Contemporary Art Concepts

COLLABORATION, it means to work together. One goal cannot be accomplished without the assistance of others. I routinely use this word when I was teaching, this is something that not only did I insist occur in the classroom but outside of it as well. I feel it is extremely imperative for interdisciplinary learning to be a process in the high school students, because of this I collaborated repeatedly with the foreign language, history and science departments at my school to create an end of the year enormous art piece that was centralized in the hallway for the whole school to view. I felt it was vital for not only students that are not involved in art, involved in art, parents, administration and other teachers to see how collaboratively you can have different disciplines work together in creating art and the importance of art. Working together from all different areas of learning is imperative for not only educational purposes but also humankind. You must understand patience, others opinions and take their thoughts into consideration. However, not only do we collaborate in the educational world, we collaborate everyday with many people that you may come in contact with and not even know that this act is occurring. Since being on maternity leave from my occupation as an art educator, I collaborate with my children everyday. I teach them patience, understanding of one another’s feelings and how to work together as a team. Collaboration is also displayed in sporting teams, there is that old saying, “there is no “I” in team.” It’s true, everyone on a sporting team needs to look out for one another and play together collaboratively to make it work.

Another example of collaboration is displayed through, The Great Walls Unlimited: Neighborhood Pride Mural Program in Los Angeles. The program began in 1988 and has produced about 105 murals throughout L.A.’s communities. Not only was this a wonderful movement, but also it employed 95 various novice muralists from the whole country. Unfortunately due to budget cuts this program no longer exists, and the murals are no longer being created, however during the short time they were, it was an amazing journey and ending to the art that was executed. The murals still remain today and touch on political, visually appealing landscapes to historical figures. When I was looking further into the mural project and digesting how these muralists had no idea who each one of them were, they had to learn to work collaboratively together to allow this process of creating art work. It did for fifteen years, allowing Los Angeles to become an epicenter of collaborative art. Actor Pete Galindo quotes on the website, sparcinla.org, “People often decry Los Angeles’ lack of an official center, a heart that feeds the arteries that run throughout its neighborhoods, but it is this lack of center that creates the opportunity for democratic process that is multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-faith, multi-historical, in essence multi-centered. It is not that the City of Los Angeles lacks heart but that it has many hearts, beating simultaneously and inexhaustibly.” (Galindo, 2002)

The mixture between public pedagogy and contemporary art leads me to one of my most favorite feminist artists of the current 21st century art, Cindy Sherman. Publically in galleries she exhibits photography as her choice of medium and the subjectivity of her artwork autobiographical. She conveys through her images what societies perception of women is, Sherman attire plays an enormous portion of the art. The wardrobe allows the viewer to know what stereotype she is portraying though that photograph. I have always found her to be very interesting, simply because of the label that I came to realize at an early age of what men and society in general think women ought to be, how they should act and their roles. The culture in which we live allows Cindy to produce the art subjects that she is consistently recreating through the lens of the camera. Cindy Sherman is still active today and continuing to make art in the ways she did back in the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s. Women’s voices are heard more today than when she first started this journey, without anything being said through her work vocally, so much is said visually.

References:

Galindo, P. (2002, 12 1). SPARCinLA Social and Public ARt Resource Center . Retrieved from SPARCinLA: http://sparcinla.org/programs/neighborhood-pride-mural/