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FEATURE
MAKING A // LESLIE KINSMAN CONNECTION
Mixed-media artists reach out to viewers by transforming ordinary objects and spaces into extraordinary art, making visual experiences more accessible
Ephemeral art. Brooklyn-based installation artist Miya Ando works on a project in which she painted flowers onto snow. The outdoor exhibit only lasted a few hours, but the fleeting nature of the work was its core message. Ando says.
Photo contributed by Thomas Kruesselman
As the sun slowly begins to set on a cold February evening in Berlin, Miya Ando straddles a patch of snow in front of the Reichstag
building. With luminous paint, she fills in an outline of numerous tiny cherry blossoms spread on top of the snow-covered lawn. The blossoms go unnoticed in the daylight and are only visible later on for just a few moments in the dark until disappearing into the night. What she's working on will never hang in a gallery and never go on sale. It won't be featured in a glossy book, or even be seen by more than a few people. It won't even last more than 24 hours. But still, Ando says, it's a work of art.
"I don't think it would be possible to create this feeling with a painting," Ando says. "The ephemerality of the melting snow and the people walking over the piece was something that was very important to the piece, as was the fleeting nature of the viewing time frame of the work."
Mixed-media and installation art has never been more interactive and accessible because of the freedoms allotted to the modern artist. Spaces are being filled at an alarming pace, never being imagined to be occupied with an artistic intention. Artists are doing whatever it takes to fulfill their personal, artistic aesthetic while still, and more importantly, maintaining a connection with the viewer.
Maria Velasco, associate professor of installation art within the School of Arts, says mixed-media and installation art emerged in the 1960s, when artists rebelled against the authority of museums by finding other venues to display and express their work.
At the same time this offered a more direct and refreshing way to connect with their audiences. "They would question the power of the art establishments and museum curators. Because of this, the artist's work was considered much more action-based and ephemeral." Velasco says. "This generated a lot of energy that's been since ongoing, but has ended up being a little more polished these days. If you call an artist mixed-media, you want to see that in his or her work is inter-disciplinary and offers an alternative viewpoint to what art is and can be."
Nathan Hoffman, Oregon, Illinois, graduate student, is experiencing first-hand the potential effect and ever-evolving possibilities that mixed-
media art, including today's technology, can offer.
For example, whereas images used to consistently be just static, now artists such as Hoffman utilize video. "It's a more photogenic process," he says. "I don't think technology or multi-media has hurt the art world but only transformed it more."
Storeck's artistic livelihood is dynamic and hyper-evolving thanks to the technological advances offered to today's artist. Installation art is a young discipline and is extremely flexible and powerful way to think and work, he says. It can get the artist thinking spatially and architecturally about the viewer's experience with the work.
"There becomes a time-based, programmatic unfolding of the experience for the viewer as they move through the space and discover their way through its intentions," Stork says.
Aaron Storck, local installation artist, says the artists of the 1960s and '70s paved the way for modernizing installation art and helped mold artists like himself. "I feel grateful to pioneering, twentieth century artists who made some of the first happenings, installations, performance pieces etc." Storck says. "They really opened up a lot of new territory for artists to explore."
When developing his work, Storck says he deals with interlocking mediums. Within one piece of installation Storck has staged performances, which are photographed and videotaped, which then become the basis for more work. "I take the photographs and arrange them in the computer." Storck says. "I print them out and collage them to canvas and proceed to paint on them to make a new kind of hybrid painting. I write poems and speeches which become printed narratives for my
Storek grew up in New York City. After graduating from the Bronx High School of Science, Storek came to Lawrence to attend the University to escape the East Coast pace. He completed a BFA in printmaking from the school of art in 2001. He returned to New York after graduating, but returned to Lawrence in 2006 for the easy living and inexpensive space so he could develop some art projects. Since his return to Lawrence, he has worked intensely with his collection and even helped find a local Lawrence alliance of artists called the Fresh Produce Art Collective.