11/10/08

Sweet Briar College

While at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts (VCCA), I did a guest lecture at Sweet Briar College for David Griffith's class. While preparing for the lecture, I went through tons of old photos and found some good stuff.


This first image is of the Lost City in Bophuthatswana, Africa, where I worked for about 4-5 months. The Lost City is a project Sol Kerzner created to attach to Sun City (think Las Vegas in South Africa) so it would be more family friendly. CNN did an article on him, recently. We created "ruins" out of cement to make it look like it was an ancient city that had been destroyed by a volcano.


This is my crew (Blaine isn't in the image - argh. I need to find a pic of Blaine)


This was at the Henry Doorly Zoo. We were constructing rainforest trees (I helped sculpt and did all of the painting).


We would go through all this work to make them look great, and they would take the wires you see in the previous image and hook things to the wires such as fire alarms. Kind of spoils the effect.

Anyway, I talked about a lot of different things at Sweet Briar College, but the focus was "process," so I showed lots of images that showed how and why I create things. I think the lecture went okay...

I have spent the last few days dealing with computer issues and cleaning my office and basement. I hope to get back to art by this coming weekend. Updates will be slow here until then.

9 comments:

Kate said...

The lecture was more than "okay" as I enjoyed it very much. I thought your work was very impressive and unique. Since you came to talk to our class, I have been reading your blog and I have become even more impressed by your work, etc. Prof Griffith claims I am "stalking" you, but I beg to differ. I have loved reading your blog and some of your work as inspired me to finally do some of my more "experimental" work that I have been afraid would not be well accepted by teachers here.

So thank you for coming to our class and I hope that one day you can make the trek back.

ArtsyFartsyTim said...

Hey! Kate, it is so nice that you are following the blog. What a surprise. Thanks for the kind words. Now I am very curious about what kind of work you are doing. You should send me a link to your web page if you have one. Mine is kind of down, for now. I hope to redesign it by the end of the year (very different from what it has been, or even what a web site SHOULD be - uh oh)

How's Prof Griffith? He seems like a very cool guy. I want to read his book...

Kate said...

I don't have a website, aside from my flickr for my photography (http://www.flickr.com/photos/25361576@N08/).

Otherwise I just started doing different sorts of things with printmaking, Ill share once I can either take pictures/find a better way of explaining it.

Prof Griffith seems to be good I like him as a teacher and he is a cool guy. He's doing a reading tomorrow in Lynchburg that I am going to, and quite excited about.

I would love to keep in touch with you and see what you are doing, so I hope you can get back to me!

ArtsyFartsyTim said...

Wow - those are some fantastic photographs. Very nice. I forgot to take a pic of the Sweet Briar campus so I couldn't include an image on the blog (and there was so much color in the trees when I was there). If you'd like to send along an image for the blog, please do! I will credit you, naturally ;)

Kate said...

Done. I just uploaded some photos from the weekend onto flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25361576@N08/

Other than what I have on there, on the main page and the "West" album, I dont have any more right now

ArtsyFartsyTim said...

wow you are speedy!!! If I post them on my blog, how should I credit them? Just Kate?

Kate said...

Just "Kate Gorman from SBC" is alright with me

Jessica said...

Impressive conversatin'. We all liked your lecture a lot(though we are not all lovely photographers like Kate here). Thank you again for coming, though. It was very interesting/informative/funny/beautiful to look at; what more could members of an interdisciplinary arts class ask for?

ArtsyFartsyTim said...

Wow - thank you Jessica!

I never know if those presentations are very interesting to people. I always work from the assumption that they are boring, so I try to put some silly stuff in to lighten them up. I guess what I am saying is that it is nice to get positive feedback. The work I am doing now seems so different from a lot of what I talked about at SBC. I might be doing a similar lecture this Spring (at a university out West) and it will be interesting to see how different the presentations are just months apart...

What kind of art do you do? I am always interested to see what other people are doing.

I was impressed with everything about Sweet Briar. I heard a lot from people at VCCA about how bright and talented the students are, as well. Seems like such an idyllic place to go to college.

Tim