What a Nice Surprise

I’m blogging this week following the Association of Midwest Museums’ annual conference in Chicago – Museumpalooza, which got underway on Sunday, July 24, with a terrific kick-off party at The Art Institute of Chicago’s Renzo Piano Modern Wing. Wow!

Needless to say, museum colleagues roll out the red carpet for their peers and when sponsors such as Groupon – yes! – get involved, the results are impressive.

It had been seventeen years since the Midwest Museums convened in Chicago and clearly the destination is a draw. In addition, the Midwest Association teamed up with the Illinois Association of Museums and the Visitor Studies Association, resulting in an even more robust array of program sessions and a total registration approaching 800.

First up Monday morning was the Association’s annual business meeting, which included the pro-forma activities of approval of the minutes from last year’s gathering, a finance report, and Board nominations and election. Prior to introducing the keynote speaker, the Association presented awards.

I was delightfully surprised and even a bit flummoxed to hear the name Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum announced as the recipient of the Best Practices Award for Public Programming.

Quite a wonderful surprise, indeed!

In presenting the award, Lin Nelson-Mayson, director of the University of Minnesota’s Goldstein Museum of Design, highlighted the Woodson Art Museum’s leadership in developing programs for all ages and stages, ranging from Art Babies for our youngest visitors to SPARK! for older adults with memory loss and their care partners.

Over the next day and a half, I attended a number of excellent sessions, met new colleagues, and visited with longtime friends. I’m returning to the Woodson with pages of notes, ideas for new programs, and names to share with my co-workers for future projects.

Reflecting on these all-too-quick experiences, I must say that the recognition for the Woodson’s programming is a highlight. The Best Practices Award belongs to each and every Museum staff member, who give their all day in and day out. What a privilege it is to call them a trusted team, valued colleagues, and my friends.

Raku Oohs and Awesome Ahhs

I need a word better than WOW to describe last week. Right now, WOW is what comes to mind. It was a WOW week and so much more. Last week (July 10-16), I had the enjoyment of spending the entire week outdoors in the Woodson Art Museum sculpture garden. What was I doing? I was assisting Dean Hoegger, a Sturgeon Bay ceramist with 35 years of experience, invited to teach the Museum’s Earth & Fire summer art camp for middle- and high-school students. To prepare for his arrival, we wrapped tables in canvas, set up tents to provide shade, and set up propane gas tanks for the Raku kiln.

After Dean’s arrival on Sunday, we helped him unload and level three pottery wheels, clay, books, and a variety of tools. Everything was ready by 9:30 pm, and we all headed home feeling content that the next day would start without a hitch. During the night a storm hit, and all of us worried what we would find the next day. Based on our experience I recommend plastic sheeting; it worked for keeping things dry. A few wet cardboard boxes needed to be unpacked and replaced with dry boxes but nothing was damaged. 

 After the first wave of students arrived at 8:15 am, we were up and running with a full class of 14 middle-school students by 8:30am. We started with pinch pots, and Dean covered the importance of drawing the clay up from the bottom and keeping the sides equally thick. This was a precursor for wheel-thrown pottery work that was planned for the next day. The students learned how to wedge their clay to prevent air pockets in their finished pieces. We moved from pinch pots to slab-built construction, creating cylinder-shaped jars with individual embellishments and incorporated different techniques for altering surface texture. At noon the middle-school students were done, and by 1pm the high-school students arrived, ready to start.

The high-school class rolled out in a similar fashion, except the students were introduced to the balloon-pot technique, which is a hand-built form. This technique produced some fantastic results. Students created balloon-pot-formed containers in a variety of shapes including an acorn, a strawberry, a square box, a few capsule shapes, and many others.

Throughout four of the five days, the students created pottery, Dean and I loaded kilns at night, and I unloaded them in the morning. The amount of completed bisque-ware continued to grow in anticipation of Friday’s Raku firing.

What is Raku? Raku is a low-firing process inspired by traditional Japanese Raku firing. Western-style Raku involves removing pottery from the kiln while at bright- red heat and placing it into containers with combustible materials such as straw, paper, or sawdust. Once the materials ignite, the containers are closed. This produces an intense reduction atmosphere that affects the color of glazes and clay pieces. The drastic thermal shock also produces glaze cracking, known as crackling, since it is deliberate.

One teen described Raku as “mind-blowing, awesome amazement, with a side of flame-broiled coolness.” For those of you who never have done Raku, it is very exciting. The surprise of how the reduction affects the glaze is awesome. We heard so many “oohs and aahs” as the students pulled their pots from the water after cooling. We were “oohing and aahing” right along with them.

To see what the students created and enjoy an ooh-and-aah moment of your own, stop by the Woodson Art Museum before August 29 and visit an exhibition of their artwork created during one week of summer art camp.

Paving Paradise?

By Cindy Brzeski

It may not be paradise we’re paving exactly, but we are putting up a parking lot!

Yes, the noise, the felled trees, the silt fence, the heavy equipment, and the mud are all precursors to additional parking for Woodson Art Museum guests. No, there won’t be a pink hotel, and with deference to Joni Mitchell and Counting Crows, all of this Museum’s works can be viewed free of charge daily.  If you recall the lyrics of Big Yellow Taxi, “They took all the trees, and put em in a tree museum and they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them.”

For those of you who’ve had to park blocks away on a previous visit, you’ll soon find additional and convenient parking in close proximity both to our main entrance and 12^th Street entrance and, weather permitting, just in time for Birds in Art this fall.

With trees removed and loads of dirt hauled away, a parking lot is taking shape on the east side of 12^th Street, across from the Museum. It will take several more weeks as crews complete the cement aprons, curb and gutters, asphalt paving, stone retaining wall, storm draining, masonry piers, and later the decorative fencing and landscaping.

I had no idea how much was involved in the construction of a parking lot. From acquisition of the property and zoning to the engineering study, design, bidding, contracts, and finally construction, the parking lot is nearly two years in the making. Now that the visible portion of the work has begun, we’re finally starting to see it come together.

It seems only fitting that with all of the trucks, construction trailer, back hoe, and other heavy equipment invading this quiet, residential area, our indoor offerings this summer are entitled Iron: New Work by American Blacksmiths and Ax Lore: Historic Tools from the John and Brenda Henson Collection.

Whether you are intrigued by a construction project underway or by amazing metal works of art, current tools, or something much more primitive, now is a great time to visit the Woodson Art Museum. As the song goes, “...you don’t know what you’ve got `til it’s gone!”

Editor's note: Cindy Brzeski, business manager, has been working at the Museum for almost three months and is being welcomed enthusiastically into our blogosphere!  

Summer Art Campers Mold Clay and Future Possibilities

Summer art camps are underway at the Woodson Art Museum, and youngsters are converging this week for Art From All Angles. Early Tuesday, children ages 10-11, clustered in the lobby swinging brightly colored lunchboxes before spending the day creating three-dimensional forms and figures with clay, plaster, and wire. They started by screen printing their own graphic t-shirts. Before sculpting, they soaked up inspiration from metalwork in the galleries and sculptures in the garden, where they paused for a picnic lunch by the pond.

Prepping the crew for an afternoon with clay, educator Jayna Hintz pointed out two sculptures that helped show the difference between additive and reductive sculpting processes. To create his ostrich, Bart Walter added clay to fashion the feathers. For her mountain lion, Rosetta scraped clay away to convey the cat’s power through its sleek, angular lines.

Once back in the Museum classroom, students crumpled and fashioned foil into armatures – a sculpture’s framework – that they covered with a thin layer of clay. The impressive array of ideas included a mermaid, turtle, snowball, fairy, and swan. Later, they twisted and coiled wire armatures to support wet strips of plaster-coated gauze that became an igloo, dolphin, teepee, and a couple of tall, abstract forms. These sculptures will harden through oven baking and air drying, and this lucky crew will return on Thursday for another full day of sculpting and painting their creations.

The ratio was excellent Tuesday, with three or four budding artists to every helper – a great way for volunteers to ease into the week. This year, the volunteer crew includes two teenagers who are children of Museum staff – my daughter, Sarah Kate, and Alex, Jayna’s son who’s been a faithful camp volunteer for years.

Sessions for younger children are booked solid, with about twenty 8- and 9-year-olds coming today and a full slate of 5-7-year-olds on Friday. Sarah Kate, who is 15, wants to be a teacher when she grows up, so volunteering for the art camps offers great experience and another opportunity to solidify – or modify – that career choice. Alex, who is 17 and wants to be a paleontologist, says he has a strong artistic interest that he wants to share with the next generation.

The artistic explorations that students embark upon this week certainly will shape and mold their futures, as well, in ways as exciting and intricate as the sculptures they create.