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‘Fair go’ and Slow Art Day – An Interview with Elle Credlin

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[In this series, we interview hosts for Slow Art Day and get their thoughts on hosting, the art of looking, and the slow art community. Today we interview Elle Credlin, the Public Programs officer for Bayside City Council in Sandringham, Victoria, Australia.]

Slow Art Day: Tell us about yourself and about Bayside City Council’s Art and Heritage Collections.

Elle Credlin: I’m Bayside City Council’s Art and Heritage Collections and Public Programs Officer. I have a Bachelor of Arts (History) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Cultural Heritage/Museum Studies. My role is to manage Council’s art and heritage collection and also run public programs for the Gallery @ BACC. Council’s art and heritage collection is comprised of over 2000 items including municipal records, plans, maps, textiles, photographs, mayoral regalia and a range of visual arts.

Slow Art Day: That’s great. Tell us more about your role as Public Programs Officer.

Elle: I develop and manage the range of public programs and outreach services to accompany and enrich the exhibition program. These include things like curator’s talks, workshops, tours, art appreciation evenings and now Slow Art Day! We also run an Art and Dementia program titled Connections. Through discussion based tours of art work, the program provides a unique opportunity for people living with dementia to connect, interpret and express experiences through a work of art.

Slow Art Day: Please tell us more about the Dementia program. Do many other programs like that exist in Australia?

Elle: Connections is based on the National Gallery of Australia’s award winning Art and Alzheimer’s program. In 2012, gallery staff received training from NGA educators in how to deliver the program. Each program runs over a four week period and three works of art are discussed each week amongst the four participants. The program employs specialised forms of communication and strategies to encourage participation and support inclusiveness. These strategies include hand gestures, smiling, leaning forward and allowing for silence. It is run during normal gallery opening hours to prevent the marginalising of participants. We are really proud of Connections because it extends beyond many activities commonly available to people with dementia. Participants are able to engage in meaningful activity in an environment where their intellect is respect and valued. As far as I’m aware, we are the only local municipal gallery that runs this particular type of program in the state of Victoria, but that may have changed.

Slow Art Day: Why are you so passionate about making art more accessible?

Elle: I absolutely hate the idea that people could be intimidated or frightened by visiting a gallery or find themselves plagued by the ‘white box syndrome’. Galleries should be inclusive and welcoming. Every single person should have the opportunity to experience the richness of the arts. More broadly, as we are based within a local government context, we also need to align ourselves with the broader organisational mission of inclusivity, accessibility and facilitating opportunities for people of all abilities to participate in community life.

Slow Art Day: We obviously agree. Switching gears – Slow Art Day has really taken off in Australia. There are 13 venues in Australia making it more than 5% of the total worldwide venues yet Australia has only about .3% of world population.  Why do you think Slow Art Day is such a big hit there?

Elle: I’m not sure, that is a really interesting question. Melbourne, in particular, has a thriving artistic and cultural scene so that could have something to do with it. Maybe the fact that Slow Art Day is an accessible and affordable activity mirrors the ‘fair go’, non-elitist attitude of many aspects of Australian culture and life i.e. that everyone should have access to the same opportunities and experiences.

Slow Art Day: Say more about ‘fair go’ – is that Australian lingo?

Elle:  ‘Fair go’ is a very Australian term.  Although it has many different meanings, I think it is fundamentally a commitment to egalitarianism in all aspects of culture and life; that we are all given every reasonable opportunity to access to the same opportunities and rewards. That is how I see it anyway.

Slow Art Day: What more can you tell us about your event? Have you chosen your art?

Elle: For Slow Art Day, we will be celebrating the works of a number of significant early 20th century Australian artists, including Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin and Arthur Streeton. We will be having lunch in the municipal chambers. If it’s a nice day, we might sit out in the rose garden.

Slow Art Day: You plan to make Slow Art Day a regular fixture in your public programs. Does that mean you plan to do regular events throughout the year based on slow looking?

Elle: Yes, Slow Art Day will now be a regular feature in our program. Our Art and Dementia program, as mentioned, is very much aligned with the idea of slow looking. We also host ‘soiree’ type evenings with wine and cheese, which are very popular. These evenings are very relaxed and people are encouraged to take their time with the works.

Slow Art Day: Let’s finish by asking what’s one of your favourite pieces of art? And why?

Elle: That is a hard question! I love Ben Quilty’s work. I think he’s amazing.

[Make sure to check out Elle’s Slow Art Day event at The Gallery at BACC in Brighton, Victoria.]

‘Face’ to Face with Dorian Gray

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Martin Kline, Dorian Gray, 2011. Image Courtesy of the Harvard Art Museums.

Slow Art Day has asked its 2013 college interns to write short summaries of their own experiences looking slowly at artworks of their choosing.

Out of the corner of my eye, I can feel Dorian Gray digging into the back of my neck, his carbonized tendrils reaching outward with a foreboding aura.

Martin Kline’s Dorian Gray (2011) is currently situated on the fourth floor of the Sackler Museum (one of the Harvard Art Museums). The encaustic on panel work resides in a tucked-away enclave to the left, and I might have passed it by, if not for the incredible breathtaking presence of the piece quickly enveloping me. The odd fact that this very contemporary work is being displayed on a floor usually reserved for historical European works from Middle Ages to Modern Art is jarring. And yet, it seems completely appropriate.  Its uniqueness demands its own votive-like shrine. It shouts loudly for your attention in order to simmer to a boil before your stolen attention.

This ‘portrait’ does not portray the Oscar Wilde character in his eternal youth. Instead, the spellbinding work showcases the blistering and decaying remains of the bewitched painting. Miraculously the work still carries the same devilish, enigmatic force that you would expect from a depiction of Dorian’s debaucherous descent in his perpetual youth.

As I gaze at Kline’s work, however, I temporarily forget all literary references. Regardless of intent or allusion, this piece literally feels timeless. From all directions and perspectives it becomes reminiscent of so many worldly forms. I feel as if I need to mentally map the pulsating topography of the piece inch by inch. A gigantic festering blister at direct view morphs slowly into a singed old growth forest to bubbling, oozing lava, to a hearty crop of stalagmites as my gaze traverses the panel. I am able to visually trace the peaks and valleys, following them down into the crevasses created by the dripped wax terrain. The technique used by Kline, curiously one of addition and growth instead of the destruction that you would assume of the corrupted portrait, adds to the oddly lively artwork.

Martin Kline, Dorian Gray (detail), 2011.

Martin Kline, Dorian Gray (detail), 2011.

I realize something while looking horizontally from the right at the Martian landscape (after exhausting all of my other viewing options, museum etiquette-wise). Stepping back a few feet, I see that the wax used is a variety of colors, not the monotone mound it appears to be. Light gray, dark gray, even a sickly shade of green is intermixed to add depth and shading to the work. I was so close and drawn into the work that I didn’t realize this core component. What else did I miss?

I draw back, not in retreat, but in pursuit. The optical feat created both by the layers of wax and its pigmentation is still enchanting and intoxicating. As I’m across the gallery, however, I realize that I’ve made a crucial mistake in my original viewing of the work. This is not a remnant of past events, or a passively brewing force.

This work has a life of its own and it’s still spreading.

-Karen Trop, Bennington College.

Martin Kline’s Dorian Gray among other great works is available to view at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum in Cambridge, MA. The Harvard Art Museums are not currently hosting a Slow Art Day event. Inspired? Sign up as a host today!

Blogging, Local Art, & Slow Art Day: an Interview with Tori & Chelsey from PrairieSeen

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[In this series, we interview hosts for Slow Art Day and get their thoughts on hosting, the art of looking, and the slow art community. Today we interview Tori & Chelsey, the creators of the blog PrairieSeen and hosts of Edmonton Slow Art Day.]

Slow Art Day: This year’s Slow Art Day event will be your inaugural PrairieSeen event. But, before we get to that – tell us a bit about yourselves. You are recent graduates and art advocates, right?

Tori and Chelsey: We both graduated from the University of Alberta this past year. We also worked together at the University of Alberta’s Fine Arts Building Gallery, an on-campus space that displays mainly student work in the undergraduate and graduate Fine Art and Design programs. While working at FAB, we realized that we both have a lot to say about the local art environment in Edmonton, and about art in general. That’s how our shared blog, PrairieSeen, was born.

Slow Art Day: Now, tell us about PrairieSeen.

Tori and Chelsey: PrairieSeen was started as a way to keep our Art History degrees relevant, and also to keep ourselves in the practice of writing after graduation. Since we come from an art-historical background, we feel that we approach art and art criticism from a bit of a different perspective, and wanted to share that with the Edmonton art scene.

Slow Art Day: And it’s exciting that Slow Art Day is your first event. We have a veteran host in Rome who opened her gallery several years ago with Slow Art Day. She said it was very successful and has really shaped her whole approach to all her events. So – why did you choose to make Slow Art Day your first event?

Tori and Chelsey: The fact that it is already an established international event appealed to us, and that it is free – aside from the cost of gallery admission. We really liked that Slow Art Day promotes the idea of slow looking in the gallery, and taking your time with each piece, rather than rushing through and not really seeing the works. The discussion part of the event also appealed to us – we love talking about art exhibitions, whether we liked them or not!

Slow Art Day: You have chosen to hold Slow Art Day at Latitude 53, a local independent gallery in Alberta.  What can you tell us about that gallery?

Tori and Chelsey: Latitude 53 is a not-for-profit, artist run centre here in Edmonton. It focuses on experimental, contemporary works made by artists in Alberta and hosts a lot of fundraising events throughout the year, including a weekly “patio party” series in the summer. You can read more about Latitude 53 and its mandate here: http://www.latitude53.org/  Latitude 53 is moving into a new space this spring, and we are hoping to host the event in the brand new gallery!

Slow Art Day: One final question. We were hoping more college students would sign-up as hosts at galleries and museums all over the world. We have a large college intern team but college student hosting is still in its infancy. Do you have any tips or advice for getting more college students involved? Do you want to help reach out to more students in Canada?

Tori and Chelsey: We’d love to help reach out to more students in Canada – we’re recent University graduates ourselves and we know how hard it can be to find time to be involved in non-school related events. We will reach out to art history departments here in Canada and see if we can generate more student involvement.

Slow Art Day: That’s a wonderful offer and we’d really appreciate your help in reaching more students there in Canada. Thank you!

[Make sure to check out PrairieSeen on Tumblr and Twitter, and if you’re in the Edmonton area, sign up to attend Tori & Chelsey’s Slow Art Day Event at Latitude 53.]

Slow Art Day reaches over 200 venues!

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We’re excited to announce that Slow Art Day has reached a new milestone: over 200 venues have registered to host Slow Art Day 2013! As of this week, there are over 200 participating venues in 22 countries, 160 cities, and 5 continents. What started out as a grassroots movement has grown into a truly global initiative, and we want to take a moment to thank all of our dedicated volunteers, hosts, and participants for their help and support of Slow Art Day.

To help celebrate this accomplishment, we’ve planned some fun posts across our social media channels emphasizing the theme of growth. On our Tumblr, our weekly “Themed Thursday” series is focusing on growth with artworks like Gregory Euclide‘s Otherworldly: optical delusions and small realities, 2011.

Gregory Euclide, Otherworldly: optical delusions and small realities, 2011.

Gregory Euclide, Otherworldly: optical delusions and small realities, 2011.

On our Facebook, check out another growth-themed artwork by Rogan Brown, and keep your eyes peeled on our twitter for a special tweet congratulating our 200th venue!

Slow Art Day 2013 is just over a month away; how many venues do you think will register to host by April 27th? Let us know in the comments! There’s still plenty of time to sign up to host; click on the Be A Host tab at the top of the page to register.

Once again, thank you to everyone who has played a roll, small or large, in helping make Slow Art Day such a success!

Alie Cline
Social Media Manager

 

Slow Art Day Interviews Sarah Bluvas of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

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Slow Art Day, recently spoke with Slow Art Day host Sarah Bluvas who works in the education department at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. The Nelson-Atkins has been a participating Slow Art Day venue for three years now, though this is Sarah’s first time as a host.

Slow Art Day: What are your thoughts about Slow Art Day?

Sarah Bluvas (SB): I think Slow Art Day is a phenomenal idea. I love the concept of just stopping and looking. One thing I’m curious about is the conversation aspect after the viewing time. I think it’s one thing to encourage people to come and look at a piece of artwork, but it’s a whole other challenge to get them to sit down and talk about it.

Slow Art Day: That’s a good question. We find that once people look at art slowly that they are bursting with enthusiasm to talk. We always tell hosts that they just need to be prepared to get out of the way because attendees – especially first-time museum goers and other novices – are very excited to talk.

SB: I’m glad to hear it. Not only do we want people to come to our programs, we also want them to be more active participants and encourage conversation. So for the discussion after the Slow looking event, I am really hoping that people will be willing to share their experience. Even if it’s as simple as them saying, “I liked that work” or “I didn’t like that work”, and why—I think it further achieves the purpose of art.

Slow Art Day:  So in other words, it solidifies the experience?

SB: Yeah. I mean, first and foremost, it’s about getting people to stop and look at art. But then for me, the question of “Why is it important, why do we want people to stop and look” is brought up.

Slow Art Day: Absolutely.

SB: I just think Slow Art Day is a great program to get people to stop and look at art and to think how it fits into their lives. I’m really excited to be a part of this movement!

Slow Art Day: Great. Shifting gears – have you chosen your artwork yet for Slow Art Day? If so, what are you thinking?

SB: We try to choose works from a variety of areas in the museum’s collection. I’m still trying to narrow down my choices for this year’s Slow Art Day, but I know there will be a nice mix of pieces. Some highlights will include Ritual Disc with Dragon Motifs (Bi), from our Chinese collection, and Memento # 5 by Kerry James Marshall, from our Modern + Contemporary collection. We also have the beautiful Kansas City Sculpture Park, so, depending on the weather, I would love to include a sculpture in the park and send people outside to look!

Slow Art Day: And, what is one of your favorite works of art?

SB: In the museum’s collection, I love all of our works by Thomas Hart Benton, a Kansas City-native and one of the three great artists of the Regionalism movement. However, my all-time favorite work of art is Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, on view at the Art Institute of Chicago. One of the reasons I like it so much is because of the idea of prolonged looking, actually! The narrative, or lack of a narrative, in Nighthawks is so complicated and fascinating to me. You can look at it for hours without really knowing what’s going on!

Slow Art Day: Finally, tell us a little bit about yourself? What do you do – and why do you do it?

SB: I am the Coordinator for Public Programs at the Nelson-Atkins. I assist with planning, implementing and facilitating more than 120 public programs per year, mostly for adult and family audiences. I think museums are really important resources for the communities they are located in, but I also think museums can be a little intimidating for people. So I plan programs for and with the community to help the public realize that this is their museum and that they can find themselves here, too. It’s nothing to be scared of!

The Art of Looking with Vermeer’s “Girl”

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Slow Art Day has asked its 2013 college interns to write short summaries of their own experiences looking slowly at artworks of their choosing.

Few paintings possess the same level of fame as Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. Who was the enigmatic girl in the painting? What was her relationship to the artist? Why did he paint her wearing such a large and distinctive pearl earring? Art historians have speculated tirelessly on the answers to the questions, and the level of mystery surrounding the Girl has led her to be labelled “the Dutch Mona Lisa.”

Given all this, it’s next to impossible to not be aware of Girl with a Pearl Earring. The last time I did a slow art viewing experiment, with Jay DeFeo’s piece The Rose, I had only a passing familiarity with DeFeo and her work. But Girl is an inescapable piece, so when I viewed the painting at the de Young Museum’s special exhibition Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis, it turned out be a completely different viewing experience.

Girl is obviously the star of the exhibition. She appears on all of the de Young’s promotional material for the exhibition, and her face is currently plastered on the side of every bus in San Francisco. Before I even walked into the exhibition I’d seen her face many times over the past few weeks, and was, frankly, a little sick of her. But as any art lover will tell you, seeing a reproduction of a work pales in comparison to seeing the work in person.

Jan Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring (detail), 1665. Image courtesy of the de Young Museum.

The painting’s placement in the exhibition reinforces its central importance. The exhibition spans five rooms of the gallery, all of which are densely packed with paintings, with the notable exception being the room that houses Girl with a Pearl Earring. The room’s only occupant, the Girl confronts you head-on, visible even from the preceding gallery. The painting’s dimensions are rather underwhelming in person, something that the curators and installers cleverly disguised by shining bright lights on the painting and shrouding the rest of the room in darkness. An otherworldly glow seems to emanate the canvas.

When conducting slow art viewings, I like to view the artwork from as many different angles as possible – far away, up close, from the sides. However, I quickly discovered that this is difficult with a painting as diminutive as Girl with a Pearl Earring. I could barely see it when trying to view it from across the gallery; I just got an impression of large blocks of bright colors, an impression that was validated when I moved closer. One of the things that struck me was how sparingly Vermeer used different shades of pigment. Although the painting seems rich in color, and it certainly is, relatively few different shades of color are used in the painting. It seems almost minimalistic – although this isn’t something we generally associate with the Dutch Golden Age, I was reminded of the sparsity of different color shades used in abstract paintings by Mondrian or Rothko.

However, after spending several minutes in front of the piece, I did start to notice several subtle but startling uses of color. There is a small dot of white paint at the corner of the Girl’s mouth that echoes the white dots in her pupils. Her lips appear at first glance to have been painted bright red, but upon closer examination actually contain traces of black, gray, white, and even blue pigment. Even though her pearl earring is the painting’s brightest focal point, it is actually painted almost entirely in black and gray, with just one small white brushstroke that lends it a luminous, glowing quality amidst the darkness of the surrounding canvas.

I realized at the end of my slow viewing experience that the work, which seemed so diminutive at first glance, seemed to have taken on greater proportions. After looking at each individual detail of the painting at great length, the whole of the painting had become much larger than the sum of its parts. The work is only one and a half feet high, but it feels monumental and, at the same time, intimate, as if she is looking at you alone. If you are in San Francisco, I highly recommend that you make the effort to go see this painting (and the rest of the exhibition). You may think you’ve seen it already, on postcards, book covers, and other reproductions, but when you see it in person you will realize that until that moment you’ve been mistaken.

– Maggie Freeman, Mills College

Jan Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring (ca. 1665) was viewed at the special exhibition Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, CA]

Public Art and Slow Art Day in Orlando

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[In this series, we interview hosts for Slow Art Day and get their thoughts on hosting, the art of looking, and the slow art community. Today we interview Terry Olson, host of Orlando Public Art Slow Art Day.]

Slow Art Day: Tell us about yourself, Terry.

Terry Olson: I’m the Director of Arts & Cultural Affairs for Orange County Florida – which includes Orlando and a dozen other municipalities, Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando Resort, Sea World, etc.  I call myself an “arts instigator.”  I’m out at arts events all the time and oversee funding, public art and our Arts Learning for Life program.  I love bringing people together for new experiences and for building relationships.

Slow Art Day: Tell us a bit more about Orange County Arts & Cultural Affairs. It sounds like a government agency that’s doing a great job.

Terry Olson: Twelve years ago Orange County decided to take a pro-active approach to supporting arts and culture befitting our world class community.  Our office administers the County’s investment in the arts through several different review programs (general operating, cultural tourism, facilities).

Slow Art Day: And you seem to be quite passionate about public art. Public art does remove the intimidation that some people feel when entering a museum – something we are trying to counteract with Slow Art Day.

Terry Olson: Although my background was in the theatre, I have concentrated more on the visual arts and especially public art since we formed this office.  I love to be out in various communities and love to be delighted by some art or other aesthetic feature in a public space.  I have become the president of the Florida Association of Public Art Professionals.  I’ve always been a “populist” kind of guy, and Public Art is probably the easiest entry point for appreciation of art for many people.

Slow Art Day: How did you hear about Slow Art Day?

Terry Olson: One of the FAPAP Board members suggested that we all host a Slow Art Day related to public art in our city.

Slow Art Day: You have been promoting Slow Art Day to other public arts professionals. Why?

Terry Olson: I sent a notice to all the public arts professionals in our state because I think it would be very exciting if public art were being looked at this way all over the state.

Slow Art Day: Tell us about the design of your Slow Art Day event there in Orlando.

Terry Olson: There about 10 sculptures, murals, and media installations within a few blocks of the restaurant where our Slow Art Day will take place.  I can provide a map so that people can spend time that morning walking to any/all of those sculptures and taking time to really look at them.  I also have an exercise about “How to Look At Art” that is a series of 5 questions.  It is best to do that while the person is looking at the art, but it might be interesting to explore those questions after people have looked at the art and met at the restaurant, answering from memory.

Slow Art Day: That sounds like a great design. You have been really thoughtful about what people need – including a map.  Tell us in your “How to Look at Art” exercise – what are the five questions you are asking people to consider?

Terry Olson: First, just stand/sit quietly – and I mean without your mind whirring – and let the art make an emotional impression on you. What feeling do you have (not related to intellectual analysis or cognizant of content, but of the more subjective overall feeling)? Second, describe what it actually is – dimensions, materials, i.e. a 4’X4’ canvas with acrylic paint applied in big globs and bits of organic matter stuck into it. Third, now, finally, you can describe what it “depicts”. Even if it is abstract you can talk about what shapes you see and any associations that it brings to mind. Fourthly, describe how your eye moves about the space. Does the composition bring you around in a circle, or are there lines, triangles, divisions, etc. Lastly, how does this relate to you and what you are thinking about or what you are going through in life? Does it bring up a theme or idea that resonates with you or with which you disagree?

Slow Art Day: Anything else we should have asked about?

Terry Olson: We might see if there could be some pop-up performances around the city that morning to add extra surprise to any participants.

If you’re going to be in the Orlando area, join Terry in his exciting Slow Art Day event.

Lost in the Galapagos: Looking Slowly with Michael Bogin

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Slow Art Day has asked its 2013 college interns to write short summaries of their own experiences looking slowly at artworks of their choosing.

Last week I decided to spend some time looking at the work of Michael Bogin at the Davis Gallery here on my school campus.

After wandering the rooms of the gallery, scanning the walls in search of one of Bogin’s pieces that speaks to me, I notice a pattern. While at first seeming overtly simplistic, upon closer inspection his pieces start to formulate individual stories. Scanning the room, I am immediately struck by the stunning color schemes that run across the walls. His use of color varies in each piece despite their overall similar structure and as the works progress, a tale forms.

Upon closely looking at Galapagos #157, its shapes come to life and a story emerges. A koi fish whizzes past with a mermaid trailing behind; an underwater flower opens its blossom to say a few words; fish of every size decide to come investigate the scene; a coral reef arises from the abyss; bubbles float to the surface like fizz; and light begins to reflect off the ocean’s crystalline surface.

As I continue looking, I realize that I have just reached the Ecuador archipelago. As I gaze into the depths of the Pacific, I see something dart by. With the face of a woman and the tail of a fish I deem her a mermaid. Here things get strange. I fall into a kind of dreamlike state and the creatures gain the gift of gab. The koi fish tells me of the mermaid’s high status amongst the sea creatures as the mermaid playfully chases him away. The coral reef begins to tell me of her tremendous beauty and suddenly the fish that reside in the reef come out to confirm her allure. The sudden commotion causes water bubbles to lift to the surface and as the bright reflection of the water hits my eyes, I snap out of my delusion and once again I am standing in the gallery.

The process of slowly looking at Bogin’s painting proved a surprising experience. The more I look, the more I see. I now notice Bogin’s use of color and forms. The piece now opens up to me in a different way and I begin to see the intricacies of what Bogin has created.

Done in gouache, watercolor, and colored pencil, the multi-medium quality gives the piece a depth that mimics that of the ocean. Looking at the center of the painting, it becomes difficult to tell if the water sits in the foreground or background. The sea creatures seem to remain in limbo undulating back and forth between the different layers of the painting and it is this confusion that leads to my intrigue. The more I look at the painting, the less sure I am of where all the shapes sit in space. The reds and oranges seem to float to the surface in some areas while they seem to recede into the cloudy blue expanse in other sections. After a while I begin to see the intentionality behind Bogin’s every mark. I can see, upon closer inspection, where he has laid down a block of color, taken most of it away, and then put down more paint in order to achieve the illusion of depth. The blues overlap the greens in the top portion and leave behind a shadow of what once was, thereby furthering the magic of his artifice. It is this ambiguity that endows the painting with such power.

There seems to be an extreme intentionality that lies behind every mark in the painting. Simple shapes are transformed into sea life with Bogin’s poignant mark making and the scene comes alive with his innovative use of overlapping color. While there is a broad expanse of green and purple shapes conglomerated on the right side of the painting, this mass is offset with the smaller blocks of reds and greens that sit at the center of the scene. A large stretch of blue evolves into ocean in the areas where the watercolor pools into dark waves of indigo. Color merges and submerges in a playful coalition of paint and story. Just as your eye begins to follow a stream of red, you are pushed into a puddle of green; and just as you begin to circle around the green, your eye is slung into the neighboring pool of purple. This diversity of shape and color employed by Bogin is what gives the painting such life and allowed me to conjure up a story while exploring the piece’s nuances.

Had I left the gallery after a brief browse, I would not have taken notice of the intention that lies within Bogin’s work. I would not have formed the connection to the painting that still remains. The practice of looking slowly at art requires no expert nor expertise; art speaks and I learned again that if I am willing to slow down and listen, then I will hear its story in all its dimensions.

Mary Nyiri, Hobart and William Smith

[Michael Bogin’s Galapagos #157 (2009) was viewed at the Davis Gallery at Hobart and William Smith in Geneva, NY]

Slow Art Day makes the Tumblr Radar

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Today the tumblr staff selected a post from the Slow Art Day tumblr to be featured on their radar, a big honor! The work chosen was Maurice Sapiro’s “Gold on the Water.”

Maurice Sapiro, Gold on the Water, 2012

Check out the post on the Slow Art Day tumblr here, and see other works by Sapiro on his Saatchi Online profile.

– Alie Cline, Social Media Manager

Slow Art Lunch and Learn – Interview with Rika Nelson

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Rika Nelson runs Slow Art Day and Lunch and Learn, among other programs, at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento and recently agreed to sit down with us and talk about her passion for art and helping the public learn how to look at and love art.

Slow Art Day: Tell us about yourself, Rika.

Rika Nelson: I am the Manager of Public Programs at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, CA. It’s my job to plan and present all of our adult educational programming including concerts, lectures, films, dance, tours and more. We present an average of 8-10 Public Programs for adults each month. The programs range in size from a 10-20 person gallery program like Lunch and Learn, which we’ll talk about in a moment, to an 800 person museum-wide evening event we call Art Mix.

Slow Art Day: It sounds like a great job.

Rika: I love my job. I sometimes tell people that I feel like I hit the job lottery. We have 10 or so exhibitions per year in addition to our permanent collection and I get to work with our curators to pull out the themes and deeper meaning from each exhibition and translate it into programming that is educational, meaningful and entertaining for our visitors. I like when attendees at our programs see an exhibition from a new perspective; I also love it when our programs cause them to connect with each other.

I have wanted to work in museums since I was a kid. I studied History and American Indian Studies at the University of Washington and went on to get an MA in Museum Studies and an MBA in Non-profit Administration from John F. Kennedy University in Berkeley. I started at the Crocker three years ago right as I was finishing grad school. It was an exciting time to be working here as we were just months away from opening our new 125,000 sq. ft. Teel Family Pavilion on 10.10.2010.

Slow Art Day: Tell us about the Lunch and Learn program. How did it start?

Rika: Lunch and Learn was started through a collaboration between our museum docents and our education department. The Docents went through a VTS (visual thinking strategies) training as part of their continuing education. There were a particular group of docents who really developed a passion for this touring style and we worked with them to design a monthly tour where visitors would examine one work of art over a 30 minute period and then were invited to have lunch in the café following the program. We started with 3 or 4 visitors that would come on the tour, now we are up to about 20 or 30 per tour!

Slow Art Day: Say more – it’s monthly and has regular attendees? What is the design of the event and how does it work?

Rika: My favorite thing about the Crocker Lunch and Learn are the regular attendees we’ve started to notice. There are even a group of City Employees who come over to the Museum to spend a half hour with a work of art in our collection on their lunch breaks.  The regular attendees have gotten to the point where they are familiar with each other and give encouragement to each other during the discussions.

Lunch and Learn starts with about 3-5 minutes of silent looking.  We then ask the visitors in the group to talk about specific things they are seeing within the work.  Next we ask people to tell us what they think the things they are seeing might mean and we ask them what they wonder.  I have seen some incredible meanings pulled out of paintings by our visitors; things that never would have occurred to me.  The other fascinating thing is the diverse backgrounds our visitors bring to the discussion and how that gets the whole group to have a broader understanding of the work of art we are seeing.

Slow Art Day: What do you think helps make the program work so well?

Rika: I think the program works well because it is consistent. It happens the first Tuesday of every month and people have made it a routine. I can’t think of a better routine than setting aside 30 minutes on a weekday for Art, can you?

Slow Art Day: No – we couldn’t agree more. What do you see as the relationship between your Slow Art Day event and Lunch & Learn?

Rika: I like to think that Slow Art is a way for us to introduce people to the concept so that they can join in on our ongoing Lunch and Learn series. We get a lot of visitors who hear about the Slow Art Movement and come for Slow Art at the Crocker, but they had no clue that we do a Slow Art style format every month.

Slow Art Day: The Crocker has been hosting Slow Art Day for more than four years. Can you tell us more about why the museum has been a supporter since the beginning?

Rika: I can’t take the credit for that, my predecessor at the Crocker, Christian Adame, who is now at the Phoenix Art Museum, was the early adopter. I think, however, that it is a no-brainer for us to be involved with Slow Art. All art museums should get on board.  Slow Art is a way of teaching people how to look at works of art in your galleries, it gives them a tool to get more out of their visit. That kind of engagement is what keeps art museum’s relevant to their communities and that’s why we think it’s important.

Slow Art Day: We agree! Thanks for hosting Slow Art Day and for your time today and for your longtime commitment to helping more people learn how to look at and love art.
Next time you are in Sacramento near a first Tuesday, drop by a Lunch and Learn. You can also sign-up here for Slow Art Day 2013 at the Crocker Art Museum.