BCA Center Fall 2020 Gallery Eduction Guide

A BCA ACTIVITY GUIDE OCTOBER 23, 2020 - JANUARY 30, 2021

Lillie Harris, March to Now (detail), 2020

Welcome to the BCA Center October 23, 2020 – January 30, 2021 Use this guide to explore the exhibitions on two floors of the BCA Center. You will SEE many different works of art, THINK about how the exhibitions themes and ideas connect to our contemporary lives, and DO your own recording and sketching of your ideas.

Exhibiting artists featured in this guide: Jeremy Ayers, Becci Davis, Lillie Harris, Akiko Jackson, Brielle Rovito, EveNSteve (Eve and Steve Schaub), Dan Siegel, Sarah Camille Wilson, and Clay Mohrman.

Unprecedented? explores how the extraordinary events of 2020, from the global pandemic to protests for racial justice, have impacted our lives and reshaped our world. Featuring work by Vermont and New England artists, this exhibit invites us to think about our different experiences through shared emotional expressions such as grief, anger, uncertainty, containment, release, and hope.

Clay Mohrman: Radiant Thought: Vermont artist-maker Clay Mohrman creates a room-size art installation that helps to show how he processes emotions and manages anxiety.

Made from a plexiglas sculpture programmed to react to light and sound, the artist mimics the neuro-responses of the brain. Mohrman’s installation creates a feeling of calm awareness and relaxation while activating the senses. His work explores how art in galleries and public spaces can support our well-being.

Exhibition Themes and Vocabulary Emotion Racism Empathy Activism Research

Isolation Displacement Uncertainty Identity Narrative

Calm Installation Collaboration Neuroscience Well-Being

First Floor Gallery

Unprecedented?

Lillie Harris, March to Now, 2020

Unprecedented? explores how recent events of the pandemic and protests against racism happening locally and around the world affect our lives. The exhibition helps us to express our feelings surrounding these events and to consider how people from different backgrounds, cultures, times, and places experience these issues. The artists each tell a story and connect these narratives with feelings that we all express such as sadness, anger, worry, and hope.

In their illustration, March to Now, Lillie Harris tells a story of how children around the world are experiencing the stressful events of 2020. The artist depicts a variety of emotions on the different characters’ faces such as playfulness, curiosity, nervousness, and confusion. Harris’ large-scale drawing expresses emotions many of us also experience daily as we adapt to changes during this time.

Look closely at March to Now. What emotions do you see on the faces of the children?

How has the artist used lines, shapes, or colors to represent different emotions?

Which character’s facial expression can you relate to the most?

What are some of the changes you are experiencing at this time at home or at school?

Draw a self-portrait (a ‘selfie’) that expresses an emotion that you are feeling today. Are you feeling sad, happy, confused, or hopeful about what is happening in the world around you? Use lines, shapes, and colors to help represent your emotions.

First Floor Gallery

Unprecedented?

Akiko Jackson, sometimes I recall our hair grows after death, 2019

Unprecedented? features a diverse selection of artists who work in a variety of art forms including drawing, photography, writing, performance, video, sculpture, and ceramics. Through their work, they seek to find meaning in these uncertain times and represent their emotions and experiences. Each artist uses different materials and artmaking methods to communicate their ideas and find comfort and healing.

Akiko Jackson creates sculptures that explore her identity, body, feelings of isolation, and longing for home since the pandemic. For Akiko, her hair is a way that she identifies with her cultural roots. To create her sculptural drawing sometimes I recall our hair grows after death, the artist uses sheep wool and synthetic hair. She makes braids, ties knots, rubs, and presses the materials, repeating these motions over and over. Her work combines colors, shapes, patterns, materials, and methods connected to her cultural identity and Japanese traditions passed on to her by her mother.

What lines, shapes, and patterns can you identify in Akiko Jackson’s sculptural drawing?

How do you think the artist created this work?

What part of your body tells something about you?

What is a tradition that you share within your family that you express through your body?

Draw a shape that you think represents yourself. Your shape could represent your body or something about the way you look, like your hair, eyes, or your smile. Your shape might represent how you feel, a favorite activity, or object.

Make an outline of your shape. Inspired by Akiko Jackson’s work, draw your shape over and over to create a repeated pattern design.

Second Floor Gallery

Clay Mohrman: Radiant Thought

Clay Mohrman: Radiant Thought, installation view

Clay Mohrman: Radiant Thought explores feelings of calmness, meditation, and emotional well-being. Mohrman draws inspiration from his experience living with and managing anxiety. Working with art, science, and technology, he combines sculpture, light, and sound to show a mind taking in information from the outside world and turning it into a thought or a feeling. His multisensory installation helps guide the visitor into a meditative state between relaxation and awareness. The interactive exhibition also explores how art in galleries and public spaces can support well-being.

To create the 8-foot hanging sculpture, Mohrman assembled cut plexiglas shapes attached with fishing line. He collaborated with a sound artist and an electrical engineer so that the white lights within the sculpture turn on or off in response to sound. The sculpture, lights, soothing sounds, and meditation all work together to create a sense of calm and relaxation.

What shapes and colors do you see in the installation?

What sounds do you recognize?

What do you think of as you observe and listen to the sculpture and the sound?

How does the installation make you feel?

What do you hear, touch, taste, see, or smell that helps you feel calm? These might include a person, place, or thing. Draw and arrange your images and ideas in a way that makes sense to you - like a mind-map. You could use lines, shapes, symbols, and words to help connect your ideas together.

Keep on drawing!

Use one of the calming images from your mind map—a place, person, or thing— and expand the scene. Draw your calming scene with more details.

Are you in the scene? What are you doing? Who or what is around you?

Share your drawing with a family member or friend.

Burlington City Arts 135 Church St Burlington VT 05401 BURLINGTONCITYARTS.ORG

Due to Covid-19, our See Think Do! programs will be offered virtually until further notice.

See.Think.Do! our gallery education program invites youth and adults to engage with BCA Center exhibitions through an interactive arts experience. Virtual visits begin with guided inquiry-based exploration and lively discussion with contemporary works of art. Programs conclude with suggested art activities that will inspire students to create their own works of art that explore exhibition themes, materials, and artistic processes.

To schedule your virtual visit, please contact: Melinda Johns, Gallery Education and Programs Coordinator, at mjohns@burlingtoncityarts.org, or call 802-865-7551.

Visit burlingtoncityarts.org/gallery-education for more information.