In Norwalk, Connecticut, participants in Slow Art Day will examine WPA murals in the city’s Maritime Aquarium. After close, leisurely looking at works by Alexander J. Rummler, docents from the Arts Commission will lead discussions of each.
Norwalk has the nation’s largest collection of WPA murals, which have been restored and are on display at the aquarium and four other sites in the city.
A report on host Susan Wallerstein’s event is here.
Once a year students at the University of Maryland take an ArtWalk, an event they created to showcase visual arts programming on campus. This year, the walk coincides with Slow Art Day — resulting in an all-day celebration with eight participating spaces.
At their first stop ArtWalkers will pick up “passports,” which they will present at each site for a Slow Art Day stamp.
More information at www.thestamp.umd.edu/
Painting and PPPs
By Alison Bessesdotter
The Banana Factory at ArtsQuest in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, began hosting Slow Art Day four years ago. We have 25 resident artists on three floors and we share the common spaces to hang work outside our studios. On the first floor there are two main galleries and a Banana Factory featured artist hall gallery.
On our first year of hosting, I ran a lottery to choose five works from our resident artists. Our artists also open their studios for Slow Art Day. Each year I draw a map and provide a list of the designated works located throughout the building. We repeat the process similarly each year; two years ago I added the PPP—Post-its, Pedestals, Pencils by each designated Slow Art piece.
I had the staff set up the PPPs, next to Slow Art works so that our visitors could write their observations on the post-its and paste them on the wall next to the exhibited work. It allows interaction with the art—and they express their observations—creating an interface between viewer and work. A second interface occurs when the artists see the visitors’ messages. It was popular, and visitors stood in short lines to fill out the PPPs and enjoyed talking to each other while waiting.
The response was so positive that we left the PPPs in the main hall by the April Featured Artworks. People continued to read about Slow Art and write their messages on the Post-its. There is great reward in having tangible proof of how the art impacts the adults and children who visit our center. The PPPs open the opportunity for the community not only for Slow Art Day but the entire month.
For the Wiregrass Museum of Art in Dothan, Alabama, Slow Art Day came at what many hosts consider an impossible time. The Wiregrass sees it as an opportunity.
Art educator Leah Lapszynski explains:
This year for Slow Art Day at WMA, we find ourselves in the unique position of being between exhibitions in the early weeks of April. Typically, museum guests are aided in their visit by object labels, wall text, and other informational panels. Participants at WMA’s Slow Art Day event will be treated to an exciting, rare experience as they slowly look and make meaning of an incomplete exhibition. We are interested in the perception of museums that people have as visitors, and how that perception is constructed in the mind from outside opinions and past experiences. How will people make meaning from an exhibition in flux? What thoughts, emotions, or past personal experiences will participants pull from?
Slow Art Day host Maria Gil Ulldemolins is a Spanish painter living and working in Brussels. When she told us she planned two sessions of art-based mindfulness, we said, please tell us more!
And she did:
For my very first Slow Art Day, I plan to invite art lovers to be mindful in front of a painting. In a traditional mindfulness meditation, you take your breath as something to rest your mind on. In this case, your mind perches on the artwork, like a bird.
Even for me, observing a painting for a really long time is a challenge. My brain is so addicted to looking for stimulation that simply accepting whatever is in front of you can prove difficult. With this exercise, the observation is guided, and therefore, more relaxed. There is no pressure to keep yourself focused, there is a context. You are walked through the surface as if it was a landscape. You stop to appreciate shapes, textures and colors; and you are not alone in this, but in a group. The emphasis is on letting go of expectations and judgment to really allow ourselves to really see what is right before our eyes.
Another possibility, if I can put together a group, is to practice some mindful drawing, too. The idea is very similar: to create with a full awareness. This is another way of observing Art—looking is very much like listening. But listening to something that is being worked on is not the same as listening to something that’s finished. So we would be looking at our own work becoming, in order to have a different perspective. The experience of getting on the other side, the side of the maker, helps us forge compassion through understanding the challenges of working with one’s hands.
On April 9, the whole day will be about embodying an emotional and intellectual experience.
Demetria Verduci, one of our veteran Italian hosts, has organized her Slow Art Day this year to include a marvelous tribute to our trademark symbol, the turtle. Demetria is director of La Macina di San Cresci, an artists’ residence program in Greve in Chianti.
Here’s her story:
From nature to myth, from heraldry to art, from literature to esotericism, from science to superstition, the turtle is an animal full of charm and mystery. It has always been a symbol not only of proverbial slowness, but also of prudence and wisdom, of strength and longevity, of the passage of time, of strength in his indestructible armor opposed to the softness of his body.
Slow Art Day, which every year, at the same time around the world, gives life to events related to art and culture in museums, galleries and the most varied spaces, not surprisingly adopted the symbol of a turtle.
It is around the idea of this animal and its place in the collective imagination that La Macina di San Cresci has designed its Slow Art Day 2016: “The 99 Turtles of Florence,” an installation of 99 works in terracotta by the noted Florentine sculptor, Silvano Porcinai.
The installation is inspired by a true story: the rescue of 99 turtles from the fountains of Florence, and their transfer to two tanks at the Cascine Park, pending their placement in an appropriate environment.
The turtles, in this case marine, had been discussed and debated from the point of view of natural balance, security, education against the abandonment of animals by people who should care for them, and also these animals’ great strength and adaptability to the environment.
Hence the sculptor’s choice to create 99 pieces. We may therefore say that the 99 marine turtles of Florence become at La Macina di San Cresci, for the Slow Art Day, the 99 land turtles by Silvano Porcinai.
The 99 turtles will be a limited edition, handmade in terracotta by the artist, different from each other in shape and size, but the idea is that the installation last only a few hours; the intent is that they should be around, that someone will take care — as has happened for the 99 turtles of Florence — so that they can inspire, suggest, provoke new emotions, insights and thoughts in those who take them away.
Silvano Porcinai was born in 1950 in Grassina, near Florence. He was graduated from the Art Institute of Florence and was later a professor of sculpture at art schools and institutes of Tuscany. His work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Italy and abroad. His most recent artwork is a Pinocchio bronze in Kyoto, Japan.
A few excerpts from the Reno Gazette-Journal article published Feb. 23 by Amanda Horn of the Nevada Museum of Art:
“In 2008, an admitted art-appreciating novice conducted an experiment. As he strolled with his wife through the Jewish Museum in New York, Phil Terry decided to try a different way of looking at the art on view. Rather than scan hundreds of works for 10-17 seconds each (the average time spent by museumgoers scanning individual pieces, according to various research), Terry wondered what would happen if people spent a little more time looking deeply at a few works of art. That simple decision led to his founding a growing international movement called Slow Art Day.
… a different experience, a respite from the busy hustle and bustle of a perpetually connected world.
Meandering through the galleries can bring a richer quality to your visit. Take time to ponder the artworks. Read the labels. Many exhibitions currently on view allow photography, so snap a shot, but then put the phone away. Tweet your thought later. Return to the moment. Cultivate the art of seeing. Amanda Horn is the director of communications for the Nevada Museum of Art.”
Read Amanda’s full story here.
– Caroline Wingate
My name is Naomi Billingsley and I’ll be running a Slow Art Day at Chichester Cathedral and the Bishop’s Palace in Chichester, England.
I work at the Bishop’s Palace in role created last year as Bishop Otter Scholar. The post is something like a ‘scholar in residence’ with a focus on the arts — my job is to do scholarly research in theology and the arts, and to engage members of the Diocese of Chichester (i.e. members of Church of England churches in the counties of East and West Sussex) with the arts.
The Diocese has a rich history of engagement with the arts — probably best-known is the work of Walter Hussey, Dean of Chichester Cathedral (1955-77), who commissioned a number of important works of art and musical compositions.
My role builds on this legacy by creating new ways for people to engage with the arts — and especially visual art — in the Diocese; my hosting a Slow Art Day event is one way to do this.
I already run an monthly discussion group in which we spend time looking at — usually two — works of art in the Cathedral and then discuss them afterwards. In these sessions I record the discussion and will integrate some of the responses into new webpages I am writing about the artworks. So Slow Art Day is an opportunity to try something similar, but with a slightly different format — looking at more works, and not recording the discussion.
I hope it will interest not only people connected with the Cathedral — or indeed with any connection to Christianity — but also those who are simply curious about the Cathedral and its art.
For more information about my role, please visit my blog: https://bishopotterscholar.wordpress.com/
You can book to join the Slow Art Day via the Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/slow-art-day-chichester-cathedral-tickets-21335402764