Art Club is off to New York City tomorrow!

About twenty members of the Columbia College Art Club are headed to New York City tomorrow morning. Ben Cameron will be the faculty sponsor for the trip. It will be an exciting week, allowing students ample time to overdose on art! Since the mid-20th century New York has been considered the "center" of the contemporary art world. New York City is home to top-notch museums in art, architecture, photography, and hundreds of galleries. Students will have an opportunity to visit the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim Museum (above left), Museum of Modern Art... on and on and on. We are confident that the students will return charged up, inspired and ready to produce great art! Thanks to Professor Cameron for leading this trip!

Guests in the Department

This Friday the Art Department will host a group of prospective students and their parents. These students will visit classes, have a tour, listen to a gallery talk, and watch current art students perform a play entitled, "Matisse learns scrap-booking" (just kidding about the play part of the visit). Anyone is welcome to attend the gallery talk presented by Richard Baumann, Naomi Sugino Lear and Ben Cameron. It should start around 2:30.

Also, next week we will be interviewing Bo Bedilion, our first candidate for the position of ceramics professor. A slide lecture will be held on Tuesday morning at 10:00 and a teaching demonstration will take place in the ceramics studio at 12:30. You are welcome to attend either event.

Waste Land

Barbara and I saw this wonderful film at the True/False Film Festival last week in Columbia. I've attempted to purchase the film to make it available to show students, but it doesn't have a distributor yet. I've been noticing more and more that artists are including social responsibility as part of their artwork. Fantastic!

Director: Lucy Walker

Country: UK

Synopsis: Brazilian artist Vik Muniz creates photographic images of people using found materials from the places where they live and work. His "Sugar Children" series portrays the images of deprived children of Caribbean plantation workers using the sugar from their surroundings. When acclaimed filmmaker Lucy Walker trains her camera on Muniz, he is cultivating a new idea for a project. He knows the material he wants to use—garbage—but who will be the subject of the new series of works? Waste Land is a wonderfully resonant documentary that chronicles Muniz's journey to Jardim Gramacho, the world’s largest landfill, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. He collaborates with an eclectic band of catadores, or self-designated pickers of recyclable materials, and photographs these inspiring characters as they recycle their lives and society’s garbage. Walker gains fantastic access to the entire process and, in doing so, offers stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the dignity that can be found in personal determination. [Synopsis courtesy of Sundance Film Festival] --Website--

Work to revise Columbia’s cultural plan is underway

(COLUMBIA, MO) – Citizens are invited to provide input to the city’s Commission on Cultural Affairs as a revision of Columbia’s cultural plan, called “Creative Columbia,” gets underway.

First adopted in 1993, shortly after the Office of Cultural Affairs (OCA) was established within city government, Creative Columbia has been revised over the years in an attempt to stay current with the art and cultural needs of the community, local arts organizations and artists.

The last update of Creative Columbia took place in 2005 and re-established four goal areas: Arts Education, Arts Business, Arts Visibility and Arts Policy. The current plan can be found at www.GoColumbiaMo.com/Arts or by contacting the OCA.

A brief survey for citizens to complete is currently posted on the OCA’s Web page, www.GoColumbiaMo.com/Arts (select the “Public Input Opportunity” link near the top of the page). It will be available there through April. A hard copy of the survey form can be obtained from the OCA.

Input collected from the survey will be reviewed by the citizen members of the Commission on Cultural Affairs as they work to generate the next update of the plan. It is the goal of the Commission and the OCA to present a revised cultural plan to City Council for its review later this year. If adopted, the plan will be in place for approximately five more years.

That Columbia has a cultural plan is proof of the vitality of the local arts industry. Few other communities in Missouri have an established plan for ensuring that diverse art and cultural opportunities are available to citizens and visitors. The city’s longtime efforts in this arena are one reason Columbia was named Missouri’s first-ever Creative Community by the Missouri Arts Council in 2007.

March 5, 2010
CONTACT: Marie Nau Hunter
Cultural Affairs Manager
(573) 874-7512

The city’s cultural planning efforts are supported with financial assistance from the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency.

A request from Nancy Brown, printmaker

I received this note from Nancy Brown yesterday. She has a couple of great prints in the current Paper in Particular exhibit. This would be a great opportunity to take part in the making of a monumental work of art. Let me know if you want to participate.

Hey Mike, I just finished my epic woodblock and am ready to print it. Of course there are no presses nearby that can handle blocks this size so I'm resorting to spoonprinting again! Do you think there are any printmaking students that are willing to help print this sucker? It's 20 feet long but will be printed in three sections. Two 8 x 4 s and one 4 x 4 block. I'd like to make two copies if I can get the paper shipped here in time, otherwise i'll just have to be satisfied with one copy. I have several experienced students and friends that are willing to help out, but the more the merrier! Plus, it might be an interesting experience for your students.
thanks a ton, nancy

Wow, a kitchen stool!

We all know them--the art students who are at every event, spend hours and hours in the studio and in essence turn themselves over to the idea of being "artists". This is of course in contrast to the students who do only the bare minimum to get through the program. They appear to hate art and making art, but major in it anyway. I want to come up with a system of rewarding those who care.

The idea of giving out Top Value Stamps whenever you bought something at a store comes to mind. Back in the olden days we would stick these stamps in little books and when they were full we would redeem them for great items. I recall one time getting a kitchen stool. Wow, a kitchen stool! Seems that we could give students credit for actively pursuing their drive to become "artists". Maybe we could give students "brownie points" and once they have accumulated a bunch they can trade them in for books, art supplies, a case of Ramen...whatever. What do you think?

I don't "blog"

Hello, this is Mike Sleadd, chair of the Columbia College Art Department in Columbia, Missouri. I thought this would be a good way to get info out to the Columbia College Art Department students, friends and community. I'll try to keep you posted on a variety of topics, including exhibits in the Larson Gallery, opportunities for students and faculty, visiting artists, student and faculty exhibits and news, etc. Please keep me up-to-date on what is happening with your art and I will try to include it. See ya, Mike

Currently in the Sidney Larson Gallery
The 31st annual Paper in Particular Exhibition, a juried national show featuring works made from paper, or created on paper through March 5. Gallery hours are 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. weekdays and noon to 5 p.m. on the weekends.


Faculty Exhibits
Photographs by Ed Collings, Professor of Art at Columbia College and Bob Elliott, Assistant Professor of Art at William Woods University are currently on display in the Orr Street Studios Gallery. The exhibit is open to the public and will run through March. A reception will be announced. (Above photograph by Ed Collings)