Art – Page 6 – Kristen Baumlier

Category: Art

Food Font @ CIA on Thursday April 26th in the Student Lounge

Posted on April 25, 2012April 26, 2012 by Kbaumlier

On Thursday April 26th is the first in-person activity related to my new project Food Font.

Anyone who is eating lunch in the student lounge at school will be invited to participate. The plan is to have interested students, faculty and staff to work on making 2 CIA (Cleveland Institute of Art) food alphabets. People will be invited to make a letterform out of some of their lunch food. Each letter will be photographed and will be part of the 2 CIA font sets that will be used in the Food Font interactive design tool that I am developing this Summer.

We will be creating 2 fonts:
The CIA Vending machine food font (made of food from the vending machines)
The CIA Packed Lunch font (made of food from food from packed lunches)

Food Font is a project comprised of food and design workshops, font making activities and the use of the interactive online design tool Food Font which will be accessible at www.foodfont.com. The project supports education, interaction, and communication about food, health, and design.

I’m excited to do this first in-person activity and to test out some of the techniques I will be making into printed directions and resources so that others can do a Food Font workshop. We’ll see how it goes!

Art on Fire – Italian Museum Director Burns Art in Protest

Posted on April 21, 2012April 22, 2012 by Kbaumlier

Earlier this year, artist and curator Antonio Manfredi announced he would set fire to the permanent collection of the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, located outside of Naples, to protest the lack offunding of the arts in Italy.

Earlier this week he went into action. With live webcams running, he set fire to painting by French artist Séverine Bourguignon, who watched the ceremony via Skype. A second painting was scorched by Neapolitan artist Rosaria Matarese last Wednesday, as the artist again watched via webcam.

Manfredi announced that he intends to burn three paintings a week as a form of protest. He hopes that the actions will bring attention to the lack of support for cultural projects and will get the government to give funds to the museum.

His actions are being criticized for setting up a demand that the Italian government will not be able to respond to, since Italy is currently being challenged with issues around the euro and tax hikes, pension hikes, and an increase in the retirement age has been implemented to help remedy the economic situation.

Will all 1000 paintings in the collection be burned or will funding go to the museum? The museum’s blog has a big image that says “CAM Art War,” – and as of today there are plans to burn paintings next week.

Image Source:
rt.com

Link:

Casoria Contemporary Art Museum Website

Enri¢hed : Cereal Art by Tattfoo Tan

Posted on April 18, 2012April 18, 2012 by Kbaumlier

Crispy flakes, popped rice, “It’s grrrreat!” Over one hundred years ago, pieces of grain started to be part of the American diet in the form of cereal. Today cereal is eaten in more than 80 million bowls each day. The prepared breakfast cereal was part of the early vegetarian movement. Quaker oats and cracked wheat were some of the early forms of cereal that was convenient to eat in the late 1800s. In 1877, John Harvey Kellogg accidentally created wheat flakes, and his brother invented corn flakes from a similar method. They founded the Kellogg Company in 1906.

Kix was the first puffed cereal that was put on the market. General Mills and other companies made cereal into a large market with many of the new cereals having more sugar in it. Eventually cereals got mascots, had toy surprises in the box, and became “fortified” with vitamins and were promoted with health benefits.

Tattfoo Tan’s piece Enri¢hed is a project where participants can design their own fortified box of cereal. The artist will be present and will ask audiences to write down their ideas that will be put into a raffle drum. Other visitors will be asked to randomly draw out these pieces of paper and then draw the packaging for their product with colored markers. The space that the project occurs in is a space that will be “raining” with cereal created by a confetti blower. Enri¢hed will be at the Umami Food and Art Festival this Friday in Brooklyn, NY.

With the piece, the artist Tattfoo Tan is referencing to the term “killing the rat” which is from Robert Choate, an advisor to President Nixon in 1970 analyzed sixty well-known cereal brands for nutritional quality. His conclusion was that rats fed a diet of ground up cereal boxes with sugar, milk and raisins were healthier than rats fed the cereal itself.

Image Source:
www.tattfoo.com

Links:

Umami Food & Art Festival

www.tattfoo.com – Artist Website

What would it be like with rain in your house? I Wish You Hadn’t Asked

Posted on March 27, 2012March 28, 2012 by Kbaumlier

What would be like if rain was to fall inside of your house instead of outside? I Wish You Hadn’t Asked, an artwork created in Denmark explores this idea and is a house where over 300,000 liters of water enter the structure as part of the piece.

The project is the work of the group The Glue Societyand was made for the Sculpture By the Sea Festival in Denmark. The fully furnished house was built, shipped in and outfitted with pipes that drop over 200 liters of water per minute into the rooms of the house.

The water is recycled – and is a semi-closed system, with pumps that get the water into the structure. As the artists say the piece explores the idea of “that moment in a relationship when something is said, or done, that can’t be taken back. And the rot sets in.”

A the beginning of the show, visitors could walk through (either wearing or not wearing a raincoat) but overtime it will not be safe to occupy.

The Glue Society is an independent creative collective based in Sydney and New York. It was founded in 1998 by Gary Freedman and Jonathan Kneebone and now includes five other writers, directors and artists: Matt Devine, Luke Crethar, James Dive, Pete Baker and Paul Bruty.

Image Source:
www.gluesociety.com

Links:

www.gluesociety.com

Yarnbombing – from Carrboro, NC and Beyond

Posted on March 15, 2012June 11, 2012 by Kbaumlier

Today I was driving in Carrboro, NC with my sister-in-law and we drove past a series of public graffiti works made of yarn. A knitted piece that looks like watermelon surrounding part of a tree, a group of small trees with arm-band looking pieces on each trunk, and knitted pieces on the railings, poles, and planters of the public library were all part of the “yarn bombing” piece that was put up one night in February.

Also called knit graffiti, yarn bombing started over 20 years ago, when artists and groups wanted to give a softer side to urban environments – and created public works using yarn and other soft fiber materials. Maternal expressions such as knitting, or wrapping up something have been used to transform the cold, concrete, and metal elements in our landscapes. Hydrants, lampposts, mailboxes, bicycles, cars, and even buses and bridges have all been yarn bombed in recent years. In 2009, the book, “Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti” was published, and yarn bombing has gone global, with the first International Yarn Bombing Day held on June 11 of last year.

Not all yarn bombing is created equal. Where I live in Cleveland, a local artist was commissioned to make several pubic yarn pieces that wrap trees and poles in the area. They are bright, crocheted, and colored and function as a decoration on the elements that they cover. the objects are softer, but not transformed into something of substance. . The pieces here in Carrboro are more successful, and a great example of yarn bombing done well. The pieces seem to have a sense of humor, and pattern, color, and context seem to be considered in the works. At the center of the pieces is a bus bench, that has been yarn bombed to read, “I (heart) YARN” – which serves as a artist statement of the group.

Yarn bombing is often considered littering or vandalism. Pieces are often installed at night, and sometimes are removed by city officials. Some groups, like the Carrboro group will get permission before making the pieces, and also follow guidelines such as making the pieces less than 8 feet tall, and on specific public spaces.

Links:

Yarnbombing Hits Carrboro Article

Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti (the Book and Website)

25 Amazing Yarn Bombs – Buzzfeed.com