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September 16 - 21, 2012
SEPTEMBER 16 - 21, 2012 - first visit
- LODGING: We are staying in Pocahontas, Hinds County, at the home of Laurie H McRee, the new Chairwoman of the Board of the Museum, "a beautiful farm in the country north of Jackson with rolling pastureland, lakes, horses, stables, and even a croquet lawn."
- TRAVELING/VISITING from central/downtown Jackson to surrounding suburbs, as far as Madison. Unavoidable contrasts.
- Jackson is built on clay and sand. CREEKS in every neighborhood. 'Purple, Hanging Moss, White Oak, Belhaven, Lynch, Cany, Trahan, Willow, Oak, Pebble, Bear, Town, Big, New Canney, Rose, Eubanks, Pearl River, ...'
- Visiting, understanding the MISSISSIPPI MUSEUM OF ART. Is it going to be our base community? Seen first: a huge glazed entrance hall, an attractive public café, a walled-in museum space, peppered with iconic contemporary furniture. The wide open Garden, generosity of Bank Plus, seeps into the city . The leaders are white women. MMA as locus of superior culture? Communities at the lower periphery of culture?
- The QUESTIONS OF COMMUNITY BASED ARTISTS AS VISITORS is fully in our mind. We are concerned with what we will leave behind as much as with what will be shown and active in the Garden of the museum in March. We have a coordinator, Carole Cox Peaster, and a budget. There was a project last year, which gives us some initial contacts. First step is to visit town as we will work with 'communities'. What does that mean? for us? for the museum? for our potential partners?
We are impatient about meeting with the Jackson communities (80% Black). We do not forget that we are white, with a French accent. We are not coming to entertain/quiet down the poor on behalf of a white institution. We are on a journey A quest? We have a baggage of no-no's and the baggage of our abilities. But we want to cooperate, collaborate, learn, exchange, listen and ... transform and ... be transformed.
- The C3 label at the MISSISSIPPI MUSEUM OF ART, Creativity- Conversation-Community, is a thread, a path for us. We understand we must mark it with artistic and social content.
- One goal outlined to us is "TO INITIATE DIALOGUE AMONG JACKSON'S DIVERSE POPULATION." "We therefore wish to involve groups with existing links to the museum, from rich to poor, various social classes . We have identified two partners and three sites.
Listening and reacting to the harsh talk of Amber May opens our heart to OPERATION SHOESTRING, the after school program. After giving us some strategic pointers and insights on how to get in and out of the city in case of lockdown, she says that "Art has not worked for our children." We are determined to prove her wrong.
Our conversation with Terry Hunt, a High School Social Sciences teacher, is political and civically minded from the get-go: her high schools kids must work on the Capitol, she says.
In our conversation with Tony Davenport, an African American painter attempting "to reflect the narrative of the times," he names Farish Street as a new site in the making.
We also propose to have a group of board members involved.
- At the end of the week we propose a project "JACKSON STREAMS AND DREAMS" and a schedule from now to March. "Our plan, during our three initial visits here, is to reach out to a varied sample of neighborhoods, representative of Jackson; to identify buildings which are considered to be icons (or generic) for said neighborhoods ; to "build" a group of committed participants. With us they will start conversations and art-related activities, generate artifacts, thus developing a representation/interpretation of the area they live in.
Before our second visit, we will have built hollow structures of two or three of the iconic or generic buildings and will bring them to the corresponding partners and teams in Jackson. They will lead the process of giving meaning to the buildings with the artifacts or images/dreams collected, created or to be created by them ... In March, we will build in the garden a network of small, meandering structures, which will echo the creeks existing in each neighborhood of Jackson - "the streams" - and hold the buildings. The art installation, in our plan so far, can be seen as a constellation of structures - not necessarily a continuous piece - made of parts of different size and height, some as narrow as a few inches, some the width of a large table, some almost to the ground, some up to 100 inches high. It could start past the multi-flower planters and the pathway coming from the old museum, aim diagonally towards the museum building through the part of the garden closest to the building, direct visitors toward the stairs on the left side of the café entrance and "enter" the museum. Meaning that, inside the museum, there would be a table-like piece used for special circles, dialogue and any activity chosen by the museum."
- We also insist on ISSUES OF PROTECTION AND PRESERVATION of each and all parts of the work (temporarily outdoors in the garden, but with potentially more permanent destinations later), to prevent destruction by rain or other harsh conditions, as happened last year. All works, by artists, professional or not, or by non-artists, must be respected the same way, as our work is not to temporarily entertain people in a garden but to attempt long term, meaningful communications through the arts.
All structures must be low impact, portable, covered by tarps if necessary. Here lies the ethics of our proposal. And its aesthetics.
- We understand that we may be about to create/fabricate CONTAINERS FOR CONTENTS / POSSIBILITIES. We are weaving a thread with precious little time to understand and deepen "a" content. So our work should create opportunities for content to appear independently from us. A new exciting challenge for the initiating artists in us.
- LODGING: We are staying in Pocahontas, Hinds County, at the home of Laurie H McRee, the new Chairwoman of the Board of the Museum, "a beautiful farm in the country north of Jackson with rolling pastureland, lakes, horses, stables, and even a croquet lawn."
- TRAVELING/VISITING from central/downtown Jackson to surrounding suburbs, as far as Madison. Unavoidable contrasts.
- Jackson is built on clay and sand. CREEKS in every neighborhood. 'Purple, Hanging Moss, White Oak, Belhaven, Lynch, Cany, Trahan, Willow, Oak, Pebble, Bear, Town, Big, New Canney, Rose, Eubanks, Pearl River, ...'
- Visiting, understanding the MISSISSIPPI MUSEUM OF ART. Is it going to be our base community? Seen first: a huge glazed entrance hall, an attractive public café, a walled-in museum space, peppered with iconic contemporary furniture. The wide open Garden, generosity of Bank Plus, seeps into the city . The leaders are white women. MMA as locus of superior culture? Communities at the lower periphery of culture?
- The QUESTIONS OF COMMUNITY BASED ARTISTS AS VISITORS is fully in our mind. We are concerned with what we will leave behind as much as with what will be shown and active in the Garden of the museum in March. We have a coordinator, Carole Cox Peaster, and a budget. There was a project last year, which gives us some initial contacts. First step is to visit town as we will work with 'communities'. What does that mean? for us? for the museum? for our potential partners?
We are impatient about meeting with the Jackson communities (80% Black). We do not forget that we are white, with a French accent. We are not coming to entertain/quiet down the poor on behalf of a white institution. We are on a journey A quest? We have a baggage of no-no's and the baggage of our abilities. But we want to cooperate, collaborate, learn, exchange, listen and ... transform and ... be transformed.
- The C3 label at the MISSISSIPPI MUSEUM OF ART, Creativity- Conversation-Community, is a thread, a path for us. We understand we must mark it with artistic and social content.
- One goal outlined to us is "TO INITIATE DIALOGUE AMONG JACKSON'S DIVERSE POPULATION." "We therefore wish to involve groups with existing links to the museum, from rich to poor, various social classes . We have identified two partners and three sites.
Listening and reacting to the harsh talk of Amber May opens our heart to OPERATION SHOESTRING, the after school program. After giving us some strategic pointers and insights on how to get in and out of the city in case of lockdown, she says that "Art has not worked for our children." We are determined to prove her wrong.
Our conversation with Terry Hunt, a High School Social Sciences teacher, is political and civically minded from the get-go: her high schools kids must work on the Capitol, she says.
In our conversation with Tony Davenport, an African American painter attempting "to reflect the narrative of the times," he names Farish Street as a new site in the making.
We also propose to have a group of board members involved.
- At the end of the week we propose a project "JACKSON STREAMS AND DREAMS" and a schedule from now to March. "Our plan, during our three initial visits here, is to reach out to a varied sample of neighborhoods, representative of Jackson; to identify buildings which are considered to be icons (or generic) for said neighborhoods ; to "build" a group of committed participants. With us they will start conversations and art-related activities, generate artifacts, thus developing a representation/interpretation of the area they live in.
Before our second visit, we will have built hollow structures of two or three of the iconic or generic buildings and will bring them to the corresponding partners and teams in Jackson. They will lead the process of giving meaning to the buildings with the artifacts or images/dreams collected, created or to be created by them ... In March, we will build in the garden a network of small, meandering structures, which will echo the creeks existing in each neighborhood of Jackson - "the streams" - and hold the buildings. The art installation, in our plan so far, can be seen as a constellation of structures - not necessarily a continuous piece - made of parts of different size and height, some as narrow as a few inches, some the width of a large table, some almost to the ground, some up to 100 inches high. It could start past the multi-flower planters and the pathway coming from the old museum, aim diagonally towards the museum building through the part of the garden closest to the building, direct visitors toward the stairs on the left side of the café entrance and "enter" the museum. Meaning that, inside the museum, there would be a table-like piece used for special circles, dialogue and any activity chosen by the museum."
- We also insist on ISSUES OF PROTECTION AND PRESERVATION of each and all parts of the work (temporarily outdoors in the garden, but with potentially more permanent destinations later), to prevent destruction by rain or other harsh conditions, as happened last year. All works, by artists, professional or not, or by non-artists, must be respected the same way, as our work is not to temporarily entertain people in a garden but to attempt long term, meaningful communications through the arts.
All structures must be low impact, portable, covered by tarps if necessary. Here lies the ethics of our proposal. And its aesthetics.
- We understand that we may be about to create/fabricate CONTAINERS FOR CONTENTS / POSSIBILITIES. We are weaving a thread with precious little time to understand and deepen "a" content. So our work should create opportunities for content to appear independently from us. A new exciting challenge for the initiating artists in us.