Art from Ephemera: May 2008

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Mapping Correspondence Panel Discussion

As an addendum to what I thought would be my final blog posting of the spring semester, note that there will be a panel discussion in connection with the Mail Art show I went to recently and blogged about right here. If you plan to see the show before it closes next month, this would be a great time to go and listen to the discussion as well. Here's a link with more info (scroll down to June 13th).

About the course:

Art from Ephemera (Mail Art and the Internet) was a multi-media studio class where students explored the distribution of images and text through network systems, creating art from ephemera in the form of hand-made mail art, as mass-produced printed material, and in digital format as e-mail art and blogs. Students were introduced to strategies of visual communication traditionally associated with Dada, Fluxus, and Mail Art movements, initially looking at a range of artists from Marcel Duchamp to Henrik Drescher. Our investigation each semester progressed towards more recent approaches to these strategies that utilize digital technology and the Internet, both as a broadcast medium (one to many), as well as a system that enables new forms of emergent content (many to many). In this way, students considered the medium of the Internet from both aesthetic and conceptual perspectives. Students had the opportunity to develop their personal voice through several short individual assignments, paying particular attention to the interface of art and technology, as well as contemporary theory around access, public and social spaces, interaction, audience, and community during class critiques, slide lectures, readings, films, and special presentations.

Download a sample syllabus

About the Instructor:

Rebecca Bird Grigsby origtinally taught this course as a Post-Graduate Teaching Fellowship in the Text & Image Arts area at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA. As an interdisciplinary artist, Grigsby's work encourages transparency and active engagement with the illusion of control and related notions of interiority and domesticity, employing unlikely materials while flipping on its head a child’s typical practice of incorporating the detritus of the adult world in their creations. Other than her own photography and printed imagery, she now works almost exclusively with recycled materials and fragments of her daily experiences as primary caregiver for her two children. She received a MFA degree from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University ('08), and a BA degree in Art Practice and French from the University of California at Berkeley ('02). Other teaching and related educational experiences have included working as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Print & Paper, Painting, and Text & Image Arts areas at SMFA; in the Education Department at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA; with SMFA's pre-college summer studio program; in the Art Practice Department at U.C. Berkeley; and with the ArtsBridge Scholar program in Oakland, CA. Exhibitions include Heaven Gallery, Chicago, IL; Tufts University Art Gallery, Medford, MA; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; SMFA galleries; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; San Francisco's Fort Mason Center; the Berkeley Art Center; and the Worth Ryder Gallery at U.C. Berkeley.

Art from Ephemera

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Mapping Correspondence Panel Discussion

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About the course:

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