We’ve been busy in Star Studio during Andy Warhol Enterprises…then again, it might be more accurate to say that our visitors have been busy. Star Studio is a space designed to encourage visitors of all ages  to participate in hands-on exploration of works of art on display at the IMA.  Star Studio projects encourage visitors to think about art by making art of their own, by creating in dialogue with the work on display.  Andy Warhol Enterprises has definitely sparked quite a few of those creative conversations in Star Studio.  We’ve divided the activities in Star between making art and writing about the intersection between art and commerce.

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Filed under: Art, Current Events, Education, Local

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

I received an email the other day from a good friend with whom I attended the Cleveland Institute of Art in the mid 1990’s. He had been back to Cleveland for a visit, and had met up with another CIA painting alum to walk the galleries at the Cleveland Museum of Art. He wrote about revisiting paintings that had been important to him during school, like Rubens’ Portrait of Isabella Brant and about other paintings that stood out now, at this different moment in his life, including an Inness landscape. I haven’t been back to Cleveland since 1999, and I’m curious about which paintings might stop me now, and how different the list might be for me today than it would have been 10 years ago. To tell the truth, it isn’t necessary to travel to a museum that I haven’t been to for many years to have a similar experience. I’ve been working at the IMA for a little over five years, and I am amazed by how often a work of art that I haven’t paid much attention to suddenly asserts itself.

Isabel Bishop’s Tidying Up

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Filed under: Art, Exhibitions, Musings

The current Star Studio exhibition, More than Four Legs: A Closer Look at Chairs asks visitors to think carefully about and look closely at chairs. Of course, since this is a Star Studio exhibition, visitors are also encouraged to translate these thoughts and observations into practice by creating a model chair to display or take home.  I thought it might be fun to share images of a few of the chairs that visitors have left in Star Studio.

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Filed under: Art, Design, Education

No knack. I don’t get it. I work in a wonderful world of creativity surrounded by artists and generally brilliant people, and I have the ultimate creative block. I can’t put a brush to canvas to save my life. Now mind you, I have canvases at home. I even had an easel till I sold it to my more creative neighbor Trevor in my garage sale a few weeks ago. And don’t get me started on my blogging ability. I just don’t think I’m a good blogger. I believe Despi and the cool kids asked me to blog thinking I could spread some of my everyday humor into this thing, but I’m just not funny in a blog. My wit and quirkiness is lost on paper. Go ahead, quit reading now – you’re just wasting your time. I’ve had suggestions of just being around scribes who can record my funniness in type, or maybe I’d be the first blogger to turn in a blog on video or podcast. After all – the Nugget Factory gave me a Flip Camera for On Procession, and those videos turned out pretty stinkin’ hilarious, If-I-do-say-so-myself.

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Filed under: Art, Musings