On Sunday morning we officially opened the studio. First to those who had responded to the fliers and listserve emails and later to anyone who walked by. Throughout the afternoon people began to take notice some only stopping in and others staying and setting up shop. Without exception everyone who entered asked about the building which gave us an opportunity to discuss some of the spatial politics on campus. While the breadth of our visitors expanded to all reaches of the university and town, surprisingly few of our visitors were from the art department.
Due to inclement weather the structural integrity of our ad-hoc sculpture was tested throughout the day and was often lost against gusting winds rain. But at each point the structure had an opportunity to be rebuilt and without a master plan or blueprint to refer to the task of rebuilding was left to its occupants who were often engineers or architects who offered greater insight in redesigning its features.
When the frame began to shake and threatened to collapse a pre-med painter designed a system of twine supports and when the roof flew off and took the south wall with it it was a mechanical engineer who suspended the new roof between the neighboring trees. Through the building and rebuilding of our studio construction became an impossible but highly social collaboration between practitioners of different disciplines.
No comments:
Post a Comment