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overview
Lesson 3 | Summary
Activity Pages
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lesson 3 | converging media
activity | recombinants
Is the diversity of the art world finite or infinite? Has everything
already been done? How can artists create new “species”
from the existing phyla of the art world?
For artists Elizabeth Murray and Ida
Applebroog, the answers to these questions often come in
the form of visual recombinants, whether fusing 2D with 3D or marrying
contemporary and traditional media. Elizabeth Murray blurs the line
between painting and sculpture, creating three-dimensional canvases
that bring the painted surface off the wall and into real space
in works such as “Empire,”“Inner
Life,” and “Worm’s
Eye.” Ida Applebroog photographs figures made from modeling
clay and gives them unique personalities through the use of digital
imaging, large format printing, and painting. In her series of Digital
Outtakes from Work in Progress, you can see the way that Applebroog
changes the scale of her three-dimensional forms into monumental
figures.
Introduce the work of these two artists to your students using Murray’s
and Applebroog’s video segments and interviews (see links
above). Discuss each artist’s purpose in creating hybrid art
forms. How does the combination of forms communicate something different
than one media alone? How do the resulting art objects relate to
and break with the traditions associated with their “parent”
media? How did Murray and Applebroog come to their present process?
Why do you think each artist decided to branch out from a single
medium to multiple?
After looking at slideshows of Applebroog's and Murray's work (see
links above), ask your students to experiment with bringing together
two types of media to create a new hybrid art form such as sculpture
and painting, drawing and video, performance and installation, or
textiles and printmaking. Assign a journal entry in which students
reflect on their process. What challenges did they face? What new
possibilities for art-making did they discover?
After completing their individual experiments, tell your students
to partner with another student. Each pair should select two divergent
media with each student assuming responsibility for one of the two
media. Have students work together to combine the two different
media in a single work of art. How does collaboration augment the
hybridization process?
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the next activity for this lesson
Natural Selection
Students consider the works of socially engaged artists Krzysztof
Wodiczko and Mel Chin, both of
whom mix media to communicate their messages in public spaces, and
propose a public art project and consider the logistics of bringing
it to life.
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