An Experiment In Art, With ‘Home’-Grown Results

By Shannon Hicks

On view this month at Gallery Thirteen in Danbury is an exhibition simply titled “Home.” It is a collection of work by high school students who have just completed the pilot year of a new program, called Art Lab, sponsored by the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield. Of the ten students who have work on view in “Home,” eight are of Newtown High School.

On Friday, June 2, the success of Art Lab was celebrated when the first group of students were the guests of honor of an opening reception for their exhibition. NHS students Kelly Fuller, Ben Jura, Jessie McGlasson, Katie Miller, Cara O’Neill, Marlene Pixley, Kest Schwartzman, and Jonnathan Yacashin were all at 13 Library Place that evening surrounded by family and friends who were impressed with the presentation and individualistic work with which the students had come up.

David Cook, who just graduated from St Luke’s School in New Canaan, and Katie Bachler, a Class of 2000 graduate of Ridgefield Alternative High School, also have works in “Home.”

“Home,” the show, is an exploration of the student-artists’ interpretation of home, the word. The title may be simple, but the concept and its resulting artwork is quite varied.

“The students came up with the concept of the show and its theme on their own,” Nina Carlson said this week. Ms Carlson is the curator of education at the Aldrich Museum and the guiding force behind the Art Lab program. “They did some brainstorming among themselves, presentations to each other, and even met with [Aldrich Museum director] Harry Philbrick, who offered ideas on narrowing the concept of an exhibition. He also guided them along the differences between things being too broad or too focused.

“ ‘Home’ ended up being a combination of a lot of other ideas,” Ms Carlson continued. “A lot of the things they were talking about were all brought back to their relationship with their home. I think a lot of it came from the fact that many of them are about to leave home. They’re redefining their concept of home, and re-staking new territory. I think it was natural for them to focus on that concept.”

Art Lab began at the Aldrich Museum in the fall of 1999. The intensive program is for juniors and seniors in high school who intend to pursue a career in the visual arts, and is made up of two classes. Participation is open to students of high schools in Fairfield County; in addition to the students from the above-mentioned schools, Ms Carlson this past school year also worked with students of Joel Barlow High School in Redding, and Bethel and Greenwich high schools.

Students met weekly with Ms Carlson and other art professionals to explore facets of the art world through museum studies, gallery trips, studio visits, and group critiques. Students were also given the opportunity to explore issues in contemporary art to focus on career possibilities, and investigate their creative potential while interacting with artists and art professionals.

Art Lab had students working with the Aldrich on a long-term basis, learning first-hand the workings of a major museum. Participants were given the opportunity to meet every member of the Aldrich Museum staff and learn about the responsibilities of each position. There were days when they worked directly with artists, and even days where they helped hang a show.

Nina Carlson worked with local high school art teachers, including Joyce Hannah and Diane Dutchick of Newtown High School, in developing Art Lab. The teachers were able to help the curator focus her program on filling in the holes left open by most high school art classrooms, including life experiences with curators and working artists.

That last point was accomplished through a number of field trips Ms Carlson led to artists’ studios and to galleries in New York City.

“They not only seem positive about this program,” Ms Carlson said of her educational associates. “They’ve been incredibly flexible in letting the kids get out of school to come on the field trips.

“I think they see the value in this,” continued the curator. “Most of them, actually, have said they have a number of students they would like to see participate next year. We’re very lucky in that we have teachers like them, who will do almost anything to give their students a good experience in the arts. They see the importance of art in life.”

It was during the second semester of Art Lab that students began working on their own show. The students, said Ms Carlson, were responsible for every aspect of the exhibition, from the theme, invitations, and press releases, to creating the work, and of course, mounting the exhibition.

“I would definitely call this a success,” Ms Carlson said. “We tried a lot of different stuff out, and most of it seemed to work. The kids seemed to respond very well with meeting artists. It was the hands-on application of this education that they really responded to.”

Feedback since the opening of “Home” at Gallery Thirteen has also been positive and encouraging.

“I was lucky to end up with such a talented group of kids,” Ms Carlson said. “I’m really proud of what they came up with. It could have gone in a lot of different directions, but they all seemed to sit down and think everything through.”

Apparently working in a museum setting had a good impact on the Art Lab students, but the fact that it was a contemporary art museum seems to have made a difference, too.

“One of the most fascinating things I noticed immediately was that while the idea they were all working on was the same concept — home, in other words — they all came up with very different projects. They really applied their individuality to their project. I think the influence of the museum really played a role in the conceptualization of their work.

“It was pretty strong conceptually, which I was really happy to see,” she said. “No one did realistic paintings of their house, in other words.”

Nothing even remotely close to a painting or drawing of a house exterior can be seen in “Home.” One student presented a photo collage, presented in the Tic-Tac-Toe/Brady Bunch configuration; another did a large spiral over which a poem about home has been pasted; a third did a shelf fixture on which 12 handmade clay pots rest. In each pot is an oil-based scent, with each scent representing a different family member.

The public has until June 30 to find out what the ten students who made it through the pilot Art Lab program consider “Home.” Incoming juniors and seniors at Fairfield County high schools who are interested in finding out more about Art Lab should contact Nina Carlson at the museum, 203/438-4519, for an application as soon as possible.