Public Art 2
Topics in Public Art II
Instructor: Assistant Professor Dee Hibbert-Jones, hjdee@ucsc.edu
“The person who chooses to do public art might be considered a refugee, in flight from the gallery/museum which has been established as the proper occasion for art in our culture and time…Public art revises the present of art and conjectures on the future: a time when art might be considered not as a separable category, in it’s own arena and with its own products, but as an atmosphere instilled, almost secretly, within other categories of life."
Vito Acconci, Coming Out Notes on Public Art.
Course description:
Topics In Public Art is an upper division elective that invites a more in depth exploration of art in the public sphere. Students will build an understanding of public art sparked by practical experience designing and developing projects. The theoretical aspects of contemporary public art, and an introduction to the range of current public art practices will be introduced through readings, lectures, artist's talks. The combination of practical hands on technique and theoretical ideology will enable students to fully develop and execute their own project within the class.
The students will engage in a quarter long project, creating a relationship to one community, then proposing and designing a project to accommodate a specific group or area. Students may work individually or in groups at public sites such as the landfill, the arboretum, local hospitals and schools; or in other public areas such as public parks, the UCSC campus; or with or for specific communities such as people of color, the aged, the homeless etc.
The class will be divided into three sections, landscape, memory and artist as activist. Each section will have slide presentations that introduce key issues in public art. Throughout each section readings and discussions will raise questions pertinent to the specific area, such as: what is public space, who are “the public” and can there truly be an art for them, what is the role of the artist in new genre public art practices, what does site specific truly mean, and what is the value of temporality vs. permanence?
Students will also research one area of interest to them. Their research will take the form of interviews with living artists, visits (on-line or in person) to sites to explore public art works, and guided readings. A series of demonstrations and mini assignments will hone skills taught in public art 1(scale model fabrication, proposal writing, orthographic and scale drawing etc) and help build presentation skills for the quarter long projects presented in class and to the community.
When opportunities arise for the whole class to undertake an actual public art project within the Santa Cruz area, the class will be re-structured to accommodate these real life opportunities. In this instance rather than individual projects, students will work as a group to design and create a work of public art.
Prerequisits: none. Students from outside of the department are encouraged, but require permission from the instructor to join the class.
A list of books which may be used in this class:
Landscape
Cerver, Francisco Ascensio, Landscape Art: world of environmental design, Asensio, Barcelona, 1995
Finkelpearl, Tom, Dialogues in Public Art, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, 2001
Katz, Sarah, New Landmarks public art, community and the meanng of Place, Fairmount Park Assn. 2001
Mitchell, Art and the Public Sphere, Chicago, Univ Chicago Press, 1992
Stiles & Selz, Theories and Documents in Contemporary Art. UC Press, Berkeley, 1996
Memory
Downing, Francis, Remembrance and the Design of Place, Texas University Press, Texas, 2000
Edkins, Jenny, Trauma and the Memory of Politics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003
Fentress, James & Wickham, Charles, Social Memory, Blackwell, Oxford,
Roth, Michael &Salas, Charles, G, Disturbing Remains, Getty Research Institute, 2001
Young, James, E, The art of memory Holocaust Memorials in history, The Jewish Museum, New York, 1994
Artist as Activist
Doss, Erika, Public Art and Flying Pigs, public art and cultural democracy in American Communities, Smithsonian, Washington, 1995.
Els Van Der Plas, Creating Spaces of Freedom, culture in defiance, Prince Claus Fund, 2002.
Jacob Mary Jane, ed Culture in Action, Sculpture Chicago, Seattle, 1995
Haakke Hans Biennale Venedig , 1993
Kelly, Owen, Community, Art and the State: storming the citadels, Comedia Pub group, London, 1984
Poynor, Rick, Obey the Giant, Life in the Image World, 2001
Report from Charleston, Art in America, 2002
Fathy, Hassah , Architecture for the Poor, 1976
Mockbee, Samuel, Rural Studio and an Architecture of Decency, 2002