Collaborative Installation Projects and Residencies with Adria Arch

1. LESLEY UNIVERSITY STUDENT LOUNGE – MARCH, 2011
In March of 2011, I had the opportunity to explore this idea. Professor Robert Shreefter of Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, invited me to work with his class of art education graduate students to create a mural on a huge curving wall in the student lounge.

Eliciting the Unselfconscious Mark
At the first class meeting, I briefly introduced myself to the students as a visual artist who would be working on a project with them during the semester. Without further explanation, I handed each student a small paper lunch bag fitted with a piece of paper cut to fit inside the bag, and a pencil. I instructed the students to doodle inside the bag as they listened to a short story I read aloud. Drawing inside the bag would prevent them from seeing their work, and free them from self consciousness. I picked a five minute reading from Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ book, Women Who Run With the Wolves. It is a New Mexican myth of an old woman who spends her nights searching for and collecting the bones of animals, especially wolves. As she sings over the bones of the wolf, they reassemble into a skeleton which comes back to life. The wolf runs back into the desert, turns into a woman and disappears into the horizon.
From the resulting “blind” drawings I collected from the students, I chose a few that appealed to me. These drawings were enlarged at a few different sizes, and photocopied onto transparencies. Using an overhead projector, the drawings can be projected onto the painting

Painting the Mural
The background shapes are derived from actual paint spills, imagery that I have been using in my paintings and that I find quite interesting. A group of Lesley University staff and faculty chose their favorite design from several that I created. I placed a grid on the wall with a snap line in order to copy the design as closely as possible on the wall. The students helped to paint the background of drips onto the wall, and then set to work on the meditative task of painting in the looping black lines of the doodle fragments. I required the students to meticulously paint every small bump and dip in the enlargement in order to capture each line’s eccentricities.

A final element is the textural layer created with silkscreen stencils. An image is burned into the photosensitive emulsion coating the screen, then the image is printed directly on the walls to add more interest. The entire project took approximately five painting sessions of about 2 hours each.

2. DANFORTH MUSEUM OF ART, FRAMINGHAM, MA. JULY, 2011
The Danforth Museum of Art, dedicated to featuring the work of Boston area artists, approached me to collaborate with students in their Teen Docent Program to create murals in three areas in the building, including two restroom areas (2 bathrooms and a hallway) and the stairway wall leading from the main museum area to the education area.

Who are the Teen Docents?
Teen Docents are high school students interested in learning about art and the art museum experience. They train during the summer to lead interactive tours for children and families. Their training helps them prepare questions, think on their feet in front of an audience, and accept and encourage multiple interpretations of a work of art. Free art classes (from the Danforth's Teen Art Programs) increase their understanding of the processes and materials involved in the creation of art. At the same time, Teen Docents get a behind-the-scenes perspective on how the museum functions by meeting staff members and notable guest speakers from the art world.

Getting Ready to Paint
The first all-group meeting was our ice-breaker day, so I knew that it was important to establish the right tone. Just as in the Lesley piece, I needed some unselfconscious marks for the wall paintings. I handed out paper lunch bags and pencils to these students and played several selections of popular music while they drew without looking on paper inside the bags. Following that, I led the students through contour line exercises, emphasizing the importance of drawing what you see, not what you think you see, to encourage more effective  looking.

I chose several drawing fragments to enlarge and project on the walls. These fragments were photocopied on transparencies at a few different enlargements. The transparencies, the pre-chosen color scheme, and the set of 4 silkscreen stencils, were our variables. Although I had picked colors to work well with the pre-existing trim paint and black and white floors, I was not exactly sure which colors we would end up using in each space. The paintings evolved as we worked on the spaces. I asked for input from the students occasionally, and was always happily surprised by their interesting suggestions, many of which I used. My challenge as an artist/teacher was to keep all the students busy and focused. Sometimes this required me to make on-the-spot design decisions. I also challenged the students to do their very best and most careful painting.

Each of the three areas was completed in about 5 days of 2.5 hours. Latex house paints were our main medium, with acrylic paints used in smaller amounts for the more precise marks and for the screen printed textural overlays.