Art students install Richmond exhibit in New York

Michael Todd
Assistant Spectrum Editor

For a majority of students in the school of the arts, visits to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and Richmond galleries are a common occurrence. For nine art students, a routine trip to the VMFA with a class turned into a new opportunity.

As opposed to revisiting a building that the junior and senior sculpture students had visited multiple times over the past few years, a simple suggestion to instead take a visit to the Richmond Architecture Center activated a chain of reactions that proposed to the class a unique opportunity for the students.

The only parameters of the class’s next assignment was to collaborate. Intermediate and advanced students – junior and senior level sculpture majors, respectively had the option to do so either at home in Richmond, or in professor Marc Ganzglass’ New York Studio space.

After two weeks of rapid planning, students Nick Fagan, Zach Buehler, Harrison Stewart, Alex Curley, Amanda Salazar, Stephen Elefante, Zack Morris, Gloria Figueroa and Hyun Son left last Thursday morning and returned late Sunday, sacrificing their extended reading day weekend for the sake of their collaborative project.

The installation consisted of a 10 x 16 foot printed image which all students collaborated in creating, using abstract map imagery meant to represent connections between Brooklyn and Richmond. The image was draped like a tent and weighed down with six total gallons of river water — three from the James in Richmond and three from the East River in New York.

Two projectors cast various rotating triangles of light onto both the structure and wall opposite of it. The piece took on an interactive component as people moved around and under the structure, which in turn affected the display of the projected images.

It was the first time the students had collaborated together and for some, it was their first collaboration in art at all. The students unanimously decided that, despite the large size of the group, there were never assigned roles.

“I feel like we all worked evenly,” said Salazar, a senior. “We tried to make all of our decisions as a group.”

“Whenever there was something that needed to be done, someone would do it,”added Stewart, a junior.

With a little under two weeks to fully formulate and execute the installation, the group found they really didn’t have time to disagree.

“At the beginning, we all had these different ideas, and then the more we talked, the more it became more important for us to think about what we all had in common,” said junior Alex Curely. “(And) that was traveling to New York and this process of collaboration. So that’s what this project is primarily focused on and about.”

With each group member taking part in the process of forming the idea, creating the image and navigating a system of installation—both in Richmond and New York—the overall piece adjusted as a result.

For instance, as a subtle way for each group member to have an individual presence in the piece, students selected a color they associated with their idea of Richmond that would carry through both the printed image, show poster and multicolored projected triangles of the installation.

The decision of the tent form as a reference to travel, and to the Marlboro design, as Richmond was a city founded on the tobacco industry. This idea of triangles was further repeated in the colored wall projections.

Besides the collaboration between the students, the group said Duggal Visual Solutions, where they obtained their printed image, was a major contributor to their idea. The Duggal company is generally known for printing billboard-sized advertisements, such as those displayed in Time Square.

Soon after their arrival, the students were able to tour the studios and watch the printing of their image. Due to privacy restrictions, the students were unable to photograph or video record the experience, which led to the documentation of the printing process through sound recording, which was then played during the exhibit.

Not all of the brainstorming process that helped inform the idea necessarily made it into the final installation. One idea, however, did inspire the title of the piece: “Analemma.”

This term refers to the figure eight shape formed by the pathway the sun travels through the sky, north to south, as it would appear if photographed every day over the course of a year. Star, sun and space maps were but a few of the ideas the group considered during the decision-making process.

In Richmond, using a tarp of similar dimensions, the students created a mock up installation. Because so much of the installation relied on both the print and the gallery space, there was little the group could do before their departure. All they could bring were water jugs and their ideas.

Upon arrival to New York, the group encountered a series of obstacles, like the slanted nature of the wall where they were meant to project their images and the differences in the structural installation imposed by ceiling differences.

“Everyone was so excited about what we did in Richmond,” said Steward. “But once we got to New York, we could not make that happen (again), and so we redid everything to set it up in a new way.”
The group further had to consider the differences in using the actual materials which they previously didn’t have access to, primarily their print. Until that time, there was no way for them to plan the piece with considerations to properties such as weight or how the printed material would handle when installed.

These difficulties ended up working in the group’s favor as, after an immense amount of labor, they were able to improve upon their original design, once they were able to install “the real deal.”
While the group plans to reinstall the structure here in Richmond, there is no definite word on the where or when.