Artists' Statement
Our theme for the week was the connection between media and community, and explored the play between those two forces. They are constant influencers on each other, defining each other, telling each other stories about what they are and what they mean. Our Concerned Citizen project was able to doubly explore that theme: not only does it, itself, navigate those murky waters, but it further clarifies the issue by focusing on someone who is, herself, concerned with developing that dialogue and dichotomy. Tara Carpenter is a part time teacher at BYU who has, for several semesters now, assigned her students to display interactive art in the third floor hallway, inciting dialogue, both through the art and about it, as students pause to admire and add during the passing period.
It was initially a struggle to find someone to focus the piece on, but the idea of an artist or teacher, as mentioned in the assignment description, seemed especially interesting, unusual for a project of this type, and a great place to start looking. When we found what we were looking for in the hallway just outside our classroom, it was more than a little ironic, and initially a surprise. It started by appreciating the art and the participation with no ulterior motive, enjoying the real sense of community created when you’re writing your fears down right next to a stranger, when you’re reading someone else’s bucket list. It was only when we reached the end of the hall that we realized how significant it was, and wanted to seek out whoever had instigated it.
That was Tuesday, before the reading, so it was hard not to see our project through and through that. article, which was, of course, very encouraging. On just the second page, it mentions “Participatory projects” as an important tool for shaping society through art, the very subject of our piece. These types of projects, interacting on such an unpretentious and simple level with society, prompts artistic activity in many who would otherwise be intimidated or uninterested. One may argue the importance of the right to culture forever, but as long as people don’t exercise it, it is useless. This is a principle similar to the one explored by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, where the government didn’t need to take away rights, because the people gave them away. The work that Tara does in encouraging such a communicative and community focused art is, in a way, a positive gateway drug. It can lead to new realizations about the essential nature of art as a dialogue, and can get students thinking about art in more casual settings than they’re used to.
Another movie that explored these themes well and provided some inspiration as we thought about it was “A Man Named Pearl,” a documentary that focused on a topiary artist whose work came to inspire his whole town not just to admiration or acceptance, but to participation. Seeing what he’d done, his neighbors started joining, downtown hired him to landscape, and a nearby liberal arts college hired him to teach a class, much like Tara. All this community building came from the initially ammature efforts of a now 60-year-old black man, trying to prove his lawn could cut it in a rich white neighborhood. The sense of community in that film and in our subject it the most important theme we explore, and Tara explores.
