POLYGON BLOOMS

POLYGON BLOOMS @ GROVER WASHINGTON JR. MIDDLE SCHOOL

2010-06-18T14:01:00.001-07:00

ART IN THE OPEN PHILADELPHIA: POLYGON BLOOMS essay by gerard brown

2010-06-10T14:29:00.001-07:00

GETTING TO THE POINT

Since September 11, 2001, we have been obsessed with ‘connecting the dots’…and failing to do so. Conceptually, the world has become a vast array of points, and the paths and vectors that unite and direct them are beginning to form a kind of 21st century astrology understood (one hopes) by the vast security and intelligence complexes that have sprung up to interpret them.

As people, places, and events become coordinates in a grand matrix of possibility, it comes as little surprise that the paths we create as we walk through space, invisible trails we inscribe on our cities, should be of interest to us. I think of this as I meander an uncharted path through web links, browsing images of Grover Washington Jr. Middle School students tracing crystalline forms created by plotting the positions of landmarks. Distilling the messy, organic world of lived experience into the clarity and precision of geometry takes effort.

Benjamin Volta, Jerry Jackson, and their students generate complex geometric shapes from map coordinates. The students have explored a middle terrain between art and mathematics to arrive at their endpoint. They have translated these illusionistic flatforms into actual objects. In 3D space, these forms look like radio towers, electricity pylons, and they call to mind the Watts Towers. Engaged as they are with information, they belong to a genre of art and design that extends from Mark Lombardi and Edward Tufte. But – engaged as they are in the community from which they arose (an 8th grade class at a Philadelphia school) - they seem like a kind of Modernist folk art.

They look like knowledge…at once crystal clear and confounding. One thing that comes to mind is an image by designers Lisa Streusel and James Nick Sears that appeared on the cover of the New York Times Magazine on December 3, 2006. It was an immensely complicated tangle of white lines connecting names of places (New York, World Trade Center, etc.) to people (Mohamed Atta, Tawfik bin Attash) to very general nouns (flight school, place of worship, and so on). This inter-penetrating 3D bubble chart is a beautiful mess – the very image of clarity causing confusion. Anyone who hoped to connect the dots in this thicket was looking for trouble.

But aren’t these things the outcomes of any effort to structure something? Loss? An appearance of clarity where none actually exists? People want things in order. And the clarity of a diagram is seductive for how it pares away all the troubling textures of the world.

Mathematics provides a brilliant metaphor to address the complexities of adolescence. Polygons can be regular and irregular, forms closed or open. Line, arcs, and shapes may be tangent, overlapping, or exclusive. Life is made up of these things. However, once a clear but abstract message passes beyond the charmed circle of the community in which it was invented, who knows?

And is it our business to worry about such things? I doubt it. For now, the constructions blossoming in Grover Washington Jr. Middle School are arrestingly gorgeous, simultaneously simple and complex. I want to pull a student aside and ask her to explain them to me. That’s the life they’ll have – one that is carried out by communication from one student to another. That way nothing gets lost,
and all dots will be connected.

- gerard brown

gerard brown is an artist and writer living in Philadelphia

POLYGON BLOOMS created with Grover Washington Jr. Middle School for the ART IN THE OPEN PHILADELPHIA festival on June 9th, 2010.

Wednesday June 9th – Saturday June 12th
Schuylkill River Banks, Philadelphia PA
Along the Path Under the Market Street Bridge
Special Reception on Site Saturday June 12th from 3 – 5pm

ART IN THE OPEN PHILADELPHIA is a new citywide festival that celebrates artists, their inspirations for creating art, and their relationships with the urban environment.Inspired by the tradition of plein air painting, the four-day festival
presents over 35 artists working in a variety of media and styles on site, outside, along the banks of the Schuylkill River in downtown Philadelphia. Complementing this unique display of art-making-in-action will be a host of public programs presented by many of the 34 partner institutions and showcasing the vibrant community of working artists, galleries and institutions that make Philadelphia a major urban art center.

http://artintheopenphila.org/

BRIGHTER

2010-06-03T16:07:00.000-07:00

Whitewash

2010-06-03T16:04:00.001-07:00

BUILD

2010-05-28T05:10:00.000-07:00

COORDINATE CONSTRUCTIONS

2010-05-05T19:12:00.000-07:00

LABELING & REDACTING COORDINATES

2010-05-05T19:07:00.000-07:00

TAP MG TEAM: BUILD

2010-05-05T19:01:00.000-07:00

Towers in Vinyl

2010-05-05T18:59:00.001-07:00

Tower Design with TAP: MG TEAM

2010-05-05T18:49:00.000-07:00

HEARTS & MINDS

2010-03-08T11:36:00.001-08:00

Students created orthogonal perspective drawings over a digital print of Raphael's painting, "The School of Athens".

On the left students drew their Geo-Emblem drawings vanishing at Plato's chest. These drawings visualize the students' idea of an ideal geometric design.

On the right students drew their Contextual-Coordinate drawing vanishing at Aristotle's head. These drawings visualize the students' experiential relation to the observable world (ie Philadelphia).

RESEARCH II : PLATO & ARISTOTLE

2010-03-08T11:16:00.000-08:00

Raphael's School of Athens from Beth Harris on Vimeo.

RESEARCH I : ON POINT

2010-03-08T11:15:00.000-08:00

smARThistory discusses Leonardo's Last Supper from Beth Harris on Vimeo.

RELATIONAL GEOMETRY

2010-02-01T06:27:00.000-08:00

Students traded finished drawings with each other to create collaborative forms.

"Commerce, trading, the market, is a much more important metaphor for art than we like to believe. For my part, I tend to think well of metaphors of commerce and trading. In early civilization, the trader or the merchant was always bringing things from outside culture, from other cultures, into the market at the center of the city. Traders disrupted things, they brought disharmony, difference, new objects and ideas." Nicolas Bourriaud

From Public Relations - Nicolas Bourriaud - ArtForum Interview

ReTHINKING CARTOGRAPHY: CHARLES AND RAY EAMES

2010-02-01T06:04:00.000-08:00

Powers of Ten from Heinz Legler on Vimeo.

CONTEXTUAL COORDINATES 2

2010-01-29T05:58:00.000-08:00

Thick Sharpie markers were used to create finished drawings.

ReTHINKING CARTOGRAPHY: WILLIAM POPE L.

2010-01-22T05:20:00.000-08:00

In his colorfully drawn map, William Pope. L - who has literally crawled the streets of Manhattan - identifies the location of safe houses in downtown Manhattan, identifying the transitory spaces in the city used by people with an estranged relationship with legality. (From New Museum Website)

"Like the African shaman who chews his pepper seeds and spits seven times into the air, I believe art re-ritualizes the everyday to reveal something fresh about our lives. This revelation is a vitality and it is a power to change the world." WILLIAM POPE L.

Interview

CONTEXTUAL COORDINATES 1

2010-01-16T22:09:00.000-08:00

Students worked over a map of Philadelphia, PA.

Students placed a dot to mark locations that they have lived, played, or experienced as a visitor.

Students connected their dots to create unique geometric forms.

The geometric shapes created were determined by contextual experience.

ReTHINKING CARTOGRAPHY: Francis Alÿs

2010-01-15T21:20:00.000-08:00

“Sometimes Doing Something Poetic Can Become Political, and Sometimes Doing Something Political Can Become Poetic” Francis Alÿs

http://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/127/

“Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing” Francis Alÿs

GEO-EMBLEMS --> COORDINATE TRANSFERS

2010-01-05T20:50:00.000-08:00

Students created a geometric emblem over a simple X,Y coordinate grid on 8.5" x 11" paper. This emblem was transferred to a larger grid measuring 13" x 19". A final color design was transferred onto a large sheet of tracing paper.

ReTHINKING GEOMETRY: ODILI DONALD ODITA

2010-01-05T07:56:00.000-08:00

“What is most interesting to me is a fusion between cultures where things that seem faraway and disparate have the ability to function within an almost seamless flow. The fusion I seek is one that can represent a type of living within a world of difference. No matter the discord, I believe through art there is a way to weave the different parts into an existent whole, and where metaphorically, the notion of a common humanity can be understood as a real choice.” Odili Donald Odita

http://www.odilidonaldodita.com/

A RELAY IN CONCEPTUAL COLLABORATION

2009-12-24T07:32:00.000-08:00

Students wrote coordinate based instructions to create artworks that were executed by others.

We exchanged these instructions with each other and began to create an archive of geometric forms.

ReTHINKING GEOMETRY: SOL LEWITT

2009-12-23T07:15:00.000-08:00

“The idea becomes the machine that
makes the art” Sol Lewitt

“Ideas cannot be owned. They belong
to whomever understands them.”
Sol Lewitt

READY SET START: COLLAB-GEOMETRY DRAWINGS

2009-12-11T06:46:00.000-08:00

Selected COLLAB-GEOMETRY DRAWINGS

SITE FOR INSTALLATION

2009-12-01T07:11:00.000-08:00

This is our site for our TAP installation at Grover Washington Jr. Middle School. We plan to clear out the fountain and fill the space.