Josh Neufeld in Oberlin

Oberlin alum Josh Neufeld (‘89) will be in Oberlin this weekend to discuss his recently published book;  A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge . His book was reviewed in the New York Times, you can see a related post about it here.   The book grew out of his experiences while volunteering for the Red Cross after Hurricane Katrina.  He will give a talk about the book as well as his career and previous projects as an alternative cartoonist.  His talk will be followed by a discussion between Josh Neufeld and Kwame Webster, a current senior at Oberlin who is a character in the book.   Their discussion will be moderated by Caroline Jackson Smith, Associate Professor of Theater and Dance and also African American Studies.   This event will be in Hallock Auditorium (in the Environmental Studies building) at 3pm this Saturday, Nov. 7th.

Susan Kane in Libya

Susan Kane, Professor of Classical Archaeology at Oberlin,  has been invited to attend meetings in Tripoli the week of October 25th to advise the Libyan government about substantial investments that are being  proposed for the five UNESCO World Heritage sites in Libya.  Susan Kane has worked on many archaeological excavations in Libya including the  “Terracotta Army”; found during excavation of Greek and Roman ruins of Shahhat in Libya.

All You Can Eat Cleveland

“All You Can Eat: A Buffet of Architectural Ideas for Cleveland” is an exhibition at the Cleveland Sculpture Center which will be accompanied by a panel discussion by Cleveland-area architects, designers and researchers.   “All You Can Eat” will focus on new ideas for the use of vacant lots in the Cleveland Area.  The show’s organizers hope that the exhibition and surrounding events will generate interest and motivation towards not just building, but creating a forum for how to better use these spaces.

The show opens this Friday the 30th from 5-10 with an actual buffet of delicious food and music.   There will also be a  second event on Saturday from noon to 5pm with a panel discussion starting at 3.  The panel discussion includes Oberlin’s own Luce Visiting Professor of Emerging Media Julia Christiansen.   The panel moderator is the designer, critic and “All You Can Eat” organizer Michael Abrahamson.  You can find out more about the exhibition here.

New resource for Oberlin goings-on

Heads up, Obies:  a former Oberlin student who is now living in Oberlin has started up a new website to help college students and Oberlin residents know what is going on all the time, all over campus and all over town.  On the site you can view and submit to an events calendar, find out the weather, check out discounts and deals from Oberlin businesses and also view a user-submitted picture of the day.  Tom Geller, the site’s inventor and manager wants to have a single resource that will better inform Oberlin’s full- and part-time residents of what’s happenin’ ’round these parts.

www.inoberlin.com

Eccentric Visions: the Worlds of Luo Ping (1733-1799)

“Eccentric Visions” just opened at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and was team-curated by Oberlin Visiting Professor of East Asian Art Michele Matteini along with Kim Karlsson and Alfreda Murck.  The show focuses on two Qing Dynasty painters, Luo Ping and his mentor Jin Nong.  Luo Ping is an important and remarkable painter of this time period  because of his original portraits, ‘ghost’ paintings made for his mentor as well as his paintings of the fantastical beings he claimed to see everyday.  Although Luo and Jin’s work are very different from each other, Luo was respected for his skill as a copyist as well as for his own unique work.   Many of the works included in the show are on loan from the Palace Museum in Beijing and the Shanghai Art Museum and have never been shown in the US before.  The show was given an extremely positive review by the New York Times; you can read the article here.

The show will be open until January 10th.  You can look at the Met’s site directly here.

Paper in Motion

The Morgan Conservatory and Art of Papermaking is having an opening reception for their new show “Paper in Motion”.  The show, which opens October 10th, includes the work of Oberlin Director of Cinema Studies Rian Brown-Orso as well as Nancy Baker Cahill of Los Angeles and Nina Sarnelle of Cleveland and Pittsburgh. The three artists collectively explore notions of “destruction and creation” and “violence and healing”.  The artists work in varied mediums, including collage, video, painting and installation.   Rian Brown-Orso’s new work, Circular Motion which draws inspiration from Eduard Muybridge’s studies of the human body as well as prehistoric cave paintings.  Her work uses spinning discs, paintings, back-lit illuminated collages and video projection to translate the language of cinema and motion.     The reception is Friday, October 16th from 6-9pm at Morgan Conservatory 1754 E. 47th Street, Cleveland.  The show runs from Oct. 10th to  Nov. 28th.   www.morganconservatory.org

2010 AICUO Award for Excellence in the Visual Arts

Heads up all sculptors and artists interested in designing an award for AICUO’s (Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Ohio) yearly honor. What they’re looking for, from the horse’s mouth:

1) The AICUO Award: Given to the Grand Award winner only. It should be the largest award.
2)The finalists’ award: Given to the five finalists. This should be smaller. It should be a variation of the AICUO Award.
3) The People’s Choice Award: Should be different from the other two designs, but a cohesive piece to the awards as a whole.
How it works: You design three awards, submit sketches/drawings, and if your design is chosen we will have it created by a local artist. Your signature will be on the awards as well as us highlighting that it is your design during the awards reception.
Who can enter: Any student! Not just Seniors!
All entries must be submitted by January 12, 2010 and can be sent via email to cmartin@aicuo.edu with the subject “AICUO Design Competition” or via mail to:

Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Ohio

C/O Afton Gladman, Art Awards Coordinator

41 S. High St., Suite 2720

Columbus, OH 43215

Please call 614-228-2196 for additional information.

Two Lectures by Professor Pamela Smith

This coming week, the Oberlin Art History Department will host Pamela Smith, Professor of History at Columbia University.  The lectures are funded by the Baldwin Fund and organized by Christina Neilson.

Monday, September 21 at 2:30 pm in Classroom I of the Art Building Smith will deliver a lecture “Casting from Life: Art and Nature in Early Modern Europe.”  This lecture is an open session of Neilson’s Baroque class.

Tuesday, September 22 at 5:00 pm in Classroom I of the Art Building Smith will give a lecture titled “Butter and Gold, Lizards and Vermilion: Art and Science in Early Modern Europe”.

Butter, gold, vermilion, and lizards were all materials employed by sixteenth-century European metalworkers.  What understanding of matter and the transformation of materials stood behind the use of these substances?  This lecture describes a “vernacular science” of matter and nature that informed metalworking practices, and considers the origin and transmission of these ideas and techniques.

Pamela Smith is a specialist in early modern science and her most recent publication is a book she co-edited with Benjamin Schmidt called Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe: Practices, Objects, and Texts, 1400 – 1800, in 2008.

Obie Sighting: Corin Hewitt ‘93

above: 85 Union Street, mixed-media installation, 2004

Oberlin Alumnus Corin Hewitt is having a show at Seattle Art Museum’s downtown SAM space.  Corin Hewitt is the featured Next artist, a program designed to expose the public to up-and-coming artists who are still under-represented.    Hewitt works in photography, sculpture and performance and recently had a show at the Whitney where he performed and installed a piece called Seed Stage.    During this performance Hewitt used a variety of materials which he processed in a variety of ways, from casting to canning to eating or sculpting.    The SAM exhibition features a collection of photographs taken from a performance piece exhibited at a gallery in Portland, Oregon.    The Portland performance piece included still-lifes of organic and inorganic objects which the artist photographed as they decayed and changed.   The body of work, called Weavings: Performance #2 (Portland, Oregon) will be on display at SAM until October 18th.   Corin Hewitt is represented by Taxter and Spengemann Gallery in New York.

The Plum Academy at SPACES Gallery

Oberlin Professor Julia Christensen is co-curating an experimental show at SPACES Gallery in Cleveland.  The show takes the form of The Plum Academy:  An Institute for Situated Practices.    The Academy is up from September 11 through October 23 and includes three departments; the Department of Psycho-Cartography, the Department of Cultural Husbandry and the Department of Chance.    Below is the write-up about the show, but you can find out more at the SPACES website.

Throw away the canvas. Let the brushes dry out. Grab a #2 pencil (but you may not need it). This fall, SPACES will be host to The Plum Academy: An Institute for Situated Practices, an experimental school. Rather than house a traditional exhibition of objects, SPACES is choosing to organize a school-as-exhibition. Concepts and ideas will take the forefront, rather than materials, styles and conventional aesthetics. Specially selected facilitators from the regional community and beyond will lead forums that approach topics obliquely, find unique entry points to ideas and challenge the established structures of education. (To assist in taking a different look at education, we use the terms “forum” and “facilitator” rather than “class” and “teacher”, respectively.)

Forum subjects will be unexpected. The student-teacher relationship will be questioned and the school itself will function as a large, collaborative performance.

This is not an “art school” per se. We are not offering art classes. We do offer a variety of forums that tackle contemporary thought on a number of topics and disciplines—that challenge traditional educational systems, are out-of-the-ordinary, outrageous, educational and entertaining. Forums will be solo presentations, workshops, open discussions, field trips, etc.