Exhibition Class Update

The class talked about the opening that occured the night before and its success.  One of the interesting things brought up in class was about the diversity and variety of people that attended the show. There were many different people from different aspects of Susan’s life. The overwhelming feeling of the show was that the attendees were all very impressed and responded well to her work.

Some things that the class noticed about the opening was that there were some amazing and unpredictable moments. For example, the musicians were hired to play for an hour and they ended up playing the full two hours and even past the official end time of the opening. Susan’s friend Paula sang a few songs for the opening including “Brown Baby”. Paula is a spiritual singer and had the exhibitions class participate in her rendition of “Brown Baby” by adding in vocals on “Black Lives Matter”.

Ms. McRath introduced some of the students to some visitors from a fellowship that took people from different professions all over the world to come to different universities. There was a woman from Croatia and a man from Niger. The man from Niger talked about his experience in his education field and traveling to Boston to talk at Bunker Hill Community College. He talked a little about the program and how there were many universities across the U.S. that participated in hosting people in the fellowship.

Aside from Susan’s friends and family, there was a variety of MassArt educators who came to the opening. Ken Strickland, the vice president at MassArt came to the opening. Faculty from the 3D, ceramics and Art Education department all came to see the show.

The next portion of class was dedicated to talking about the public programming activities that will occur the following week. The exhibitions class will be hosting two schools to participate in a gallery activity related to the exhibit on Susan Thompson. The first school is Paige Academy where Brother Joe Cook will be bringing 16 of the students between the ages of 6 and 10. The Mission Hill Elementary School will also be brining 18 students ages 11 and 12.

http://paigeacademy.org/node/9

The class brainstormed about public programming that branched off from Brian’s original idea. The original idea being making a family crest or a family flag using colors and symbols and family history.

Some of the other ideas:

• rust was brought up because of Susan’s rust paitnings, but we worried about using iron and the risk with children
• we talked about cyanotype and pictures to be taken of the students
• photo transfers and citrisol so that they could bedazzle their own portraits like in precious memories

Then the class talked some trouble shooting about that photo transfers don’t always have a secure and stable success rate and with the younger students, it might not work. The fabric or card stock printing might be too time consuming for the class to take and print portraits and also get the rest of the project done. Symbols were considered being too commercial when working with younger children. It might run the risk of students copying examples or if there were pre-made shapes, that the symbols are too literal or it could be taken somewhere else. Meanings of symbols to children are different than with adults.

The class decided to continue with the flag, or quilting or crest idea. There will be two activities as the two classes will be separated into two groups. One of the activities will be in the gallery. Susan will talk about her work in the gallery and the students will have a chance to walk through and explore the exhibit. The gallery activity will include somewhat of a scavenger hunt. The idea is to engage the students in looking for symbols, similarities, themes, common images and to look closely at Susan’s work. A discussion will then be led about the findings from the students.

The classroom activity will be to make the flags. Katie and Bobby will work on creating examples of the work for next week. Leane and Bryan worked on the ideas for the projects and looked through books about African symbols. Marissa and Henry worked on the activity for the gallery. Rachel O. and Rachel H. are in charge of getting the material for the classroom activity.