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Art for Our Times

"This is precisely the time when artists go to work."

By UNC Asheville

April 21^st, 2021

Cover art by Assata Goff, new media major

Art for Our Times 2.0

UNC Asheville brought its second iteration of the Art for Our Times project in the Spring of 2021, with opportunities to engage with visual, digital, performing, and contemplative art forms that offer a moment of pause, reflection, and meditation.

Some of the showcased works directly address the events of our times, others offer experiences that invite the audience to observe, reflect, and respond in their own way. Take a look at a few of the projects, activities and performances that came to life with Art for Our Times.

“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

Glass-Blowing and Beadmaking

Students from the Glass Club, led by New Media Lecturer Mark Hursty, demonstrated multi-cultural hot glass techniques.

Crafting Monuments

The study and practice of craft has long been an integral part of UNC Asheville’s curriculum, but this spring, students in three classes brought their interdisciplinary perspectives and problem-solving abilities to a new challenge – a big one. Each class and each student conceptualized new monuments for their college city.

The assignment was part of a Crafting Monuments workshop hosted by the Center for Craft in partnership with UNC Asheville, at the start of the Crafting Resilience series. Students from each class presented their ideas as part of Art for Our Times 2.0.

Photography of Our Times

The "Photography of Our Times" virtual exhibit was collected from a range of classes, and focused on work that gives voice to student experiences of the issues we have had to confront both individually and collectively over the last year and the many ways they have responded in their roles as artists and citizen scholars.

Making Meaning

The Making Meaning project showcased mini-documentaries by students in the Mass Communication Department, utilizing visual tests as a way to analyze and process our current political, social, and cultural climate. Watch the video compilation here.

Young and Gifted

Art for Our Times saw the premier film screening of "Young and Gifted," a documentary on the creation of the UNC Asheville Black Lives Matter mural, that was filmed, directed and produced by UNC Asheville students. The film screening also included student performances.

Minute Mandalas

Students from the course More than Mindfulness: How Mandalas and Their Analogs Around the World Cultivate Wellbeing shared mandalas, analogs, and related activities for campus community members to observe and engage, pause and contemplate.

Faith In Arts

Roy Carroll Distinguished Professor Rick Chess spoke about the intersections of faith and the arts, his vision for the upcoming Fall 2021 Faith in Arts Institute, and the Faith in Arts interview series with artists, religious practitioners, and everyday people who bring a range of perspectives to the questions of how faith and arts impact their lives.

Transformation

This compilation by New Media students includes recent projects developed by students in the New Media Department for the Art Party 2020 event at the Asheville Art Museum. Students used the museum as a classroom not only to study works by established artists but also to find inspiration for their own works. Experimenting with new media tools and concepts, students discovered innovative ways to materialize abstract concepts, forged personal connections with the source works, and provided visitors with fresh experience of the collection, exhibitions, and museum spaces.

In this project, students explored the idea of transformation both physically and conceptually through augmented reality, projection mapping, and video installations. Their imaginations invite us to experience the museum’s spaces and artworks in exciting ways. The works explore the boundaries between past and future, nature and artificial, human and nonhuman.

Data Visualizations

Cherokee High School students who are dual enrolled in Computer Science 107 with Susan Reiser, senior advisor to the provost and collaborative co-founder of STEAM Studio, used different types of data, to put together artworks to convey information in aesthetic forms.

Rocky Peebles, Restocked, 2021 The visualization shows the quantity of fish restocked in the Qualla Boundary’s rivers from October 2020 to projected amounts in September 2021.

Maya Cruz, Separation, 2021 The relative scale of the chain link fill depicts the number of children separated from their parents in each state.

The visualization depicts the unequal racial representation in the NBA.

Shay Barker, COVID-19 in the US, 2021 The visualization illustrates the seven-day positivity in each of the states by the relative size of the stars.

AfroMusics Ensemble

The UNCA AfroMusics Ensemble gave a live performance on the Quad, directed by Adama Dembele and Toby King.

See all the projects from Art for Our Times 2.0 here.

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