“How Did You Make That?” Music by Ruth Crawford Seeger, Steve Reich and Anthony Braxton: process and improvisation.
As the Richmond Art Center reaches the milestone of its 80th anniversary in 2016 it will be assembling an exhibition looking at some of the artists who have shown in the Art Center over the decades. These artists will have been asked to also invite artists whom they have taught, encouraged, mentored, or simply admired. With these relationships we see certain affinities between artists, a commonality of interest, attitude, mood, agenda, even humor. In regarding these works it becomes possible to discern patterns of palette, shapes and textures, rhythms and tempe, volume and space.
Taking these elements as keys to understanding the foundation and structure of the art or the music, three sessions will focus on three approaches to expression. Finding parallels in art in the exhibition and the music performed, the students will have the opportunity to make art engaging some of the same elements in projects geared to the musical manifestations of these elements.
The Third Session will leave the wall and examine the work of two artists: Yvette Deas and Mildred Howard. Both follow process to add layers of richness and meaning to their work, In the paintings of Deas, the surface of popularized scenes of the American Dream as promoted in mid-20th century T.V. yields to the underlying reality. Collaged news photographs of the period’s police clashes and civil rights demonstrations seep through to the surface to disrupt the myth. Mildred Howard uses the printmaking technique of chine-collé to layer historical images with composite figures to set up dichotomies of freedom and slavery. Viewing the bits and pieces lend shape to a greater form will stimulate the impulse to push beyond the first view. Listening to the final musical program in the series, the students will explore how they can make each pass through a part of a process which becomes more than the sum of the parts.
Using brush with paint, collage elements, and then the line of the pen, each iteration of color, shape, pattern reveals a deeper resonance, a closer space. Launching from the two-dimensional into three-dimensional to push the colors, shapes, and patterns into deep space will open students to the intrigues of pushing an idea, a theme, a vision, always further.
The Residency by the Del Sol String Quartet, organized in partnership with the Richmond Art Center, has been made possible with support from Chamber Music America through its Residency Endowment Fund.