This week my Design 1 group took part in a project called Stone Soup. We were tasked with doing an quick art installation out on our campus with materials that we all brought and whatever we could find outside. This was a fascinating project because it really teaches how to work in a community with each other but it also forces us to ask the question: what is art?
We began stone soup with a pile of supplies that included an empty cereal box, a copy of TIME magazine, lots of construction paper, and, of course, glitter glue! After a few minutes of brainstorming each group member quickly began working on something. It was an interesting group dynamic to see us all working on our individual small things before bringing them together for the final product. Each of us not only contributed supplies to the project but we all worked on our own section. This was great because each of our unique styles was able to come out and really be seen in a group art project. We worked really well as a group, all of encouraging each other and we all really wanted to work everyone's style and creativity into the final project. It was a great environment to work in, especially considering how easily this could have become all about one person's vision.
Stone Soup was a great team building exercise, but what does it say about art? Is something thrown together in such a short amount of time art? Is it art if, only minutes after finishing it, we began tearing it down? Was Stone Soup even art at all? To me it was art, it was creative and thoughtful, it was something to look at and it was something to experience. As we were finishing work on the project we noticed we had a whole cardboard box left unused and we thought we should somehow incorporate into our design. Maybe we were out of ideas, or out of time but we quickly just stuck the rest of the project on top of the cardboard box and called it a stand. But we wanted it to be something more, maybe decorate it too. One of said that we didn't need to do that and we should just leave it as a pedestal for the project. So we road "pedestal" on the box because that's what we do with art, we, often as a society, put art on pedestals and honor it. Then someone offered the word "altar" on the other side of the box because not only do we honor art, but we use art to honor something else (I think of religious art to honor God). Then someone thought of "soap box" for another side of the box because many artists use their projects as places with which to preach a message or an idea. And finally we used "launch pad" for our fourth side, mostly because our project looked like a really cool and out there space ship. But I think, beyond that, that art projects, and especially a project like stone soup can be a starting point (or launch pad) for ideas and creativity. Pedestal, altar, soap box, launch pad. It was art.
We began stone soup with a pile of supplies that included an empty cereal box, a copy of TIME magazine, lots of construction paper, and, of course, glitter glue! After a few minutes of brainstorming each group member quickly began working on something. It was an interesting group dynamic to see us all working on our individual small things before bringing them together for the final product. Each of us not only contributed supplies to the project but we all worked on our own section. This was great because each of our unique styles was able to come out and really be seen in a group art project. We worked really well as a group, all of encouraging each other and we all really wanted to work everyone's style and creativity into the final project. It was a great environment to work in, especially considering how easily this could have become all about one person's vision.
Stone Soup was a great team building exercise, but what does it say about art? Is something thrown together in such a short amount of time art? Is it art if, only minutes after finishing it, we began tearing it down? Was Stone Soup even art at all? To me it was art, it was creative and thoughtful, it was something to look at and it was something to experience. As we were finishing work on the project we noticed we had a whole cardboard box left unused and we thought we should somehow incorporate into our design. Maybe we were out of ideas, or out of time but we quickly just stuck the rest of the project on top of the cardboard box and called it a stand. But we wanted it to be something more, maybe decorate it too. One of said that we didn't need to do that and we should just leave it as a pedestal for the project. So we road "pedestal" on the box because that's what we do with art, we, often as a society, put art on pedestals and honor it. Then someone offered the word "altar" on the other side of the box because not only do we honor art, but we use art to honor something else (I think of religious art to honor God). Then someone thought of "soap box" for another side of the box because many artists use their projects as places with which to preach a message or an idea. And finally we used "launch pad" for our fourth side, mostly because our project looked like a really cool and out there space ship. But I think, beyond that, that art projects, and especially a project like stone soup can be a starting point (or launch pad) for ideas and creativity. Pedestal, altar, soap box, launch pad. It was art.
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