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"Musician. Humanitarian. National Threat."

OBIE SIGHTING: John Scheinfeld, OC '75, will be back in town on Thursday to be a special guest at the screening of "The U.S. vs. John Lennon."
What makes John such a special guest? He is the co-producer, co-writer, and co-director (with David Leaf) of this film which explores how John Lennon moved from being music sensation to antiwar activist, using extensive archival footage. Be sure to come by Hallock Auditorium (in the AJLC) Thursday night at 7:30 PM to check out this 2006 documentary with its maker.
This screening and meeting with the filmmaker is sponsored by the Cinema Studies Dept, Office of the President, and Alumni Office.

film website: http://www.theusversusjohnlennon.com/

AMAM Acquires Important Painting by François Boucher

On February 12th the Allen Memorial Art Museum debuted its latest acquisition in the East Gallery. After much research done by Andria Derstine, the Museum’s Curator of European Art, and Stephanie Wiles, the Museum’s Director, the Allen purchased Allegory of the Education of Louis XV by François Boucher. Completed in 1756, this work is painted using only shades of black, white, and grey—called a grisaille. Though Boucher frequently used grisailles as compositional studies for larger color works, he created this piece as a study for a number of engravings revolving around the life of King Louis XV. This purchase was made possible by the R.T. Miller, Jr. Fund, the Museum Friends of Art Fund, and the Ripin Art Purchase Fund. It currently remains on display on the South wall in the East Gallery above the fireplace.

On April 8th at 2:30 pm please join Andria Derstine who will be giving a lecture on this magnificent new acquisition as part of the museum's Tuesday Tea series.

Visiting Artist: Carroll Dunham

Carroll Dunham, a painter whose work revolves around human sexuality, will be speaking about his work on Tuesday February 26 at 5:00 pm in Classroom I of the Art Building. His work can be quite explicit in its imagery. Stylistically his non-realistic images extrapolate the direct essence of intimate human interactions that have come to focus very explicitly on genitalia. The work is very direct and expressionist in its manner of execution and the drawing style reflected seems to be intentionally cartoon-like. His work appears to relate more to the world of underground comic books than to the work of the Abstract Expressionist Willem DeKooning. There is a childlike freshness to the work that contradicts the mature content His paintings tend to be very large and they are both visually and conceptually challenging.

This lecture is sponsored by the Ellen Johnson Fund and accompanies a show of Dunham’s prints that runs in the Allen Memorial Art Museum from February 5 to March 23.

Need money for your exhibition?

Funding is available to students on a competitive basis through The PoGo Family Foundation for student-curated exhibitions of 2-D or 3-D art. The grants are intended to cover the costs of materials to mount the exhibit, documentation and related marketing materials for a gallery and/or Internet-based exhibit. The exhibition requires faculty sponsorship and should be developed either in conjunction with an existing course or an approved independent study program. Questions about the program and possible grant applications should be addressed to Professor Johnny Coleman, Associate Professor of African American Studies and Art (johnny.coleman [at] oberlin.edu or x56908).

Full guidelines and application form are available through the Grants Opportunities link or on the Student Grants tab of the Sponsored Programs Blackboard site.

Michael Trigilio of Neighborhood Public Radio visits Oberlin

As part of the Margin Release new media lecture series at Oberlin this spring, Michael Trigilio of Neighborhood Public Radio will be speaking at the Cat in the Cream on Monday, February 25 at 12 noon. NPR is an activist/artist group based out of Oakland and San Fransisco that presents shows created by and intended for the people in the place it happens to be broadcasting from. Check out their website: http://www.neighborhoodpublicradio.org/

In conjunction with the talk, the studio art class "Margin Release" and TIMARA class "Digital Art and Public Performance" will be presenting FMemory Sunday, February 24 at 2 PM in the art building. Anyone is welcome to come or just tune in. Bring your portable radio player (boombox, walkman, etc), if you have one.

Crave excellent websites?

 Check out the Art Library's del.icio.us site

               del.icio.us/OberlinArtLibrary/ 

We've selected hundreds of art web sites and imagebases and categorized them for easy browsing.  

Architecture and temporal transformation

February 13: 5:00 PM, Art Building, Classroom I

Felicity Scott, Columbia University: Groovin’ on Time

Clarence Ward Spring 2008 Lecture Series

NEW APPROACHES TO MODERN ARCHITECTURE

The psychedelic experience of a spatial expansion of “consciousness” and sense of an interconnected “planetary culture” was widespread among the late-sixties counterculture. This identification with a global community and its concern for the entire Earth’s ecosphere was largely a postindustrial phenomenon, a reflection upon new technological potentials that, while apparently euphoric, were haunted by a politics of survival. In addition to this spatial sensation was an equally symptomatic sense of temporal transformation. The psychedelic experience of the “trip” involved an “expanded time phenomenon”, a sense of one’s ability to “dwell exponentially” in time, or to experience not the sequential passing of time but accelerating rates of change.

It was within this historical condition that Ant Farm was founded in 1968 on a platform of educational reform, one intending to bring architectural pedagogy into alignment with these radically transformed space-time relations and in so doing to offer a “turned-on” counterpart to normative models of pedagogy.

from Documenta 12

Architectural Design Studio Exhibition

on behalf of jesse lecavalier (ETH zuerich) and the students enrolled in the winter term course "PRIMER: Introductory Architectural Design  Studio," i would like to invite you to a closing show of the students' work on friday, february 8 at 7pm in the gallery between the two domes.

i will give a very brief presentation on the structure and method of the course, and then the students will present their projects and answer your questions.  afterwards, please join us for a reception in the gallery.

any and all are welcome;  we hope to see you there!

john

John Harwood

Assistant Professor of Modern Architectural History

Dept. of Art

Oberlin College

Call for Papers: Museum Tuesday Tea Series

Open To All Oberlin College seniors 

Date of Presentation:  Tuesday, May 13 at 2:30pm

The Allen Memorial Art Museum is seeking submissions from Oberlin College 

seniors for a lecture to be presented during the last Tuesday Tea of the spring  

semester, May 13, 2008 at 2:30 pm.  With this opportunity, the AMAM hopes 

to celebrate the achievements of a graduating Oberlin student.  

Tuesday Teas are part of a popular adult lecture series that occur on the second Tuesday of each month during the academic year.  Past speakers have included AMAM staff, Oberlin College professors, outside scholars, and other art  professionals.  Tuesday Teas are held in the galleries and generally last about 30 - 45 minutes, followed by a question and answer period.  Light refreshments are then served in the East Gallery. 

Papers should focus on a single work of art in the permanent collection or a special exhibition, preferably on display.  Proposals will be in part assessed on the work's suitability for discussion in situ before a large audience.  A one-page abstract should be submitted, along with a resume and letter of interest, to Jason Trimmer, Curator of Education, at the address below by Tuesday, March 4, 2008, no later than 5:00pm.  An Art History or Studio major is not required, but the student’s academic background and familiarity with his or her subject will be taken into consideration. 

Abstracts will be juried by AMAM curatorial staff and the selection announced 

by March 17, 2008. 

 

For more information or questions, contact: 

Jason Trimmer 

Curator of Education 

Allen Memorial Art Museum 

(440) 775-8671 

jason.trimmer@oberlin.edu 

Clarifying clerestories

Did you ever notice the unusual "clerestory" screens covering the windows in the Weltzheimer-Johnson (W-J) House? We are proud of our Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian home, but this feature has always seemed out-of-place.

Perforated wood clerestory window screen

currently on the W-J House

In fact the current clerestory screens are not specified in the original Frank Lloyd Wright plans; they were designed by the Taliesin apprentice supervising construction, Ted Bower, in consultation with the Weltzheimers. Presumably this alternate design was approved by FLWright, but to even the untrained eye its aesthetic differs noticeably from the rest of the house.

Now visitors can envision the W-J House with the original Usonian screens. Thanks to Michael Holubar (Preparator, Allen Memorial Art Museum and experienced in Frank Lloyd Wright restoration and reproduction), the FLWright's design has come to life. Michael fabricated a full-size replica of the original perforated clerestory screens; the replica is backlit and on display in the House workshop.

Taliesin design now featured as interior light screen

The original screens delineated a geometric and directional motif which would have drawn the eye around the upper circumference and down the length of the house. With Michael's replica in place W-J House we can envision the different effect of the original screens.

Fresh new hassocks
In February three newly constructed hassocks will join the others at
the House. Freshman David Field spent his Winter Term researching
FLWright hassock designs and then building three in the Art Department
woodshop. Special thanks to Ed Fuquay, Art Department Woodshop
Technician, for assisting David.

Come visit!
The W-J House offers "Conversational Tours" the 1st & 3rd Sundays every month, 12:00-5:00 PM

This year we are also open last Saturdays.   The monthly "Focus Saturdays" will feature conversational tours emphasizing a specific topic (such as decorative arts, landscape design, etc.).  Watch for each month's topic in the Oberlin college on-line calendar.

Oberlin College students are admitted free Others are $5/person.

Palli Davis Holubar
W-J House: 775-5999 email-wjhouse@oberlin.edu

Diary of a Victorian Dandy

Candidate Lecture:
"The Twentieth-Century Dandy as Cultural Provocateur: Yinka Shonibare,
MBE and the Diary of a Victorian Dandy."

Courtney Martin, Yale University
Monday January 28th, Noon, Art Building, Classroom II

On Monday January 28th the Art Department is hosting Courtney Martin.
Ms. Martin, an Oberlin graduate (class of '96), is currently a
doctoral candidate at Yale University, where she is writing her
dissertation on the black British arts movement of the 1970s and 80s.
Some of you may have met her already, as she was a guest professor for
Professors Mathews and Cara in last spring's London program. She is
visiting Oberlin as a candidate for a Dissertation Fellowship from the
Consortium for Faculty Diversity in Liberal Arts Colleges; if she
receives it, she will be here next year, writing her dissertation and
teaching one course in the fall. At noon on Monday she will give a
lecture titled "The Twentieth-Century Dandy as Cultural Provocateur:
Yinka Shonibare, MBE and the Diary of a Victorian Dandy." The lecture
will take place in classroom II of the Art Building. To see some of
Shonibare's work, see
http://www.yinka-shonibare.co.uk/
http://www.stephenfriedman.com
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/turnerprize/2004/shonibare.shtm

Students will also have the the chance to speak with her at 2:30 in
the Art Department's Seminar room.

Songs from My Mother's Sky

Check out the YouTube video of Johnny Coleman describing his work and the influence behind his latest piece "Songs from My Mother's Sky" exhibited January 20 – April 1, 2007 at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JLb4Q5YB2I

A masterful storyteller and poet, Johnny Coleman creates site-specific multi-sensory environments. This installation is a part of a personal, ongoing series of works in memory of the artist’s mother, Florence McCoy. Following her passing in 2003, Coleman began constructing physical spaces that sought to simultaneously reflect something of her spirit, and to function as a “prayer.” Within each of the prayers, the presence of birds has been central. Coleman writes, “For my mother, and for myself, birds are evocative of a kind of freedom that is chosen and actively pursued. Birds are music. Flight.”

From the exhibition description, Fort Wayne Museum of Art