Art students and art buffs alike can look forward to a public lecture from two visiting artists and a corresponding workshop this week. The public lecture will be Thursday at 6 p.m. in 203 Garland Hall, and the workshop will be Friday from 2:30-4:30 p.m. in 103 Garland Hall.
The two visiting artists are Nate Larson and Marni Shindelman, also known as the collaborative art duo “Larson+Shindelman.” They are the creators of the internationally acclaimed Geolocation Project.
The project focuses on “geolocation” because Larson and Shindelman wanted their work to focus on “the cultural understanding of distance as perceived in modern life and network culture,” according to their website, telepathicwitness.com.
The Geolocation Project has been featured on the NPR program Marketplace Tech Report, the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun.
The workshop will be in conjunction with the project and will teach students how to make GPS drawings. Students will learn how Larson+Shindelman make their geo-drawing projects and will have the opportunity to make one themselves.
There are 20 slots available for participants, and participants should bring a GPS-enabled smartphone like a Droid or iPhone, as well as a cable to attach it to a Macintosh computer.
Participants do not need to be art majors and those interested may sign up in the Art and Art History Department’s main office in 103 Garland Hall.
Lucy Curzon, a professor in the Department of Art and Art History and one of the coordinators of the event with art professor Sarah Marshall, explained the workshop in further detail.
“Marni Shindelman and Nate Larson are hosting a workshop that will teach students and interested community members how notions of space, location, geography, etc. are pivotal to understanding trends in contemporary art,” Curzon said.
Shindelman is an associate professor of art and associate of the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Rochester. Larson is faculty at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and serves on the Board of Directors for the Society of Photographic Education, according to the bios on their website.
Curzon said that while Shindelman and Larson are both respected in their field, they also bring a level of energy and passion to their work that students would appreciate.
“They are both passionate about their projects together, and they bring that passion with them when interacting with their audiences,” Curzon said. “Yet Larson+Shindelman are exciting not only because of their energy. Students should be intrigued by the unique ways in which they gather the information that fuels their art.”
Curzon gave the example of a recent work in which Larson+Shindelman used the GPS location tags from Twitter messages to create a series of photographs that marked the physical location or origin of “these otherwise ephemeral messages.”
“So if you happen to be tweeting on the days that Larson and Shindelman are on campus, you might just find yourself immortalized in one of their projects,” Curzon said.
Larson+Shindelman’s work has been shown at a multitude of art venues and museums across the world and for that reason it is a special chance to see and work with them, Curzon said.
“In this respect, I think that this is one of the many reasons why the project is so important to the University,” Curzon said. “Few people realize how much a work of art relies upon the space in which it is located for its meaning, whether inside a gallery or out on Woods Quad, and in the specific case of Larson+Shindelman’s projects, how space can be culturally meaningful or become a work of art in and of itself.”
Curzon said the University’s art department tries to host visiting artists at least once each semester, and they are currently soliciting names for next year’s round of lectures.
