Ray Pawulich

The following post was written by Ray Pawulich. Ray currently lives in Indianapolis. He went to film school for a couple years, so he thinks he knows what he’s talking about. Here’s part one of his series on Summer Nights here at the IMA.

Growing up in a relatively insulated Indianapolis suburb, many of the defining experiences of my youth were lived vicariously though film characters who came of age in the 1970s. The fact that early 90s suburban kids like myself were hungry for this kind of entertainment was not lost on the filmmakers of the day; for awhile there, it seemed all you had to do to get your movie on video store shelves was to pack it with drug references and give it a retro soundtrack. And while some of these films have endearing qualities (The Stoned Age remains a personal favorite), none can match the subtlety or artistry of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused.

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Filed under: Current Events, Film, Guest Bloggers

In a few weeks, I begin teaching Museums and Technology (I’m not the only IMA instructor this fall – my colleague, blogger and conservator,  Richard McCoy is also teaching -  Collections Care and Management with Jennifer Mikulay).  Museums and Technology is run through IUPUI Museum Studies and will feature 18 or so, up and coming undergrad and graduate students.  They will one day enter the museum community with their own ideas, theories and philosophies.  I’m actually excited to learn from them.  The class itself is a different story, and for the sake of clarity, here is the official class description:

MSTD A414 / A514: Museums and Technology (3 cr.) This course surveys the growing use of technology in museums. It examines applications for information management in collections, conservation science, and archives. It examines critically the use of technology in the service of education both in exhibit contexts and in the variety of educational programs and web-based dissemination of knowledge.

(I would normally put an image here, but I don’t have a good one.  Instead I’m going to plug our latest video, a trailer for our next major exhibition Sacred Spain: Art & Belief in the Spanish World).

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Filed under: New Media, Technology

Acclaimed film director Julie Dash worked with six area high school students over the course of their participation in the IMA’s Museum Apprentice Program to produce short films featured in the exhibition Smuggling Daydreams into Reality: Yesterday, Today and Forever.

The exhibition opened Saturday and runs through January 18, 2010 in the IMA’s Star Studio. I spent my Tuesday lunch in the exhibition. The students’ video works and the film documenting the process with Dash drew me in. I was also tempted to add my own daydream to an IMA Flickr set shown in the exhibition as a slideshow. But my stomach was growling so I’ll have to go back.

I was delighted to sit down with Julie for a quick chat earlier this year.

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Filed under: Art, Education, Exhibitions, Interviews

From Thursday through Sunday, fantasy creatures of all sorts will be roaming through thousands of imaginations at GenCon 2009. You may have read about the upcoming convention in the news already, but let me expound upon the artistic and creative aspects of this annual game convention.

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Filed under: Current Events, Local, Musings

When I wrote the intro to Geoff’s blog a couple weeks ago I told you I was prostituting myself for plants at the Perennial Plant Symposium. There is some truth to that.

Image from slantmouth.com

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Filed under: Horticulture