TAM Docents: In the Galleries_Pre-holiday Edition

Hello Docents-

I have forwarded on a very informative (and fun) email from Ellen that will be useful information for the month of December (and in some cases, beyond). Please read below and let me know if you have any questions about Snowjob.

I will soon be sending you some reading materials and the January – March training calendar so that you can do a bit of homework to prepare for the new exhibitions during the break.

Thank you for all that you do for Tacoma Art Museum!

-Jana

 

Jana Wennstrom
Volunteer Programs Coordinator
TACOMA ART MUSEUM
T: 253.272.4258 x3030

 

 

 

From: Ellen Ito
Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2008 3:07 PM
To: Visitor Services Group; Jana Wennstrom; Michelle Kinney
Subject: In the Galleries_Pre-holiday Edition

 

Hello.
With Thanksgiving now past, I am looking forward to Snowbound - My interest is largely due to the imminent arrival of Snowjob by the brilliant Shannon Eakins and Marc Dombrosky. If you need the details about Snowjob, here they are (I've underlined the dates the work will be on view):

During Snowbound, Tacoma artists Marc Dombrosky and Shannon Eakins will transform three museum spaces with their original art. In the Event Space, place yourself inside a snowglobe as they create a snowdrift with thousands of snowflakes made from recycled office paper. Periodically throughout the day, the drift will be blown about with electric-powered leaf blowers, creating an interior blizzard.

Dombrosky and Eakins will also wrap each of the 650 stones in Richard Rhodes' "stone wave" with secondhand sweaters and blankets. The installation addresses the diversity of our community: how we share, take care of one another, and protect ourselves. Afterward, each garment will be laundered and donated back to the community. This installation will be on view December 9 through January 4.

And don’t miss Shreddy, a life-size polar bear rug made from shredded office paper. Shreddy will be on view in the lobby December 13 through 16.

If you'd like to learn more about the artists, here is a link to their collaborative blog:

http://tacomafunmachine.blogspot.com/

from there you can link to their individual blogs, or go look at Marc Dombrosky's pages at the website of Platform Gallery:

http://www.platformgallery.com/artist_pages/Dombrosky/Dombrosky_main.html

..You can look at more Scott Fife at the Platform site, too:

http://www.platformgallery.com/artist_pages/Fife/Fife_main.html

Speaking of Speaking Parts:

At the most recent docent workshop, Judi Keyser gave some interesting TAM related information about artist Hilda Morris.Thanks, Judi!Here is an article with the same:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/visualart/17645_tf107.shtml

Judi went the extra mile and asked registrar Michelle Kinney the current whereabouts of the sculpture. The piece is on loan to the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. The Myth of the Sea is on view in the level one lobby, at the 7th Ave. entrance. The convention center has a self guided tour of the artwork that is on view throughout the building,including a gallery space that has rotating exhibitions. Completely worth stopping by for a breather during downtown Seattle holiday shopping trips!

Hooray for Modernist poetry:

Sally Finch's The Wasteland Revisited I is the artist's response to Eliot’s poem is based on the graphic qualities of the written text.
Do you want to revisit T.S. Eliot's poem and experience the despair of post-war London? Here:
http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html

Harry Bertoia,creator of Small Bush and awesome furniture- like the iconic, waffle-butt inducing Diamond Chair:



I can't mention Bertoia's Diamond Chair without giving props to our own gallery seating,by Marcel Breuer:

According to Wikipedia,"The Wassily Chair, also known as the Model B3 chair, was designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925-26 while he was the head of the cabinet-making workshop at the Bauhaus, in Dessau, Germany. Despite popular belief, the chair was not designed for the non-objective painter Wassily Kandinsky, who was concurrently on the Bauhaus faculty. However, Kandinsky had admired the completed design, and Breuer fabricated a duplicate for Kandinsky's personal quarters. The chair became known as "Wassily" decades later, when it was re-released by an Italian manufacturer named Gavina who had learned of the anecdotal Kandinsky connection in the course of its research on the chair's origins."


That's all for this round. Happy post-Thanksgiving!

-Ellen