Dear Classmates,

My visit was to the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia last Sunday. It is located near the Virginia Beach Pavillion at 2200 Parks Drive nestled in a thicket of trees. I made a foolish mistake and tried to go on the previous Monday. I had checked the website and had glanced at the hours not noticing that it said closed on Mondays. When I did finally get to go, it was a very pleasant surprise. After touring two of the exhibits, LIZA LOU American Presidents, and Cherished Objects Still Lifes as Fact and Fiction, I chose the latter. It was a tough choice because the Liza Lou exhibit was truly amazing. However, I knew I would never be able to come anywhere close to making a drawing of her art

The Cherished Objects exhibit was actually a project whose premise "refers to the Einsteinian notion that the appearance of things always involves the viewer's or the artist's point of view."1 "It is always the artist's subjective interpretation (fiction) of objective reality (fact)."2 Students from some leading art schools were invited to create still-life paintings based on identical still-life models. I observed various interpretations and settled on one I thought I had the best chance of remotely duplicating. I asked for a chair, and sat in front of that painting trying to draw it without allowing the curious passers by to see it!

The still-life I chose was different from most. It did not show kitchen objects grouped on a stand at all (or did it?). It looked like an ultrasound of someone's heart, or maybe a microscopic vision of a DNA strand, (I am obviously no human physiologist) which had been painted in soft blues and some dark blue or black. It caught my eye, because it was so different, and because it had my favorite color: blue. The technologies involved were the paint, the brushes, the canvas, the various probable communications to the various art schools through fax, e-mail, and other technological luxuries. I imagine the artist may have used a focusing tool such as a magnifying glass. The actual name of the student artist is Renee Fox from the Corcoran Gallery School of Art. Her painting was unnamed as far as I could tell. It had no odor I could detect without making a spectacle of myself or getting too close (at the National Art Gallery in D.C., I have had the guards tell students to stay back one foot).

The social value of the art is that it demonstrates so well the idea that the work of art is the artist's subjective interpretation. It was like a fish out of water amongst the others. The display in the exhibit showed the group of objects used by the students. It has the exact duplicate of a group of objects at various heights replicated around fifteen or twenty times. It was a great means of showing various perspectives. I haven't figured out which one Renee Fox used. It is so difficult to explain.

I simply used a black pen on a white background, working from the center outward. I quickly realized that I had chosen no easy task. My drawing will easily direct the viewer to the painting, but is far removed from the appearance of Renee's art. My drawing is like something I might scribble when talking on the telephone. It doesn't look as if much effort was taken to do it, but I feel hopelessly lost trying to do it. I will show it to the art teacher at my school before I scan it. I have already told him about it. I will try to add hyperlinks to this letter, but I am not sure if they go here or on the Web page.

I will close with a translation of a quotation from a French painter, Delacroix,

"The painting is a bridge between the spirit of the painter and the spectator."

That can certainly apply to the exhibit I saw. I hope you will take the time to see the awesome exhibit. I love museums, but tend to stay away from contemporary art. I am glad to have taken the chance to see something out of my ordinary paradigm.

Sincerely,

Karen S.

1 Weil, Stephen, consulting curator for "Cherished Objects: Still Lifes as Fact and Fiction." CAC

2Ibid.
 
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