Recently Acquired: New Art in the Collection February 2 – March 1, 2008 University of Wyoming Art Museum 2008 Educational Packet developed for grades K-12 The Art Museum has acquired a number of new and important works over the last year, adding such important artists to the collection as Helsinski artist, Kaarina Kaikkonen. Recently Acquired: New Art in the Collection presents a selection of these new acquisitions, including selected works from a JP Morgan/Chase Manhattan Art Program gift to the Art Museum. Purpose and Focus of this packet: This packet provides K-12 teachers with background information on the exhibits and suggested age appropriate applications for exploring the concepts, meaning and artistic intent of the work exhibited, before, during and after the museum visit. The focus of this educational packet and curricular unit is for students to observe the work of ten diverse artists working in varied media, to question the work, to explore it, to create their own work, and to reflect back on the entire process. Curricular Unit Topic: From Concept to Creation: Communicating through Medium Introduction Question: “I have heard enough of politicians talking about Students will have an opportunity to read, write, ‘change.’ We’ve seen it being used ad nauseam,” [Robert] sketch, listen to museum educators and artists, and, Redford told Thursday’s opening night audience for the then, come up with questions about the subjects and 2008 festival at Eccles Theatre in Park City, Utah. objects in the work, and the concepts behind the art work. They will, also, come up with questions on the If you want real change, according to Redford, find artist’s use of media and each artist’s style. Students an artist. “Artists are really agents of change,” said the will be encouraged to question their responses to each Sundance Institute’s founder. “They’re the first responders. artist’s work. They document change as it’s occurring in the world around us.” Explore: The Salt Lake Tribune, January 18, 2008 Students will be encouraged to research any or all aspects of the artwork in the exhibition and/or the The artists in this exhibition of new acquisitions have artists in the exhibit. been and are change agents in the art world, extended, in some cases, to the political, social, and environmental Create: world. These conceptual artists have something to say Students will be given time to practice sketching, about the world today. All we have to do is spend time drawing, and creating their own art work inspired with the art; observe it; question it; explore it; research by the concept/s behind the work or inspired by the it; reflect on it. artwork itself.

Reflect: Observe: Students will evaluate their final art products with Students will observe the work from the JP Morgan/ other students from their classes, with teachers and Chase Manhattan Art Program gift: Larry Zox, Enrique museum educators. They will be given feedback on Castro-Cid, John Koegel, Tad Zavinar, Sue Fuller, Edwin the art work and the concepts behind the making of Ruda, Augusto Marin, and recently acquired work from the art work. After this process, each person will then Richard Misrach, Kaarina Kaikkonen, and Debbie write an essay about their process of making art and the Fleming Caffery. They will notice the different media in concepts behind the work. This portion of the museum the collection and identify the media. experience can be carried out in the student’s home school and classroom. About the artists in the exhibition:

Larry Zox, Untitled, Silkscreen on paper A native of Des Moines, Iowa (born 1936, died 2006), Larry Zox is an abstract artist who utilizes color and space in a unique way. He utilizes color combinations with references to nature, music, or the city that surrounds him. But often there is a black section that is placed in the work for the sake of the painting’s aesthetic alone. The work ranges from the harmonious to the unexpected. All the work is done with a tremendous amount of technical control. - AskART Mr. Zox’s paintings involved the splicing of a to give the sensation of shifting planes. Fourteen of his works hang in the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington. Mr. Zox, a Des Moines native, studied at the University of Oklahoma, Drake University, and at the with noted German artist George Grosz. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Council of the Arts award. - Boston Globe

Enrique Castro-Cid, Dragonflys, Lithograph on paper Enrique Castro-Cid was born in 1938 in Chile and died in 1992 in Santiago, Chile. He studied in Chile until the early 1960s when the Organization of American States awarded him a grant to study in the United States. Castro-Cid was awarded two Guggenheim Foundation Fellowships and won the William Copley award. He later served as a Fellowship juror for the Guggenheim Foundation. The University of Illinois appointed Castro-Cid “visiting artist” in 1968. Enrique Castro-Cid was one of the first artists to use computer-aided design. He designed the robot hound seen in the filmFahrenheit 451 directed by Francois Truffaut. - AskART

Space as an act of reflection is absolute, yet, as a phenomenon presents many forms and gradations. Euclidean geometry represents space as an absolute category, this is, as an entity independent of our experience. At the beginning of this century, relativity shattered the epistemological foundation of the Newtonian-Euclidean world picture when it denied the notion of absolute space and time in the physical world. The use of non-Euclidean geometries in my work responded initially to this epistemological rupture. Certainly one of the most beautiful disciplines in mathematics has been used to further this pictorial argument, that of conformal mapping. Conformal transformations have been used to interpret the behavior of electrical currents and also to depict the configuration of electromagnetic potentials. The intrinsic geometry of the rectangular canvas is Euclidean, that is it represents space as an absolute. By contrast my work examines the possibility of alternative space models for painting in which the notion of absolute space has been transgressed. -Enrique Castro-Cid Karlie Corporation John Koegel, Untitled, Pencil on paper John Koegel was born in 1946 in the industrial town of Cumberland, Maryland, in the mountains near the Western Pennsylvania border. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago and received his B.A. from Warren Wilson College, Swannanoa, North Carolina, in 1969. After a few years as a high school teacher of English, Koegel abandoned that career and went to Mexico to study for his Master’s Degree at the Instituto de Allende, San Miguel de Allende. In 1978, he was awarded a Hayes-Fullbright Grant for study and travel in India. Since 1980, koegel has lived in Atlanta, returning to Warren Wilson College frequently to teach art, arrange exhibitions, and direct theatrical productions.

The strong narrative quality of his work invites comparison with Tad Zavinar, Untitled, Southern fiction, particularly that of the late Flannery O’Connor who Pencil on paper also depicted emotionally-charged characters in fantastic situations, Savinar was born in Portland, often called grotesque. To that label, Koegel replies—as O’Connor may Oregon in 1950 and educated at well have done, “But that’s the way I see the world.” Colorado College, where he received his BA degree in studio art. Savinar In these drawings, however, the narratives are never explicit, but is a conceptual artist and playwright remain always mysterious, many-layered, laden with symbols both who has been featured in dozens of personal and universal, and open to multiple interpretations…For one person and group exhibitions Koegel, a drawing is never finished. He erases more than he wields over the years and is included his pencils and any ‘completed’ drawing is underlaid by an untold n numerous public and private number of previous images, each with its own history and message, collections. Savinar’s work ranges adding a third dimension known only to the artist. He works in a from printmaking and installation stream-of-consciousness manner and each new thought and its resultant pieces to urban design and design image stimulates another and another to spring from his abundant of memorials. As an artist who imagination. The cramped, teeming crowds could be a social comment has chosen his brain as his tool of on our overpopulated world, but more likely stem from the enormously choice, Savinar feels it is of value for abundant material the artist brings to each drawing that eventually students and others to be exposed to strains the seams of his design. the variety of options that are open to one who gets an “art education” As with literature, these drawings are journeys in time that unfold bit or becomes an “artist.” by bit, each portion building on the past, and require contemplation to - Willamette University News be fully experienced. The artist has provided points of entry into each drawing and a rhythmic progression for the journey into the world of his inner spirit and vision. - Ethel Moore, Athens, Georgia, July, 1986 Sue Fuller, String Composition #202, Plastic thread Constructivist and printmaker Sue Fuller was born in 1914 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, gaining her B.A. degree in 1936 from Carnegie Institute of Technology. She studied printmaking for a year at Columbia University’s Teachers College in 1939. Perhaps of even greater importance in forming her artistic character was her exposure to two leading abstractionists, one essentially an expressionist (Hans Hofmann), the other the producer of the geometric “Homage to the Square” series, Josef Albers. Fuller studied with Hofmann at the Thurn School of Art during the summer of her sophomore year at Carnegie Tech; later with Albers in 1944 at a Bauhaus class in the U.S. Stanley William Hayter, an important figure in the world of etching in the 1940s, also provided Fuller a major artistic experience. She served as his assistant at Atelier 17 in during the latter War years, 1943 – 1945, where she printed the work of such artists as Andre Masson, Marc Chagall and Hayter himself. String was Fuller’s medium of choice, whether used in three-dimensional constructions or titled with numbers and embedded in plastic. She also studied glassmaking, calligraphy and lace-making. She taught for periods of a year or two from the 1940s through the 1960s at major institutions such as the Museum of , etc. She exhibited her work at the major New York City museums. She died in 2006 in South Hampton, New York. - AskART

Edwin Ruda, Untitled, liquetex on canvas Edwin Ruda was born in New York on May 15, 1922. He attended the Art Students League in New York, Cornell University and the Teachers College at Columbia University in the 1940s. Ruda then studied at the School of Painting and Sculpture in Mexico City from 1949 to 1951 and received his MFA from the University of Illinois in 1956. After teaching at the University of Texas, Houston, from 1956 to 1959, the artist returned to New York where he held his first solo exhibition at the Globe Gallery in 1961. He was included in Systemic Painting at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1956 and has been represented in numerous other survey exhibitions. In New York Ruda exhibited at the Park Place Gallery in 1966-7, then with the Paul Cooper Gallery from 1959 to 1975. In 1971 he was included in the group show 8 from New York held at Gallery A in Sydney with a solo exhibition at the same venue in 1973. He exhibited with the Max Hutchinson Gallery in New York in 1978 and in Houston in 1979. Since 1987 the artist has been affiliated with the June Kelly Gallery in New York. - International Paintings and Sculpture Augusto Marin, Armonia Campestre, Oil on canvas Augusto Marin was born in 1921 in Santurce, Puerto Rico. He first studied art under the Spanish artist Alejandro Sanchez Felipe. He studied at the Art Student’s League in New York and at the Oris Art Institute in California. In addition to his studies in drawing, painting and mural, he learned the technique of stained glass with Arnaldo Maas and then completed his studies in Holland with Henri Mesterom. Lastly he studied lithography at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. He was also a teacher at the school of “Artes Plasticas del Instituto de Cultural Puertorriquena” and at the “Colegio Regional de Carolina” of the University of Puerto Rico. Marin’s body of work has evolved throughout the years. - OBRA Galeria Alegria Gallery

Debbie Fleming Caffery, Seventh Day of Hell, gelatin silver print Debbie Fleming Caffery’s photos shot in black and Artist statement white, are overly pictorial, yet psychological and I did not experience the first sometimes darkly beautiful. Caffery’s images deal few days in New Orleans with what she calls “shades of mystery and shadow, during the horrific flooding, ” . . . For Caffery, even bright daylight doesn’t as I was at the River Center dispel mystery. Most of the time Fleming Caffery Shelter in Baton Rouge deliberately blurs her pictures, for atmospheric photographing for People effect, but sometimes she focuses them so sharply Magazine. The assignment they become hyper-real. was to do portraits of the - Tucson evacuees and what they Weekly: Arts, 2002 evacuated with. I worked Fleming Caffery is most comfortable in the with a writer from New shadows, drawn to movements, patterns and York and we both were deep tonality. Caffery’s photography has garnered extremely upset in our praise for over twenty years, and has been quest for the story. We watched people being checked into included in exhibitions from the Smithsonian the shelter, having to go through typical airport security machines and have their belongings checked by the National Institute n Washington D. C. to the Photo Guard. They were evacuated into a huge convention room Gallery International, Tokyo. Her work is in the lined with hundreds of cots. We talked to many people and collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I photographed few. We found that most of the people we New York; the George Eastman House, Rochester; met were evacuated from the flood waters of New Orleans and the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France. and did not have any personal items with them. An elderly Before Debbie Fleming Caffery received the woman showed me the only personal item she brought with Katrina Media Fellowship in 2006, she received her besides the clothes on her back, was her dead husband’s the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship for 2005.” driver license. The few that were able to bring belongings - Trudy Wilner with them brought their Bible, family pictures and family Stack: Debbie Fleming Caffery.com members. One kid told me he brought himself! . . . Each morning I say a prayer of thanks that the media was there to After Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, show the world the truth. fine art photographer Debbie Fleming Caffery - The Aftermath of Katrina, found herself in the role of photojournalist, Debbie Fleming Caffery, documenting the stories of those most affected. January 6, 2006:Takegreatpictures.com Kaarina Kaikkonen, Dancing Shoes from Queen Night, leather and silver The Finnish artist Kaarina Kaikkonen is a visionary sculptor who uses found objects such as second-hand clothing, toilet paper, women’s shoes, and potato sacks to create moderate to large-scale installations that articulate the architectural or open space that contains her work.

She has created site-specific installations indoors and outdoors in unusual places in her native country and throughout the western world. The visual impact of these large sculptural projects is extremely dramatic, almost theatrical, because of their scale, the materiality of the jackets – the softness, textures, muted colors, different styles – and the meanings conveyed by their presence in the absence of their wearers. Kaikkonen has painstakingly sewed fragments of material by hand to form a horizon line in the middle of the wall. The line creates an unexpected illusion of depth and perspective traditionally associated with classical painting and drawing . . . - Empty Jackets: The Presence of Absence, Julia P. Herzberg

Kaikkonen has continued to challenge herself, finding architectural spaces in urban as well as rural locales to enrich and to encourage new readings of the garment motif. Way of 2002, one of the most impressive outdoor installations, enhanced the classical architecture of Helsinski Cathedral. Thousands of jackets, overlapping on every step leading to the porch of the church, served as stand-ins for those who worshiped there or just came to visit the historic building. In that work, as in others, the artist successfully merged a repetitive motif with the architecture that housed it to provoke a new interpretation of agency and site. In Beyond Reach of 2003, Kaikkonen found another place to impart spiritual references, covering the floor of a former church, now an art gallery, with jackets instead of the worshippers who had once filled the pews during services. Towards Light of 2003 was an outdoor installation appended to the side of a typical Finnish country house. Jackets rippled in the wind as they had in Havana. Although the air created a sense of kinetic movement, the artist conveyed an element of life as an environmental statement. And so it goes, Kaikkonen’s men’s jackets, laced limpidly or rigidly, spread out or pressed together, in different sizes, shapes, styles, and colors, refer to subjects that are not painted or drawn, but sculpted and assembled to express existential territories of the human condition. - Julia P. Herzberg, 2004

Kaikkonen has exhibited extensively in Scandinavia and Europe. She is a recipient of the Finnish State Award (1989) and was invited to exhibit in the Echigo-Tsumnari Triennial (Nigata, Japan; 2006), the Biennale Balticum at the Rauma Art Museum (Finland 2006), Omniart | Art Basel (Miami 2004 and 2005), and the 8th Havana Biennial at the Wifredo Lam Center for Contemporary Art (Cuba 2003), She lives and works in Helsinki.

Richard Misrach, Battleground Point #6, chromogenic print Richard Misrach, a native Californian, has spent most of his career photographing the American desert and is considered one of this century’s most internationally acclaimed photographers. Misrach graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971. He first started photographing with a 35 mm camera to foster social change. Since the late 1970s he has photographed using an 8X10 camera and color film. Misrach lives in Berkeley, California. His works are represented in more than fifty major museum collections around the world. Selections from his groundbreaking Desert Cantos series have appeared in three previous books, including Desert Cantos, which received the 1988 Infinity Award from the International Center for Photography; Bravo 20; The Bombing of the American West, which was awarded the 1991 PEN Center West Award for a nonfiction book;Violent Legacies’ Three Cantos; and Crimes and Splendors. Lesson overview Art Questions to Consider Students will learn about the different media in this exhibition Grades K-6 and the artists who created each work. We’ll consider the • What do you see? background information available on each artist, and then • What shapes and forms do you see? “mine” the art work for more clues about the artist’s intent and • What colors do you see? the cultural, political and historical influences on their work. • What lines, marks, and textures do you see? • Describe the compositional make-up Students will explore the ideas behind the art from their of one photograph, print, drawing or perspectives. They will closely observe each piece of art and painting. determine what the art conveys to them. Students and teachers • What and who are the subjects of the will consider these concepts and how the concepts help to paintings, prints, drawings and sculptures? create the art. • Select an art piece you are drawn to and explain what you see? In the Shelton Studio students will be given the opportunity to create art work inspired by a concept they have thought about Grades 6-12 after viewing the Recently Acquired: New Art in the Collection • In discussing art how do you define what exhibition or they will create new art work in response to the is concrete, representational, figurative, or art work itself. The students may choose to model a piece of art abstract? they feel strongly about or feel connected to. • How does Larry Zox utilize color and space in his art? Students and teachers may research and engage in conversations • How would you describe Zox’s technical about the collection before arriving at the art museum, using control? the study guides (available on-line) to explore some of these • What is a silkscreen on paper? ideas. While here they will spend time in the galleries closely • How does Enrique Castro-Cid utilize observing the work, discussing it, writing about it, and sketching geometry in his work, Dragonflys? it. They will begin conversations about the theories behind the • What is a lithograph? How would you work which will lay the groundwork for future opportunities to create a print using the lithographic pursue these ideas in their home classrooms and schools. process? • In John Koegel’s pencil on paper art Essential Questions work explain his use of space, forms, • What is art? composition. What is he trying to do with • Is it an idea? A process? A product? All three? this drawing? • What is a concept? • To begin with, list all that you see. • How does an artist take a concept and create art • What is his drawing about? from it? • Explain the significance of the symbols on • How does a viewer recognize a concept in the artwork paper you see in Tad Zavinar’s Pursuit. by observing it? • What do you think it means when Zavinar • What are examples of concepts? says he uses his brain as his tool of choice? • How do the paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings you • Sue Fuller is called a constructivist. view in this exhibit express ideas? How does that term relate to her strong • Can viewing art and thinking about the concepts composition? What is your reaction to behind the artwork change the viewer’s perceptions, this piece? thoughts, and feelings? How so? • Look closely at Edwin Ruda’s abstract • What do we mean by style when we speak of art? painting and study the colors and forms • Do these works present the culture, the social and and composition. Give your response to political climate of today? How so? this painting. How is it abstract? • How are the artists’ work the same, if they are at all, • Describe the visceral feeling you have after or different? viewing Augusto Marin’s oil on canvas, Armonia Campestre • Discuss Richard Misrach’s use of light, perspective, The Media exhibited in this collection: color, and composition in his photograph. 1. Silkscreen on paper • Give your response to Kaarina Kaikkonen’s silver and 2. Lithograph on paper leather art work, Dancing Shoes from Queen of the 3. Pencil on paper Night, created from her mother’s shoes. Based on the 4. Plastic thread title what does this work represent? 5. Liquetex on canvas • How does Caffery’s photo,The Seventh Day of Hell, 6. Oil on canvas describe the circumstances New Orleans people lived 7. Gelatin silver print: Photograph on through during Hurricane Katrina? paper or plasticized paper coated with • Can you name various techniques used in these an emulsion of light-sensitive silver prints, sculptures, paintings, and drawings to show salts suspended in gelatin, printed out that they are striving for an idea or style or both? of developed out, and fixed. Came into general use in the 1880s; the developed Pre-visit activities variety remains the standard black-and- In order to prepare students for their museum visit and white photographic process. extend learning possibilities, we suggest that teachers and 8. Leather and silver students consider the following 9. Chromogenic print: The most common activities. type of color photograph, printed from • Students will research and read about the artists in a chromogenic color negative; consists the Recently Acquired: New Art in the Collection on of dyes within gelatin layers on a plastic- the internet and in their school libraries. coated paper base. Subject to fading • Students will research and read about the different and color shifts in dark storage and on media in the Recently Acquired: New Art in the exhibition. Developed in the 1940os Collection. as an outgrowth of chromogenic color • Students will read the biographies and artist transparencies (Kodachrome, invented in statements on the UW Art Museum website. 1935). Used by amateurs and artists alike.

Museum activities Part 1 – Time frame: 45 minutes Part 2 – Time frame: 45 minutes • Students will closely observe the works of the ten artists The following projects may be considered in the Recently Acquired: New Art in the Collection individually, or combined, or museum exhibition. staff will work with teachers to develop • They will identify concepts behind the individual artist specific projects which support ongoing works. classroom work. • They will identify lines, shapes, forms, patterns, • Students will explore the concepts repetition, color, light, and shadow, technique and style of the art work they viewed by in the individual work. drawing, painting, printing or • Students will discuss what they see with museum sculpting. educators. • Students will create an art piece • They will explore the artists’ work in relationship to the based on a concept they identified concepts the students identify in response to the work. in the Recently Acquired: New Art • Using worksheets, students will respond in writing or in the Collection exhibition. drawing or both to the work they view by recording their • Students will explore techniques observations and their thoughts about the work. in the making of an art piece in • Students will answer questions on a museum worksheet. the specific medium they choose • Students will engage in discussions about their to work with. observations, answers and sketches with one another, teachers, and museum educators. Post-visit activities Materials to be supplied to each student We have found that students achieve maximum benefit Materials for selected Shelton Studio projects are from a museum visit when time is scheduled for post- provided by the art museum. visit activities. Here are suggestions for them. Assessments and documentation of museum tour and • Students discuss or write about their museum studio experiences experiences, reviewing what they have learned, In order to ensure that our museum tour program is what has special meaning for them, and how meeting the needs of teachers and students, we ask that they will use new information and skills. participants complete evaluation surveys. Surveys will • Students continue to create more art using the be distributed to teachers and students, but they are also same concept they used in the creation of an art available on-line as a pdf file to be downloaded, or they piece in the Shelton Studio. may be requested via e-mail ([email protected]).

Suggested use in the curriculum 1. Students will self-assess using a quick survey The study of the different media and the artists in the that asks them to consider their response to the JP Morgan Chase Collection ties to multiple curricular gallery discussions and research, and their studio areas including art, history, social studies, writing, experience. reading, geography, philosophy, and technology. 2. Teachers will assess the overall visit by Museum staff will work with teachers to address specific completing a quick survey that asks for their Wyoming Teaching Standards and to align museum observation and assessment of students’ projects and studies with ongoing classroom curricular experiences, as well as assessment of the overall units. process of the museum visit. 3. Museum staff and artists/teachers will record their observations and assessments. Some recommended resources 4. When studio time permits, we will ask students These are a few of many resources available. We welcome to briefly discuss their art work completed in the other suggestions that teachers and students find helpful Shelton Studio visit. which can be added to this list. 5. Museum staff may take photographs of students • UW Art Museum website and teachers to document the learning taking • Exhibition descriptive materials (contact place and the work produced during a museum the museum education program for more visit. These are available upon written request information) to teachers who would like to use them as art of • Color by Paul Zelanski and Mary Pat Fisher, teaching and student portfolios. Prentice Hall, 2003. • Principles of Three-Dimensional Designby Stephen Luecking, , Prentice Hall, 2002 • Techniques of the World’s Great Painters, Waldemar Januszcak, consulting editor, Chartwell Books, 1981. • Form, Space, and Vision, by Graham Collier, Prentice Hall, 1972. • Research on the internet about the artists and their media. • Research on the social, political, historical, geographical, and technological connections with the art works.