Christo style Design Project

The third year design class, led by faculty designer Jenni-Lee, demonstrated their understading of wrapping objects to create works of art the other day in our office. The works of the wrapping artists Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude were their inspiration, and they chose two fellow classmates to cover completely in torn newspaper.

Hubs and Jenni Lee are nearly done with covering Jade in a tailcoat and four-in-hand tie of newspapers.

Allison is hard at work covering Jo in a newspaper dress and leggings.

All 5 are creating wrapped art!

A detail of Jade's hand, artfully wrapped by Hubs.

We opened the office door, and released the art into the hallway.

Since these were the same student designers who studied lighting design with me, they thought they'd try to tango without tearing their newspaper carapaces.

A stunning portrait of the artwork posing against a red wall.

Of course the artworks had to go into the ladies'  bathroom to check their reflections in the mirror.

Jo extricates herself from the wrapping.

Jade extricates herself from her wrapping, with Jenni-Lee looking at the accumulation of post artwork on the floor.

And finally, all that remains is the litter and memories of the live wrapping journey. Thanks for the inspiration, Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

Here's a weblink to a site that explains a bit about the artists Christo and Jeann-Claude, including the fact that the were born on the same day. http://www.kettererkunst.com/bio/Christo-1935.shtml

A Few Performance Art Installations

Signatures was curated by Wits scenographer Jenni-Lee Crewe. Her students were the artists, and each had to create a piece involving their take on what performance art is today. I provided most of the lighting - there was one piece that defied lighting as it's performance was all smell and tactile work. One piece used large maps of differing translucencies and a ceiling of ever-changing map projections and post-it-notes to locate memories. My photos of that unfortunately did not come out. Three of the pieces were on the amphitheatre stage which shared the same setting, including a rectangle of glossy black on the floor. In one case it was a duck pond, and in another it was a barrier for the performance.

This piece involves heavy metal safes, white gloves, ear phones, and things inside the safes that you could look at and consider. The safes were presented on white pedestals with white fabric leading down to them from the ceiling.

There were seven of these safes, all presented as if they were in a gallery. Very audience-friendly.



Across the room from the safes was this cut-out tree with all the good and bad terms for "woman" painted on it. A woman in yellow sat underneath with a huge pile of lemons, eating lemons like they were going out of style.



At the end of the room was a room-sized box of paper with a doorway and a window and a moveable lighting instrument. Participants could draw or paint the outlines of their shadows. In some cases, outlines were enhanced with paint after being drawn in pencil. This could be viewed from above, through the door or window, and through the walls from outside since the walls were just thin paper.



Here is the artist outlining a particpant's shadow onto one of the walls as seen from the outside of the box.



One of the performances in the Amphitheatre used masks, and sound effects came from the actors. The glossy black rectangle was a fishing pond with ducks in it for this one.

One of the Amphitheatre performances used only the glossy back rectangle, with dance-like movements contained tightly by the rectangle. Notice, too, the rectangular mirrors in the upper right reflecting the activity.

In this third Amphitheatre performance art piece, the actor's movements were directed over a loudspeaker by someone in the lighting booth, who changed the procedure every performance.

In the final installation, the audience was invited to go outdoors to watch and hear the boys in blue commune with a blue-wrapped tree against the sodium vapour lights of the city.

I should add that if and when I can get other people's photos of the smells and the maps installations, I would love to post them here as well. I would also love to get a close-up of the masks used in the duck-pond performance. They were papier-mache masks, very lightweight.