Put your art into it

A new exhibit featuring a group of UCLA art students at the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art not only examines the process of
making art, it also gives viewers a chance to throw some art
away.

“Making,” the latest exhibition from LACMALab, the
museum’s research and development unit, presents the work of
student teams from four major L.A. art schools.
“Making” asks the question, “What does it mean to
make art?” The UCLA group has responded in turn with,
“What would it mean to ask someone to give that art
up?”

Running through Sept. 1, 2003 at LACMA’s Boone
Children’s Gallery, the exhibit showcases an installation
created by 10 graduates and undergraduates from UCLA’s School
of the Arts and Architecture and provides the emerging artists with
their first taste of large-scale public exposure.

In addition to UCLA, Art Center College of Design, California
Institute of the Arts, and Otis College of Art and Design were
invited to create participatory projects that would appeal to
audiences of all ages.

Given $10,000 and 1,500 square feet of gallery space, each
school was asked to think about making art in both philosophical
and practical terms. The UCLArts team chose to explore the
relationships that people have with their own creations, and what
throwing those works away might mean to them.

“We’re not talking about discarding trash,
we’re talking about discarding art,” said
interdisciplinary studio graduate student Sharon Hayes. “What
happens, if instead of putting it on a shelf, they relinquish it to
this pile? What happens if they let it go?”

The public is encouraged to ask themselves these questions while
tossing self-created artwork into a 9-foot-tall steel and Plexiglas
octagon. A 48-foot ramp makes its way up and around the container
and provides access to its lidless rim. A few hours after its
unveiling, a colorful layer of construction paper and clay
accumulated on the bottom.

For the project, which LACMALab director and curator Robert Sain
calls “an exhibition by dare,” each school had less
than a year to conceive and produce its installations. The museum
allowed most schools the two- to three-year planning process. Being
that LACMALab had previously only commissioned working artists
““ some internationally recognized ““ the concept of
working with students via their art schools was unprecedented.

“We asked ourselves, what’s in the heads of the next
generation?” Sain said.

In addition, the groups were required to think of themselves as
part of a larger endeavor, presenting their work in tandem with
other schools.

“We didn’t want for this to be like a science fair,
with everybody’s individual little project,” Sain said.
“And that’s what led to the notion of a collective,
collaborative approach.”

The UCLArts team hopes that some of the artwork generated by the
other installations, which include a hands-on potting shed and a
mountain of sculpting clay, will end up in their container. But
“throwing away” art into the giant receptacle might not
seem like the obvious thing to do, especially for children. Project
mentor and UCLA professor Paul McCarthy noted that kids seem to
enjoy running up and down the ramp, making energetic circles around
the container.

“It’s turning into a jungle gym,” he said.

Ideally, the octagon will accumulate a wide variety of objects
over a period of nine months. It would evolve into a larger,
collaborative work reflecting the art and art-making of its own
audience.

“I know someone who’s having something framed, just
to throw it away,” said new genres graduate student Jill S.
Miller.

Although the team half-jokingly speaks of the container making
its permanent home among the bronze forms of UCLA’s Franklin
D. Murphy Sculpture Garden, their goal at the moment seems focused
on the effect their art has on Boone Gallery viewers.

“Who knows? This thing could flop,” said Hayes.
“It could be that those kids never understand how to use it.
But I still think that it asks an interesting question that we have
all felt is really important.”

“Making” is now showing in the Boone
Children’s Gallery through Sept. 1, 2003 at LACMA West,
located at Wilshire and Fairfax Aves. Admission is free.

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