The Art wall I assembled last night, right in front of Adam's Futo Coffee Cart. Sit, sip a chilled coffee and enjoy.

I spent the better part of last night ‘curating’ and putting up a small show of my students’ work.

Last quarter I promised my Neoclassic to Modern Art students I  would organize an exhibit of their art in the main foyer of our school and I am happy to announce that that’s one promise kept:)

My students had the choice to either write an essay or pick a painting of their choice, research its symbolical meaning and attempt to blow up a detail reproducing  it in the same media of the original.  It was a way I thought students of an art lecture course could get closer to the art.

You can see the results of their efforts here.  My objective was not to have a typical gallery show, but combine all the work as in a collage, interspersing the canvases with the prints of the full scale work the students provided. It was a challenge to combine different shapes, colors (art curating and gallery display being an artform of their own) and be true to some sort of grid. The wall is bursting with energy. This was an Art intervention/injection for our architecture school!

I especially loved the documentation of the process. One student wrote what looked like a blog entry, taking photos of his painting at different stages:

‘It is so strange, I found, once I started painting,

I could not put the brush down.’

Well, my work here is done.

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What you see here is a prime spot, the little urban ‘piazzetta’ we have for drinking coffee @Futo’s, hearing Adam playing guitar (or his always interesting music selection), talking, scheming etc…..

As my professor Francisco Sanin would say, this is a place for moments of urbanity.

It’s a  bit of a clandestine show, art that just shows up during the night….as I did not clear all the red tape forehand, but I am hoping we are going to be able to enjoy these for one or two weeks.

So here, to all the students that asked me in the hallway, or staircases, or doorfront : When is our show?

Here you go:)

Oh, I will be at the San Diego ArtWalk in Little Italy (where else) this weekend, with artists, musician, street performers. My kind of people.
Want to come along?