Mirthful morbidity

By GREG COOK | April 3, 2012

The real action is a series of workshops that mine the library. Amy Walsh helped participants use the library to design "personal and experimental maps." Andrew Oesch and Jori Ketten will show participants how to "generate a set of personal encyclopedias" on April 5, 21, and 26. Shea'la Finch will help people use the library to create "visually compelling stories" on April 9 and 16. Lara Henderson teaches bookbinding on April 11 and 18, and Oesch will tell you how to make pop-up books on April 19.

The umbrella academic term for these sort of art projects is relational aesthetics, though the idea goes back at least as far as Joseph Beuys's "social sculpture" and feminist consciousness-raising groups of the 1960s. And for some of the local organizers, it's a logical outgrowth of their work leading youth art programs at places like New Urban Arts. The idea is to move us beyond passive looking to interaction. So it's not really about what you see in the exhibit, but the possibilities it proposes. It can feel a bit like a parlor game, but its aims are big, encouraging us to directly participate in the art world — and then to get more directly involved in the rest of the world as well.

Read Greg Cook's blog at gregcookland.com/journal.

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ARTICLES BY GREG COOK

A REALLY BIG SHOW! | May 21, 2013
This showcase of tomorrow's-art-stars-today is both invigorating and overwhelming, with work by 194 students.

CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN | May 13, 2013
What does it mean to be a man? That's the question at the heart of this smart, sumptuous exhibit — one of the best shows in the region this year.

MERRY PRANKSTERS | May 07, 2013
Parked out front of Brown University's gray modernist Granoff Center on a recent sunny morning were one of those 15-foot-tall inflatable rats that unions install in front of businesses they're protesting and a limousine sloppily painted to resemble a yellow and black school bus.

ALTERED IMAGES | April 30, 2013
Among the handsome Washington Street storefronts of AS220's renovated Mercantile Block building, with their neo-old-timey signs, is the residents' entrance to the building. It is against AS220's religion to leave any space empty that can be filled with art. So the lobby is the AS220 Resident Gallery, which occupants of the building take turns filling with their stuff.

IN THE CITY | April 23, 2013
One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Providence art scene is how the city itself has been such a rich subject. A decade ago, the city became a galvanizing topic as artists fought to protect the old mills that served as their homes and studios from demolition — with mixed success. But lately, the community's industrial architecture itself has attracted artists' attention.