This art work is a performance piece that asks the audience to answer questions they may not be able to answer. By playing a very simple game, decisions are made about questions that are all encompassing and complicated. Through the flipping of a penny, the audience realizes that their decisions are important when in relation to someone else. That our personal decisions do not make answers to problems. In the end questions are answered but a sense if worthlessness is achieved. The whole game didn’t really matter.

The Mind Body Space

The project and paper are an attempt at exploring the spatial configuration of the mind and body. In the paper, I examine a range of writings that express various perspectives on perception, internalization of cultural and social norms, conflicting perceptual stimuli and meaning, emotion and reactions. These tools attempt to explain the relationship the physical body has with the mental workings of the mind. The project is a documentation of my personal, lived experience of this relationship manifested in the art work I do.

Space and its Occupancy of Us

My project is an attempt at experimenting how the physicality of space can affect the human psyche. I built a 3′ x 3′ x 4′ box in which I lived for a period of twenty-four hours from 1:00pm on November 21, 2003 to 1:00pm on November 22, 2003.. During these twenty-four hours I did not eat, had no entertainment (music, books, etc.) and did not provide any of the amenities of daily life. I recorded and analyzed the results of any subsequent behavioral differences during and after being in confined space.

https://ryanburghard.com/

ZEOTROPE

In choosing to represent a series of sculptures that I proposed for funding through the Wisconsin Idea Endowment, I decided to create a portion of one sculpture at full scale. The sculpture, a zoetrope, defined by Webster’s as An optical toy, in which figures made to revolve on the inside of a cylinder, and viewed through slits in its circumference, appear like a single figure passing through a series of natural motions as if animated or mechanically moved, is approximately four and a half feet in height and two fee in diameter. The abstract of the grant proposal follows: This project seeks to complement and enhance the interdisciplinary education of students at the elementary and junior high school levels. To this end, the creation of a small-scale mobile unit of six sculptures and accompanying teachers’ manual is proposed. Two Project Assistants and a limited support staff would fabricate these materials over the 2004 – 2005 school year. Each sculpture represents a melding of multiple academic disciplines including Biology, Math, Physics, History, English, Spanish, Music, and Art. Students’ interaction with the sculptures would lead to discoveries about the physical world, and human innovation and culture. This “peripatetic sculpture park” would travel throughout Wisconsin during the second year and third years of the program. Special concern will be made to ensure that schools in remote rural and inner city communities are given preference in hosting the sculptures. This entirely new initiative would create an opportunity for Wisconsin students to provide outreach to the community in their professional fields while benefiting students and educators and furthering the mission of the Wisconsin Idea Endowment

The Myth of Bodies

Did you ever wonder about the life of a complete stranger? In passing on the street, have you suddenly become curious about who someone is, or through what experiences they have arrived at their current station in life? If so was your assessment prompted or influenced by physical characteristics such as clothing, hairstyle or body language? Maybe the type of shoes worn by a stranger gives you a clue about their favorite recreational activity, or their hairstyle indicates where they grew up. Or is it impossible to judge a book by its cover? Does an individual’s choice in ‘style’ or lack thereof, provide a reliable indication of personality? It is the goal of this web-project to explore this cultural tendency. Through an anonymous survey, participants will divulge information about themselves. The information acquired through the survey will be used to simplify the participant’s “personality” (their responses) down to a simple visual/stylistic representation (a logo). The logo along with the participant’s survey responses will then be added to a ‘population’ of other participants. My goals for this project are to experiment with identity, and how it is construed through our modes of representation in the physical world. The World Wide Web is commonly seen as a sort of cold, impersonal commercial entity. I want to explore the human aspects of its users, the parts we don’t really see in our typical movement through cyberspace, in order to reveal individual identities. A secondary interest being explored in this project is the degree to which the artist’s hand must be removed from an artwork in order to make it truly public.

Pulick and Private Space in Art

My project and paper focus on issues of private and public taste in art, and how such attitudes affect its display; I use landscape painting as an example. The paper discusses ‘public’ and ‘private’ space (homes, corporate buildings, museums, government-owned space) and their historical and social meanings for the use of art.

Nostalgic Space

My project and research dealt with the topic of nostalgic space. My research encompassed our ideas of nostalgia and the different spaces that it occupies in our lives. My approach was exploring first the physical space of nostalgia, the things (i.e. souvenirs) that trigger this emotion and collections of these things, emphasizing the idea of nest building. And secondly, the mental space, the mythical, past space that a person dwells in when recalling nostalgic memories. My project was an attempt to illustrate the mental and physical forms of nostalgia through mixed media sculpture. My snow globe display was intended to symbolize the souvenirs that act as catalysts for nostalgia while simultaneously housing old photos, captured moments, that had taken on a life of their own in their attempts to be preserved. My ‘cocoons’ were meant to be embodiments of the idea of preservation. Both sculptures were meant to deal with the ambiguous nature of nostalgia, the impossibility of preserving the past, yet the instinctual desire to try and recreate it as a way of enduring and moving on.

The Intimate Space of Language-Based Art

My work involves the potential of language. It acknowledges its shortcomings and slippages as well as it necessity. I deal with language simultaneously human construct and the most straightforward method of communication available.

The painting 3′ x 4′ in size (yet to be titled) pictures the landscape of the Western Wall and Al Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem. This area, a holy site for both Jews and Muslims, has been contested for more than a century. In this painting, I represent the conflict over this space by setting up a series of figures rendered in contrast to each other. Three men, drawn naturalistically with charcoal, stand facing the mosque with their arms up. This image is derived from a photograph of Palestinian men being investigated by an Israeli soldier. The other set of characters are cartoon-like and stereotypically Jewish. They march towards the wall with their arms raised, each holding a Star of David. The difference of these characters and the suicide bomber painting in the foreground reinforces a narrative plot between these individuals within this one location. The smaller painting, 2′ x 3′ in size, depicts the contrasting landscape of an ancient, religious site with a modern, secular city. In between these places, generalized figures drown in the sea, Hassidic flies swoop around the space and two helpless, bagged hostages lie in the lower left-hand corner of the composition. This work, like the previous one, sets up a landscape of chaos and tension. Both paintings avoid strict dialectical interpretations, simultaneously evoking an image of what, as Americans, we see, imagine and are not supposed to see in the territory of Israel/Palestine.

http://www.julieweitz.com/

I explored the units and layout of Eagle Heights, the Grad student housing complex, for my project. I entered the project with a negative attitude about group housing complexes and my intent was to create a piece that would cast group housing complexes in a positive light. I took the two constants of groups housing complexes, the layout and the units, and kept one a constant and changed the other drastically. I mapped out the exact location of each unit in Eagle Heights and instead of hanging a rectangle in that location I hung an organic unit. The end result gives one a feeling of an over-populated area, but has shed the rigid and sterile quality and now has a fluid quality.

Universal life force is a part of us all. We are from the womb that supports our every movement, idea, thought. The universe is our womb from which the earth is given life to support living and breathing forms. The roof over my head, whether it be shingles or stars I am of the womb. These life experiences that we all come from make us one in the same, living breathing beings. In my art performance “Womb Dance” I allow the spectator to become from the womb. Allowing the creativity of the spectator flow and reach into their own personal experiences within their time in the womb. The spectator becomes the movement of the working body of art. “We enter into other people’s lives; we rediscover a past, which is not ours, yet, which is recognizable. To give space, a life, a place, a spirit-to someone, to another, to those who become spectator.” (Kabakov 35) Womb dance is composed in a black box theatrical space. Stage lighting creates a mandala of light focusing on warm colors on the perimeter and cool colors representing water in the center. The wombs are made of white spandex for movement and for reflection of the light in the space; they also incorporate a stretchy birthing canal for exit of the womb. A soundtrack of birthing chants empowers the feeling of “Womb Dance”. This is done in a room that is very warm and the scent of sweet grass is burned for spiritual essence.

The Art of Animating Public Space

I set out to investigate the contribution public art makes to successful public places. Using Diane M. Buck and Virginia A. Palmer’s book Outdoor Sculpture in Milwaukee as a guide, I photographed the manner in which the public animates the spaces surrounding 30 outdoor artworks throughout Milwaukee’s downtown area. I sat with the sculptures or circled at a distance hoping to find fellow admirers of public art and document their presence. After a semester of observing rather lonely sculptures and their sparse and largely disinterested public, I created a map and led a tour of these spaces, inviting tour participants to stage interactions with each sculpture.