NOCCA Students respond to P.1 follow up

Thank you so much to the NOCCA students who submitted their writings to the blog. Their work makes me think about what I like in art essays: the writer discovers something unexpected through the act of thinking deeply and writing about a specific subject. For me personally, the meaning held in this kind of writing is much more satisfying than the typical art review. The best art experiences take you somewhere else - a journey is taken - and one moves forward from a new place. Congratulations to these students and the journeys they shared with us.

Part 4 NOCCA Students respond to P.1: Daniel Hoppes on Skylar Fein

A Punk with Spunk
by Daniel Hoppes
on Remember the Upstairs Lounge by Skylar Fein
Contemporary Arts Center

What is so appealing about “a punk with spunk”? That phrase is faded into one of the photos hung on the wall in Skylar Fein’s Prospect.1 installation Remember the Upstairs Lounge, a piece inspired by the New Orleans Upstairs Lounge which was burned down in 1973. The piece is composed of an entrance alcove, a hallway, a large rectangular room, and an exit. All around the main room are enlarged photographs of blurred punk rockers, aged wood signage advertising adult-male bookstores and depicting numerous homosexual symbols, and lit-up bar signs. Though Fein sets the various pieces up democratically so none takes precedence, for me a certain portrait stands out.
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Part 3 NOCCA students respond to P.1: Angelica Robinson on Leandro Erlich

A Hopeful Structure by Angelica Robinson
Window and Ladder—Too Late For Help
Leandro Erlich
Lower Ninth Ward

We were on a field trip, riding around on a yellow bus and stopping at numerous Prospect 1 sites in the Lower Ninth Ward. We would stop at one site, look at it, take notes, take pictures and briefly discuss the piece of artwork. At the time I couldn’t really focus on what was in front of me. A couple of weeks earlier my Creative Writing instructors sat me down to discuss my grades. They informed me that I was failing. I had an F average in my test grades, which brought my overall grade down to C- average. If I didn’t bring my grade up by the end of the semester I would be kicked out of my arts school, New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. I knew what the problem was. I hated reading the books that we were assigned and also had a part time job. I had been having these problems for quite some time, but I just always came through some how and slid by.
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Part 2 NOCCA students respond to P.1: Monique Thomas on Fred Tomaselli

Like Beads on a String by Monique Thomas
Flipper, Abductor, and Hang Over
Fred Tomaselli
The U. S. Mint Louisiana State Museum

If art is a look into the artist’s view of the world, to experience it is to see as someone else sees—if only for a moment. Collagist Fred Tomaselli uses hundreds if not thousands of tiny magazine cutouts, Styrofoam shapes, leaves, and pills to create larger images which feel unworldly due to their enormous size, and which, through their vivid detail and color, redefine what is natural and beautiful. In Flipper, Tomaselli creates huge waves that overlap and intersect with each other, while maintaining symmetry across each of its three panels. Abductor depicts what seems to be a raging tornado either whipping through or exploding from the base of the piece, releasing hundreds of little pinwheels. Hang Over shows a tree overflowing with beads.
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5-part series: NOCCA Students Respond to Prospect.1

Note: Starting this week, students from NOCCA are graciously posting their essays responding to Prospect.1 artworks. A student essay will be posted once a week for the next 5 weeks. Comments are welcome and the students may respond. An introduction from their teacher, Anne Gisleson, follows:

In December 2008 and January 2009, creative writing students from the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, Lousiana's arts conservatory for high school students, visited many of the Prospect.1 sites around the city. As part of their non-fiction writing curriclum this past quarter, they read essays by such writers as Umberto Eco, Rebecca Solnit and Arthur C. Danto, sat in on art critiques and began collaborations visual arts students. Prospect.1 brought another opportunity to deepen their relationship with visual art, the city and with their own writing.

Anne Gisleson, instructor, NOCCA Creative Writing

Part 2 NOCCA students respond to P.1: Monique Thomas on Fred Tomaselli

Like Beads on a String by Monique Thomas
Flipper, Abductor, and Hang Over
Fred Tomaselli
The U. S. Mint Louisiana State Museum

If art is a look into the artist’s view of the world, to experience it is to see as someone else sees—if only for a moment. Collagist Fred Tomaselli uses hundreds if not thousands of tiny magazine cutouts, Styrofoam shapes, leaves, and pills to create larger images which feel unworldly due to their enormous size, and which, through their vivid detail and color, redefine what is natural and beautiful. In Flipper, Tomaselli creates huge waves that overlap and intersect with each other, while maintaining symmetry across each of its three panels. Abductor depicts what seems to be a raging tornado either whipping through or exploding from the base of the piece, releasing hundreds of little pinwheels. Hang Over shows a tree overflowing with beads.
***
“All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist…. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.”

Tomaselli’s work is a new way of looking at the same old world. The quote above was taken from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, where the narrator describes how a group of aliens viewed time. This alien theory and Tomaselli’s work share the same all-inclusive theme—a breach of time and space that allows one to see everything in an instant, like a coil of “beads on a string” resting in your palm. Theoretically, the collage depicts hundreds of real life scenes (for example, I imagine a group of party-goers in a garden: butterflies and birds fluttering around them; jewels hanging from their necks, ears, wrists) that were cut apart and reorganized into the most elemental animal/vegetable/mineral categories, with hands in one section and flowers in another. In reality, one is still looking at the same images (everything present at that garden party is still there); things are just arranged differently.
Every “big picture” was ripped apart and pieced back together again in a way that makes sense, putting everything within quick sight and reach. There is an aspect of hoarding in the image—an obsession; it isn’t good enough to have just a few of anything. No, in order for things to be as they should be, one must gather all of one thing and all of another. You get the feeling that this was no casual endeavor. The plan was set, the materials gathered, and a new, meticulous reality was created.
This process is somewhat surrealist in that it takes elements of the real world and recombines or rearranges them to form a new reality—one that is different, but also logical in its own strange, indisputable way. Because this world is governed by a different logic, it must be judged by a different standard of beauty as well—one that prizes overwhelming symmetry and order. In Tomaselli’s universe, everything has a place. Stringed-together flowers or gems create a larger ribbon of similar forms and colors. Brightly-colored paints are used as glue, making connections where there were none. In this world, the natural (cutouts of leaves, butterflies, hands) combine with the man-made (painted-on dots and stars) to create a new reality in which the two coexist amiably—a recurring theme in his work.
There is also the illusion of coexistence; most of the time, each of his materials has its own lacquered plane. For example, there may be a layer of magazine cutouts, followed by a layer of geometric shapes, then a layer of paint. Though, in reality, these objects don’t share the same space, they are viewed as a whole—as one reality with one image.
I am reminded of an astrology book where a photograph of the night sky—bright with stars—is layered under a transparency that outlines a certain constellation. What other shapes—or lack thereof—would appear if one layer were peeled back? What other realities linger behind this one, somewhat incomplete?
***
The works have more similarities than differences. For example, all three pieces share a pitch black background keeping the focus on the image. However, in trying to put focus on something else, the background draws attention to itself; in reality, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to have anything as well-lit as the tree in Hang Over without illuminating the space beyond it as well. The images are like a pair of cartoon eyes after the lights go out: unusually and unrealistically clear.
Also, all three of the pieces chosen for the exhibit were created after Hurricane Katrina. Hang Over in particular captures the spirit of New Orleans’ most famous (or infamous) time of year: Mardi Gras. Among other things, the beads are made of hands, butterflies, and pills. You can almost feel the weight of each object on the tree, pulling at the otherwise empty branches. This raises a question: why is the tree depicted without leaves? It could be to allow the beads to stand out and not be cluttered with the unnecessary, but even so, the tree is left with an ominous look. Of the three, Hang Over has the largest single body of paint (the tree), drawing great attention to the swirls and colors of its bark. Because of the beads, its “leaflessness” isn’t noticeable at first, but the sense that something is wrong still persists—something, perhaps, that you can’t put your finger on until you notice it and realize: instead of growing out of the tree, life hangs from it.
The illusion that the image continues beyond the border of the work makes it easy to believe that this is only one of many leafless, bead-covered trees in the neighborhood; the black background makes it easy to believe that nothing else can or does exist in this world; and finally, the absence of life on the tree (combined with the abundance below it) makes it easy to believe that though the tree appears to be vibrant and full of life, it is actually just the opposite.
***
Tomaselli redefines reality by demonstrating the breadth of human capability. A work of this magnitude requires that the artist have a clear picture of what the finished product should look like before beginning. Sometimes the only way to prove something is possible is by doing it. I know I would have my doubts if I’d been asked if such a thing could be done.
In a New York Times article, Tomaselli is quoted as saying, “it is my ultimate aim to seduce and transport the viewer into [the] space of these pictures while simultaneously revealing the mechanics of that seduction.” The pieces work as semi-translucent mirrors through which objects, as well as one’s own reflection, can be seen. By recognizing why he likes the piece, the viewer discovers something about himself.

Part 4 NOCCA Students respond to P.1: Daniel Hoppes on Skylar Fein

A Punk with Spunk by Daniel Hoppes
on Remember the Upstairs Lounge by Skylar Fein
Contemporary Arts Center

What is so appealing about “a punk with spunk”? That phrase is faded into one of the photos hung on the wall in Skylar Fein’s Prospect.1 installation Remember the Upstairs Lounge, a piece inspired by the New Orleans Upstairs Lounge which was burned down in 1973. The piece is composed of an entrance alcove, a hallway, a large rectangular room, and an exit. All around the main room are enlarged photographs of blurred punk rockers, aged wood signage advertising adult-male bookstores and depicting numerous homosexual symbols, and lit-up bar signs. Though Fein sets the various pieces up democratically so none takes precedence, for me a certain portrait stands out.

This particular picture, “A Punk with Spunk,” shows a punk rocker wearing nothing but the leather briefs that his hands are unbuttoning to reveal his bushy pubes. Near his thigh a shirt lies rumpled on what may be a stool. The photo’s blurred like an old newspaper. The punk stands mid-canvas, with an undefined gray-black background making him appear as the only thing existing. Remembering the photo, my image of him expands: I see him on a stage when there’s a spotlight shining on him while noisy music and the loud cries of fans envelop him. Godlike, confident, he’s just looking down to where his hands are reaching, intoxicated in the exuberant roar. Standing there, he seems beyond reality though centered in it. From the softly pouted look of his lips, we gather that he’s quite serious here, truly experiencing what he does. However, just the fact that there’s silver metal studding his underwear reveals this moment to be in some way artificial. It’s like he clothes himself in illusions if only just so he can charmingly strip for us.

What separates this punk with spunk from those represented elsewhere in the piece is foremost how sweetly serious he looks. We can understand this distinction clearly if we compare his to the portraits of the four other punks, who often flash a self-parodying camp that detracts from their sincerity, as one punk unsubtly does by exuding such an excess of gusto in ripping his t-shirt you kind of doubt his earnestness. As we can see from the numerous photos in the hall leading into the main room, the Upstairs Lounge thrived in a time when homosexuals lived in un-gentrified subcultures filled with teasing illusions, elusive gestures, secret meetings, outrageous outfits, costumes for the everyday, glory holes, and restrictions (sodomy was illegal in Louisiana until a 2003 Supreme Court case) that spawned both an inventive subtlety and a cocky swagger.

Outside in the hall are colorful photos of the Upstairs Lounge’s patrons. There’s a certain sweetness inherent in them, signs of playful handlers in illusion: a lone smiling sixteen-year-old sailor, a boisterous transvestite get-together, two men grinning next to one another. Yet nothing there is as raw as “A Punk with Spunk.” We get the impression that the people in these photos, sipping martinis, sprawling on couches, looking worn and almost jaded, have become entrenched in the illusions they cultivate and that these illusions have become a reality as enduring as that of suburbanites who understand to be real the delusions brought out under the asphyxia from a choking white collar.

Fein draws attention to the discrepancy between art (and illusion) and reality throughout his piece. The velvet curtain draped over the entrance hangs like a fortune teller’s plastic beads, a border between the rest of the museum and the rendered bar you’re entering. Walking in you feel an odd coziness that compels you to sign the guestbook. You become introverted listening to the soft music coming from the speakers overhead, and notice there’s a deep maroon wallpaper with steadily repeating arabesques, that you don’t yet realize has the same design as that which covered the Upstairs Lounge’s walls. But the coziness isn’t permanent because right behind fiberglass— the second thing you see after a cheap poster portraying a teary-eyed man in a fishnet shirt gazing up at a smoking building—is a sign that only vaguely prepares you for the upcoming horrors. The sign starts us off simply: it shows a burning building and delivers the anecdote of a woman out to buy cigarettes for her husband when she smells smoke across the street.

When you turn into the hallway at left, you’re forced to make a quick decision of whether to first examine the buoyant photos of the bar’s patrons on the right, or on the left to inspect the images of charred corpses and barstools. The glee of the patrons represented in those first pictures, and the fact many of them were burnt alive, contrasts harshly with both the grainy reproductions of old newspaper articles telling of arson in the Upstairs Lounge and the coroner’s list of 32 dead.
There’s this sort of duality present everywhere in Fein’s installation. Here, on the right, you have illusion and on the left reality (by which I here mean death, utter honesty, the destruction of illusions or contentment).

Wooden slats line the hall walls much as the actual bar’s walls must have been lined, except this paneling rises only about ten feet before the solid whiteness of the standard museum wall disrupts the effect. A fine line literally divides the art and the reality.

This you wouldn’t notice at first since you’ve probably stopped to skim the news clippings and eye the photos, set there almost like concert fliers in a stairwell. Add to this distraction the music and an anxiety to get into the actual bar you suppose exists behind the swinging doors at the end of the hall—where maybe you’ll find the cheery patrons of the bar alive and waiting—then, only once you notice the metal lamp flickering just above your head and trace its cord to see it’s suspended from a rather high plastered white ceiling, will you understand again that this is a museum and not the bar or tomb or whatever it is you imagine you’re inside.

It’s the same within the main room except there, behind the swinging doors, Fein amplifies the dissonance. As soon as Fein creates an illusion, he destroys it.
Here, the walls are a blank white, the museum’s standard. The wooden paneling stops at the door and there is no wallpaper or any covering to sustain the illusion that this is a barroom, yet somehow it feels as such. Fein groups the photos, signage, signs, and other works in bunches throughout the room, often collaging various pieces together so they fit like a puzzle trying to coalesce; however, the white wall shows blank between them. Everything collected here seems sparse as if these were the salvaged remains of the Upstairs Lounge, even though most items, as with the music, clearly originated in a more contemporary time. There’s one piece actually recovered from the bar, a small statue of a Hercules with muscles bulging out from under a scant lion skin, and even this in some way is not real since the statue is a replica of a much older work.

The ceiling lower, uncovered electrical wires line its wood structuring and light bulbs shine directly on the series of painting-sized photos that portray some punks. Drawing attention to the museum’s ceiling, Fein has one of these photos, that of a spiky-haired punk, with a clown’s white-smeared face and dark recesses for eyes, raised up apart from the rest, with an open mouth screaming near the divide.
Each of these effects and juxtapositions contributes to the feeling of an austere and lonely bar, except there are neither chairs nor alcohol. Obviously, this is a very different experience than going to the Upstairs Lounge forty years ago. Fein creates an uneasy yet oddly comforting atmosphere. Disturbed, you feel at home. It’s like all that’s missing are those chairs.

Besides the floor, if you want to sit and prolong the experience, the only place you can go is in the corner behind another curtain covering a lone photo-booth, where you can watch a news clip of when the real bar was incinerated.

On the night of the fire, a Sunday night, the Upstairs Lounge was hosting a beer chugging contest which much of the community attended, even a pastor. As opposed to Fein’s installation, the atmosphere in the actual bar would fuse more easily into an uninterrupted unity. The presence of the bartender and the other drinkers help to create this effect by lulling you deep enough into the harmony that the illusions would begin to offer some sort of comfort as a permanent or perfect reality. But since life resists any crystallization, the security you sense couldn’t last. And a frequent result of illusions beginning to feel immutable is that the open playfulness is lost, causing you to not be ready when something discordant does eventually stir you from this harmony, and subsequently you may cringe to realize the sequined dress and boa you wear have turned out to be less a costume than a drunken longing for escape.

Alternately, if you have succumbed to an overly destructive stance so that the illusions flicker at best and you find it impossible to sustain your grip on them—or else some other problem inherent to you prevents your properly participating, it’d be useless going to the Upstairs Lounge since the bar is already ruined for you and has lost even the comfort of a temporary escape. You can only stutter, unsure whether from the morbidity of being surrounded by so many blind ones dumbly clutching at what they think they is true or from an insecurity in witnessing such a surplus of skilled actors at work. Life soon becomes unbearable as if all that ever surrounds you are blank walls and mimes.

Only someone like a punk with spunk, who’s got both the best of clothes and a chiseled nudity, who’s forever donning and undressing, could have gone to the bar forty years ago and experienced a truer transcendence akin to that of Skylar Fein’s installation. Conscious of the discrepancy between art and reality, this punk with spunk accepts art and illusions, he plays and is a resourceful playmate who, when a dissonant reality tries to clamber over the walls of his fort, cleverly opens the gate and somehow subsumes it, though never not concurrently being witty, impish, wry enough to strip himself and others, to expose an un-resented nakedness.

However, largely due to the absolute rarity of his kind, it’s unlikely that a true punk with spunk was present on the night of the fire. Hours before the bar became an inferno, the prime suspect for the arson, Roger Nunez, was giggling in a bathroom stall, fiddling around with a glory hole, although no one rose or bent to meet his glory. Nunez, an out-of-work hustler, not joining the festivities outside, was little more than an annoyance to the customers who only wanted to relieve their bladders and get back to drinking; eventually the bartender evicted him. Confronted, his earlier anxious teasing evaporated, revealing the bitter isolation beneath. While being thrown out, he hollered, fussing about how they were all a bunch of idiots, threatening the bar’s existence and revenge. But, when stuttering Nunez was removed, the patrons continued to chug, ignoring the threats and the possibility of danger entering their sanctuary, until about an hour afterwards when someone torched the bar.

Some customers, sobering up, ran for the door while others found themselves trapped in corners, hugging the barred windows, hemmed in by flames. Thirty-two died, some charred so badly they’re still unidentified, and Nunez followed, committing suicide two years later.

Art is and isn’t an escape: it isn’t because it transports you into the concentrated core of existence, where life comes most intense, and it is because our distance from that heart is precisely what we long to escape. At least as long he’s prying into his underwear, this punk with spunk, we feel, is living in the core of it.

The art of this installation allows a transcendence, but more as an inspiration or a taste than an actuality, one that can only fulfill momentarily since Skylar Fein’s Remember the Upstairs Lounge, like the real Upstairs Lounge, no longer exists.

Part 3 NOCCA students respond to P.1: Angelica Robinson on Leandro Erlich

A Hopeful Structure by Angelica Robinson
Window and Ladder—Too Late For Help
Leandro Erlich
Lower Ninth Ward

We were on a field trip, riding around on a yellow bus and stopping at numerous Prospect 1 sites in the Lower Ninth Ward. We would stop at one site, look at it, take notes, take pictures and briefly discuss the piece of artwork. At the time I couldn’t really focus on what was in front of me. A couple of weeks earlier my Creative Writing instructors sat me down to discuss my grades. They informed me that I was failing. I had an F average in my test grades, which brought my overall grade down to C- average. If I didn’t bring my grade up by the end of the semester I would be kicked out of my arts school, New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. I knew what the problem was. I hated reading the books that we were assigned and also had a part time job. I had been having these problems for quite some time, but I just always came through some how and slid by.

None of the Prospect 1 sites truly interested me and I began to become restless. The bus stopped again and we all got out again. As I walked closer the piece, it slowly began to capture me. A ladder floated with a window attached to it. It had a magical quality. The window looked like it was all that was left of a home, a brick house. The piece signified hope for me. It made me realize that I would actually have a way out of my problem.

The piece was titled Window and Ladder--Too Late for Help. The man responsible for the sculpture was Argentine artist, Leandro Erlich. I read this information from a green and white sign that I had chose to ignore earlier on. The sign also told what the piece was made of: a metal ladder, a fiberglass brick wall and an invisible aluminum frame, which was hidden beneath patches of grass. The frame made it possible for the ladder and window to stand. The sculpture didn’t stand straight, instead, it was slanted. This made the ladder appear to be struggling as it held up the window, which didn’t seem probable because the window is made of fiberglass. The bottom rung of the ladder was removed, to decrease the temptation to climb it, but I doubt that most spectators even realized this.

The location of a piece does influence the way it is viewed. Window and Ladder –Too Late For Help, was located between where the Levee wall of the Industrial Canal broke and the brightly colored, contemporary Make It Right homes, a Brad Pitt rebuilding project. Slabs of concrete, -- the porches and foundations of pre-existing homes – surrounded it. The dried straw-like grass and disconnected pieces of homes overshadow the rebuilding but they reinforce the idea of the piece.

As I talked to various people who have seen the Prospect 1 piece, none of them shared the same metaphorical meaning of the piece as me. When I talked to one of my instructors, she brought the political meaning to my attention. Although I didn’t share the same idea, I could understand why one would relate the sculpture to Hurricane Katrina and it explained the title of the piece. But it had more a hopeful meaning for me. In my life it represented hope whereas the title of the piece actually stated “Too Late for Help.”

Looking at art is just like reading a book or listening to a song. We all are experiencing the same thing, but we come out with different opinions.

The window is hope, the ladder and its rungs are all the steps and obstacles I had to over come to get where I needed to go. The strength of the platform underneath the surface made me think of the strength that I didn’t know I had, the hidden strength beneath the surface. The structure seemed to be weak, but once you got close to it, shook it, tugged it a bit; you realized it couldn’t be moved.

Part 5 NOCCA students respond to P.1: Amber Lyons on Beatriz Milhazes

Kaleidoscope Eyes by Amber Lyons
Gamboa by Beatriz Milhazes
The U. S. Mint Louisiana State Museum

“Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world,
for I would ride with you upon the wind
and dance upon the mountains like a flame!”
– The Land of Heart’s Desire by William Butler Yeats

Often as a child I found myself day dreaming about an empty hardwood floor stage, flooded with bright warm lights before a sold out audience. Perfectly poised with pointed toes, I am graceful, the music and my body acting as one. Lilac chiffon skirt layers drape over my sculpted legs, the magenta nylon/spandex leotard a disposable layer of skin over my chest and torso. Freshly bloomed pink rose ribbons and slippers—an image of grace. In these dreams I am a Prima ballerina assoluta. Of course, I realized that I will never be a Prima ballerina assoluta or even a ballerina because I lack the grace and poise, not meeting the height requirement by a foot and two inches. Never has this subject been more painful then when I first looked upon Gamboa by Beatriz Milhazes.

Originally constructed as a two dimensional piece of set design for her sister’s ballet company, Milhazes took advantage of her part in Prospect 1 to try her hand at creating a three dimensional piece. “New Orleans was always about the vitality, the dancing and the music. So I link it — the carnival in New Orleans with the Carnaval in Rio [Brazil]. It will make this kind of dialogue between two cities,” Milhazes told the New York Times. Using the set design as a point of reference, she went about making her acrylic and oil dream into a tangible reality. The piece, constructed of crystals, cardboard, ribbons, iron, beads, plastic, sparkling sequins, fake flowers, terry cloth hair bands, and oversized Christmas ornaments, takes up the entirety of the room in which it is displayed. Gamboa made the childish, fanciful ballerina inside of me want to dance between the strands of beads and plastic orbs dotted with opaque neon dots.

“All children, except one, grow up” – Peter Pan by James M. Barrie

When no one was around I crawled underneath the piece, just for a moment, looking up into the center of the white iron frame, a circular hole the size of a basketball. The center hole was surrounded by widening concentric circles. Each row of circles was separated from the last by a thick white line. Beneath the frame and attached ornaments I felt as safe as a child nestled inside of a wooden crib looking up at a mobile of stars, sleepy in the comfort that everything would be okay. Reluctantly I crawled out from the comfort of the mobile and off the cold concrete floor.

Lines of small gold and silver beads, reminiscent of beads thrown from floats at Carnival, fall from the iron host until connecting with targets or flowers or luminescent circles of gold or white circles with bright neon spirals. At the end of some of these strands are small pink or white crystals varying in size from tear drops to jewels the size of a child’s palm. Some scores of beads contain just one large fixture, such as a large flat gold orb. While others possess a few ornaments, for instance two plastic flowers: one pink and one purple sewn together. Beneath them is a small plastic white bulb incased by a hot pink terry cloth hair tie. Underneath that is another just like it but the hair tie is sea-foam green. The strand finally ends in a white cardboard circle that houses a spiral design made by yellow sparkling dots. Each ornament is connected by a few beads. Like fingerprints or snowflakes, no two lines are the same.

Everything but the iron frame of Gamboa felt disposable and cheap separately, but became beautiful and priceless when combined. How many Mardi Gras beads are given to little girls to play dress up with or cut up and used in Kindergarten art projects?

“Picture yourself in a boat on a river,
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies.
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly,
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.”
- Lennon/McCartney

A good portion of Milhazes’ work is large, bright, and bold on canvas using colors prevalent in Carnival celebration, psychedelia, and common favorite colors of little girls. Gamboa was a bit of a departure, in that it also employed a cornucopia of colors such as gold, blue, red, purple, black and in more varied tones, some with glitter and some without. Natural, sparkly, and neon colors give off a feeling of tenderness and delight that can easily be found in a group of four year old girls having a tea party with stuffed animals as dates or pretend fussy children. Gamboa provided Milhazes the opportunity to make her abstract visions into a tangible form of reality.

Art in Action event

The Milne Boys Home is the site of the newest Art in Action installation, this Saturday, by NOCCA visual arts students, the result of Elizabeth Underwood's residency at NOCCA this past week. The installation will be on the grounds of this historic but structurally compromised school, which still has the original segregated facilities intact inside.

Art in Action at the Milne Boys Home