me. Getting to know each of the students has been rewarding and I feel like it was a gift of sorts to have people share their thoughts on themselves and the world. Maybe most memorable for me were points when people stayed after class and we talked politics, art and life goals. Also memorable were moments where I worried students weren't focusing and wouldn't have time to complete their projects - but then they took off and made something amazing and unexpected, like a balloon on a super long string that illustrated the air currents in the courtyard near our classroom. Thanks everyone. You were wonderful!

Sandwich Boards

Following our review of sign and text related art being placed in the larger world by artists, I whipped up six sandwich boards for us to showcase some messages of our own! We tried to consider how our messages would affect an audience and we put forward statements that said something about where we are in life right now. We wanted to spread ideas that we feel are currently lacking or absent in conversation and public places.

In the Works

Here's a few shots from our in class work. Following our review of a few mail art projects other artists had done, we decided to make some mailable art of our own! We made works in response to two open calls for mail art- one in the Netherlands and one in Italy. We'll be mailing these works aways as soon as our show at the Mattress Factory comes down.

Gigapans and the Larger World

We took a walk around the N.side of Pittsburgh and used one of the new Gigapan cameras to catch a shot of some kids playing basketball. Part of our class mission is to consider the impact place can have on our work. We had a discussion of how to frame his photo, and following its post we discussed this image's strong points.
View the whole image and explore its details!