Pinch Hitter Comes Through in Clutch

By Matt Foss

     I love baseball. For those who read this blog and know me personally, this comes as no surprise. I discuss the game often and frequently use baseball analogies in conversation. I have many reasons for being infatuated with the game. The sights, the smells, the nuances of baseball, the way it sounds on the radio, the fact that it’s the only sport where the defense has the ball, and that it begins in the spring when everything is new and ends in the fall, just when you need it most. It’s a special game.

      One of my favorite things about the game is September call-ups. For those of you who don’t know, major league teams are allowed to expand their rosters and bring up players from their farm systems in September. For teams in a pennant race (like the Milwaukee Brewers), it can add a much-needed boost for a team fatigued from 130 games already played. For teams out of the pennant race (like my Chicago Cubs), it can be an opportunity to try out younger players who have a shot at making next year’s club.

      Well, September call-ups happen in the museum world, too. Curator of exhibitions Andy McGivern recently broke his collarbone, limiting his physical work at the Woodson Art Museum. Andy has been placed on the Museum’s version of the 60-day disabled list. Because now is the busiest time of the year at the Museum, with preparations for the upcoming 36th annual Birds in Art exhibition in full swing, director Kathy Foley made a September call-up of her own, bringing yours truly up to the “big club.”

      While working full time at the Museum for the next couple of months, I’ll be doing a number of things to save Andy’s arm from further damage. I’ll be installing exhibitions, handling delicate works in the Museum’s collection, and helping with set up and take down throughout the facility and grounds. This is the baseball equivalent of being a good glove man up the middle, with decent speed and a tendency to get some clutch base hits. I’m thinking of myself as the consummate “utility player.”

Editor’s note: Matt Foss has been sharing his time and talents with the Woodson Art Museum for almost two years. He received an undergraduate degree and a Master’s degree, both in history, from the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire.

Teens Have SPACE at the Woodson Art Museum

We're BACK – The Woodson Art Museum Teen Art Council (TAC) is back in session and starting its second year. The TAC participants that met August 8 to kick off another year are creative, energetic high school teens who do a fantastic job of developing events for their peers. This year they’re planning to implement a teen-juried exhibition. The theme and title of the teen art exhibition is SPACE, which leaves plenty of room for interpretation by the artists. To share the endless possibilities of creative direction teens can take, I looked up the definitions of space. The Merriam Webster dictionary website http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/space offers ten definitions of space:

1: a period of time; also: its duration 

2 a: a limited extent in one, two, or three dimensions: distance, area, volume b: an extent set apart or available space> space> c: the distance from other people or things that a person needs in order to remain comfortable space> 

3: one of the degrees between or above or below the lines of a musical staff — compare line

 

4 a: a boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction space and time> b: physical space independent of what occupies it —called also absolute space

 

5: the region beyond the earth's atmosphere or beyond the solar system

 

6 a: a blank area separating words or lines b: material used to produce such blank area; especially: a piece of type less than one en in width 

7: a set of mathematical elements and especially of abstractions of all the points on a line, in a plane, or in physical space; especially: a set of mathematical entities with a set of axioms of geometric character — compare metric space, topological space, vector space

 

8 a: linage b: broadcast time available especially to advertisers 

9: accommodations on a public vehicle 

10 a: the opportunity to assert or experience one's identity or needs freely b: an opportunity for privacy or time to oneself

Now TAC and I, as their advisor, must find ways to explore the final frontier and go where TAC has not gone before. At this point in the journey it’s time for TAC to spread the message about the exhibition and to distribute the guidelines to area high school students. Between now and April 14, 2012, the exhibition must be juried, installed and ready to open when the Woodson Art Museum’s presentation of NASA|Art: 50 Years of Exploration begins.

As we embark on this journey, TAC members will learn about exhibition development. October 27, they’ll meet with Museum staff members and find out how each contributes to exhibition development. Then they’ll take a behind-the-scenes tour guided by Andy McGivern, curator of exhibitions, and Jane Weinke, curator of collections. Each Museum staff member will assist and guide the TAC members as they journey into this new frontier.

TAC also has planned the Teens Go Social event on September 23, 7-9 pm. High school teens can meet and work with artist Thomas Hill, learn his techniques for creating wire sculpture, and experience the Wire Woodland installation. Bottom line: it’s a social event, with music, food, and friends.

TAC would like to welcome teens to their SPACE. If you’re interested in joining, contact me, Jayna Hintz, by calling 715.845.7010 or email me at jhintz@lywam.org.

Kids Get a Kick Out of Art

Looking through a camera lens this past week, the delights of art came into crystal-clear focus. It’s been written all over the faces of the children who’ve flocked to Family Fest, the Woodson Art Museum’s new drop-in, art-making festival.

The glee, the sheer joy was in their movements, too. Skips, twirls, hops, and arms held high.

That delight percolated to the surface and spilled out in giggles while one little girl squirted colorful dye onto a twisted t-shirt. One young boy simply danced while chasing bubbles as they lifted on a breeze. Others crouched, mesmerized, while seeing bright light bleach pink paper where a sun-print stencil had blocked the spray of sunscreen.

Each day, August 9-16, visitors were invited to stop by anytime during regular Museum hours to try a different art-making activity – garden sculpture, sun prints, tie-dye, bubble blowing and bubble prints, kite-making, a graffiti wall, and a movement tour of sculptures throughout the Museum grounds. More than 1,000 attended Family Fest throughout the week.

The seven-day festival culminated last evening with a family yoga class, offered free of charge by River Flow Yoga, and a family concert that drew more than 300 people to the Museum’s sculpture garden on a glorious late-summer evening. Glen Everhart’s parodies and musical fun had families’ toes tapping and hands clapping to this musician’s sing-along tunes.

Museum staff began planning for Family Fest last fall, long before the national initiative Let’s Move! Museums & Gardens was announced by First Lady Michelle Obama and the Institute of Museum and Library Services earlier this spring. But the effort – now 400+ museums strong – to promote healthy food choices and physical activity through interactive programs has been a natural fit for the Woodson Art Museum’s Family Fest and many other programs offered throughout the year for all ages.

Families are encouraged to practice healthy habits together through hands-on art-making activities in a range of monthly Museum programs – from Art Babies and Toddler Tuesday through Art Beyond Sight for those with blindness and vision impairments and SPARK! for individuals with memory loss and their care partners.

This summer’s first Family Fest may be over, but the spirit of the festival and national initiative live on throughout all of the many Museum programs that encourage visitors to let art move them – both through the process of making art and through enjoying artwork on view.

The sculpture garden movement tour lives on, as well. Both you and the children you bring to the Museum can check out an audio tour kit at the greeter desk and, with map in hand and a headset to guide you, embark on a tour called Let Art Move You.

The kit includes a pedometer to help you count steps and even calories as you make your way throughout the grounds. The audio tour includes soothing narration that offers insights about the artwork and the animals depicted, open-ended questions to ponder and music to encourage you to let go with a bit of physical expression.

The tour encourages visitors to dance or slink like a stealthy cat while enroute to some of the sculptures. With children along for the tour, adults can shed a few grown-up inhibitions and just have fun.

Stop by the Museum often to be a kid again, and let art move you, too.

Winning with Art History

Last March, I blogged about the Woodson Art Museum’s Art History 101 program. It is designed to appeal to adults who wish to learn more about the broader subject of art. The program is presented in the evening on the first Thursday of every month and repeated over the lunch hour two weeks later. It’s tied to a family hands-on activity in an adjoining space that highlights the artwork and techniques of the artist featured in the Art History 101 presentation.

Last week, I examined the life and artwork of American sculptor Alexander “Sandy” Calder. Calder, whose father and grandfather were prominent American sculptors, is best known for his colorful mobile and stabile sculptures.


Alexander Calder, Untitled, 1976
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

I’ve always enjoyed Calder’s work, and one of my favorites is his seventy-foot red-and-black mobile hanging in the atrium of the East Building of the National Gallery of Art, Washington. It’s a majestic sculpture that moves freely with the breeze.

In my lectures, I like to combine images with video. With Calder, I was able to capture archival footage of the artist from the 1950s showing a performance of his circus, or Cirque Calder, in Paris. Calder began making small circus figures of wire and other materials shortly after moving to Paris in the late 1920s; he gave these performances at social events in Paris and New York.

My recent audience consisted mainly of art enthusiasts, including Museum docents. At this lecture I also was honored to have my 92-year-old mother-in-law in attendance. She listened to my presentation and later told me she thought I did a really good job. Our visitor Services desk staff member told me that others who attended the lecture also were complimentary.

Receiving positive feedback makes the time and effort put forth to prepare a program rewarding. I have to say that I enjoy having an opportunity to study and learn about a variety of artists, and that’s a win-win situation for everyone.

Hot Fun in the Summer Time

Museum purchase with funds provided by 

Nan Schaffer and Julie Kreiner

In 1995, The Heavyweight, a life-size bronze hippo by Burt Brent was the sixth large-scale sculpture acquired for the Woodson Art Museum’s garden and quickly became a visitor favorite. I suspect there are two reasons for its popularity. One, most certainly, is its endearing pose. The huge animal appears to have collapsed into the mud, perhaps to escape the heat of the day, or maybe from its immense weight. Another, and I imagine the most appealing factor, is that it’s the single sculpture that can be touched. In fact you can sit on it, slide down it, stare into its soulful eyes, or just feel its texture and folds.

If you ever have shared these experiences you already are aware that at certain times of the day, the metal absorbs the heat of the sun and gets very warm – perhaps too warm. I cannot say it better than the attractive sign placed near The Heavyweight.

“Hi, I am a happy hippo. I love sunshine but it makes me very hot. My tent helps me stay cooler. Moms and dads, please touch me first to make sure I’m not too warm for your little ones to sit on.

PS I am the only sculpture at the Museum that can be touched. That makes me special.”

Pop-up tent canopies have shielded the sculpture for several years. While they served the purpose, more attractive alternatives certainly exist. Finding the perfect product, designing the structure, and securing the funding all have been accomplished, at long last.

The newly installed shade structure consists of two sage-colored, trapezoid-shaped sails supported by four curved posts. Not only are the sails pleasing to the eye, the synthetic fabric is long lasting and allows cool breezes to flow, all while filtering 95% of ultraviolet radiation. All that contributes to the goal of reducing the sun-generated heat on The Heavyweight.

Rob Erickson from Wausau Canvas designed the structure. He and his team have the sails in place. But a few tweaks still are necessary to get the maximum coverage and tension on the sails. This should be accomplished in the next few days.

Why not come and see the new shade structure during Family Fest, August 9-16? The week-long art-making festival will be held on the grounds adjacent to The Heavyweight and focuses on developing healthy habits including – exercise, nutrition, sun safety, and creativity – through art. Check out the schedule on our website.

We are grateful that support for the shade structure was provided in part by the Orville and Geraldine Peterson Family Trust of the Community Foundation of North Central Wisconsin.