New More City Curriculum

While at the National Art Education Association Conference in New York City last week, something didn't feel right. Maybe it's because I've spent the better part of this past year traveling and working solo and too many familiar faces in one place felt foreign.
Many sessions felt like how a professor at the University of Michigan once described modern lectures: "a pointless loop of information moving from one computer to another without it ever passing through anyone's brain." This wasn't always the case, of course, but I found my curriculum (so to speak) elsewhere, often just riding the subway and getting lost. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I love public transportation. That, along with public libraries, is the reason I still believe in humanity. Museums are pretty okay, too. I found my curriculum when I left the claustrophobic conference and walked from Times Square, through Central Park, and finally to The Met. There, I was greeted by a 500 year old Bishop holding a book and looking eerily understanding of my predicament. He totally gets it.
The week in NYC allowed me time to visit the MoMA to see 'good' but probably overrated Cindy Sherman hoopla and then I was able to see what I'm sensing is an overwhelmingly UNDERrated retrospective of another (!) woman artist showing at the same time: Sanja Ivecovic's "Sweet Violence." How timely for International Women's Day. Both women have been making work about gender since the 1970s and I regret to inform you that it is still "fresh."
I finally visited Printed Matter and even 192 Books across the street in Chelsea. And then I visited the Center for Book Arts. All places were inspiring us to hold objects in our hands and think about other human beings.

Aaron Cohick/New Lights Press, The New Manifesto of the New Lights Press, 2009, showing at Center for the Book Arts.

 What was not inspiring us to think about others was the hyper-commercialized convention I was supposed to be at that encouraged me to make a free Mehndi Art Glove. Ta-da! You understand Indian Art and its relation to latex! If, as an outsider to the field, I picked up the cover of the convention booklet and read this, I would want to cut art education from schools, too.

 

I did get to see hidden gems of thoughtfulness at the conference (however achingly under-attended), and presented a bit on my own work with other great researchers and educators. I learned about Task Parties from artist Oliver Herring and got to visit with a former teacher, Doug Beube, at his studio in Brooklyn. His new book is a must for anyone interested in books and art.

Phew, that was a lot of reading. Now, let's all return to our respective screens.

Spirit-"less" Airlines