catapult magazine

Art 2003

by The *cino Community

Did you attend an arts exhibition or event this year that stood out to you? If so, describe it.

*cino staff picks: Grant experienced the Guggenheim in New York. The whole place is an artistic experience. As museum experiences go, it was one of the best. Museums always seem to have so many pieces that you find yourself just glancing at as many as you can, so that you don’t waste your ticket money. But many pieces require hours, even days of attention. The Guggenheim seemed to have a more manageable amount of pieces, and you could look at them from many different angles as you walked up and around the building in an upward spiral.

Rob and Kirstin have been enjoying monthly exhibits by local artists in their church in Three Rivers. Favorites have included distinct and functional pottery by Eric Strader from Goshen, Indiana; incredible, thoughtful, complex work by G. Carol Bomer (which we had only seen online prior to the exhibit); and a traveling exhibit called Seen But Rarely Heard: Voices of Adolescent Girls, which featured full size wood cut-outs of actual teen-aged girls with their words on the backs of the figures.

V.K.: Art exhibit at Valparaiso University. A woman (sorry, forgot her name) photographed and then wrote about California teens doing whatever it took to live up to 1990’s California ideals of beauty, status—young girls dressed up for prom to look as if they were 35; a teenage girl undergoing plastic surgery (common in her high school); and more super shallow ways persons became like their 11 1/2" teenage dolls. The kids’ lives were about as absent of any spiritual values as one could get.

C.N.: I saw the da Vinci exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Art museum. Considering the exhibit consisted of only one painting by him (I didn’t know that the Mona Lisa was one of only three known paintings by him) I was a bit disappointed. But I saw a piece by Calder and a Chuck Close. I absolutely love Chuck Close. That was probably the coolest visual-art moment of my life.

J.V.: My wife and I attended the Peterson’s Auto Museum in Los Angeles, CA. It was very inspiring as it houses automobiles from early Model T’s to futuristic concept cars. Three floors of automobile history, which rivals a Smithsonian exhibit including a Hot Wheels center for children to play with, interact with and build cars to their specifications. Everything from engine design (combustible, electric and hydro-powered), safety design to body types are covered in detail in the displays, presentations and films shown at the museum.