Team Inspire: "Survival Series -Truism" 1995 - Allentown Benches by: Jenny Holzer

Thursday, August 30, 2007

"Survival Series -Truism" 1995 - Allentown Benches by: Jenny Holzer

Photo taken by: Patrice Rine

Allentown Benches: Selections from the Truisms and Survival Series 1995
Granite: 5’ long, 1’6"deep 1’5" high.
Jenny Holzer was born in 1950 in Gallipolis, Ohio. She received her Masters of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design and moved to New York City. She now lives and works in upstate New York and in New York City. Fourteen granite benches were commissioned for the United States by the General Services Administration to Jenny Holzer and are located throughout the federal building. Each is inscribed with a selection of text from "Holzer’s Truisms or Survival Series". Both thought provoking and meditative the inscriptions offer a sampling of opinions, sentiments and conflicting truths. Holzer believes that these texts are well suited to the courthouse because, like the people who come before a Judge, they present ideas, which the speaker believes to be true. Readers must then interpret these "truths" and draw their own conclusions.

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Team Inspire Progress

August 29, 2007
TEAM PROGRESS - SCOTT DOUGLAS
Time is passing without me noticing. This has been the most interesting class so far because of the number of emails between each our team members. I truly enjoy reading the posts of all my class mates. Our group has and always will communicate well and get the tasks agreed upon done in a timely fashion.
I now have another reason to not watch the road as I drive. I am usually looking for wildlife but now I look at what I usually see everyday but in a different way, as art.

TEAM PROGRESS - SEAN THOMAN
The group creative project has really been coming along. I am impressed with every member of the team. The artwork is displayed in great variety. I really like how the blog site is laid out. We have a new interactive section that allows you to vote for your favorite art piece. I am definitely looking forward to the finished project.

TEAM PROGRESS - MENSEH JONES
Since there is no settled definition of art, and the term art is most widely used to describe a particular type of production generated by living beings, our team has been very creative in showcasing what we have done for our Art Journal. Our creativity has taken us to appreciate art history, and the work of art by painting, taking photos, and exhibition of our photo artworks on the Team Inspire website. The way our team is being set up makes us to feel like we're all trained connoisseurs. We evaluate each other pieces based on the way the artist(s) used line, shape, space, form, color and texture. Though each of us do have our own sense of aesthetics, but, we still try to be objective to use art terms. After viewing each other work, our team always comes to a consensus that it is fine for the artworks to be uploaded on the website. We have all been working really hard to help raise the profile of Team Inspire website. That is the reason why each of us always email our work to be commented on and edited by everyone.

TEAM PROGRESS - SUSAN MAGENTA
With passing time and increasing understanding and knowledge of art I am more aware of the art in my daily life. This was certainly the goal of the art journal and it is great to see it happening.
There are things that I see, that are not framed and hanging on a wall, that capture my eye and make me think of the process that the artist or artisan went through to create it. I passed a home yesterday that had just added a stone wall with steps leading up to their front door. It was beautiful. I thought about the building process and how each stone would be selected to have the final effect of the stones fitting together.
Our Art Journal is evolving daily and it is interesting to see what is added. The journal is a work in progress. This work brings our team together to create and combine our thoughts and visions.

TEAM PROGRESS - PATRICE S. RINE
The blog is looking fantastic and the art that is being collected is just beautiful. Once we were able to get the blog to have the look and feel that we all agreed upon we were up and running and ready to jump into the actual collecting of the art. We all continue to communicate via email and often have phone conversations in order to update each other. For the first week most of us all photographed paintings with the exception of Susan’s IF house, so for this weeks submission I really wanted to steer away from the paintings in order to add variety into our blog. There were really so many things that I could have snapped a picture of but I was in search of the perfect addition. I think that I have found two perfect additions. Cloud Gate a.k.a. The Bean from Millennium Park in Chicago and Jenny Holzer’s Allentown Benches: Selections from Truisms and Survival Series 1995. The pictures don’t really capture how magnificent the benches truly are. They are thought provoking and beautiful pieces of art. The best part about this project is after finding what you think is the perfect addition to our blog, researching the artist and learning about his/her life and how they started and perhaps struggled.

August 22, 2007
TEAM PROGRESS -MENSEH JONES
As we see things in today's world, almost all important projects; at work or at school, do require us to work together as a team. This constant and effective collaboration would make us to achieve a set goal. The manner in which we collaborate directly influences the outcome of our project. The outcome of our project would definitely show that we are excellent team players.
We met in the Student Lounge on Tuesday, August 14, 2007, at about 6:00pm for the purpose of brainstorming on how we would work collaboratively for success.
After a period of brainstorming on how we would set the pace of getting this project on its way, we discussed the web creation, the team charter, roles of each team member, and how works of the project would be handled amongst us. We also launched our website: http://teaminspire.blogspot.com/ as the initial success of Team Inspire's project. These are things that we effectively do as we go along in preparing ourselves for the good of this project: (1) We communicate with each other as often as possible; and when it is necessary, so that the communication would aid our work, and not deter it. (2.) We do know what is expected of each team member because; this has enabled us to know that being a productive member of the team is very essential. (3) We have been staying up to date on what has to be done. As I have stressed communication as the mean focus for Team Inspire, we have been keeping each other informed of our progress and do know the outcome would be a success.

TEAM PROGRESS - SEAN THOMAN
Everything seems to be moving along nicely since we met last week and discussed delegation of responsibilities. The team charter is already posted and I think it looks great. I’ve posted the artwork I found for the week and the other artwork on the site looks great too. The artwork I selected was ‘Soda Jerk’ by Norman Rockwell. Selecting this artwork prompted me to do some research on the piece and I found out that it appeared on the cover of the August 22nd edition of the Saturday Evening Post in 1953.

TEAM PROGRESS - SCOTT DOUGLAS
My personal reflection - I never took the time to look at art and appreciate what effort it takes to create different pieces. I appreciated the art itself, but never the time and effort it takes to create something. I have painted pictures before but I never sat and created something large. I never read and researched much about art and it's rich and complicated history. Abstract, broad strokes, complimentary colors all were foreign to me. Yes, I have heard of these terms, but I was not sure of their true meaning. I look forward to learning more as this class progresses. Our team is progressing as planned, our project is growing and developing. As I said in my reflective paper for the individual assignment, we are not sure what the final piece will look like. That is so intriguing to me.

TEAM PROGRESS – PATRICE RINE
The five of us, Susan, Scott, Sean, Menseh and myself have been in the same study group since February 2007. I have to say that it has been such a pleasure to work with all of these individuals over the past 7 months. So how did we get to where we are? We usually like to meet in person and did so at the onset of our Art101 Team Project. Prior to our first meeting each team member had to review all of the choices of Team Projects and come to study group prepared to vote. It was unanimous and we all voted on the Art Journal. We went through the project overview with fine detail and took a step-by-step, line-by-line approach until we all understood what it is that we needed to do to get the project completed. We usually ask for volunteers for different aspects of the work and allow all of us to be involved, and divide out the work democratically and distribute the work evenly. And quite honestly some of us are better at some things than others.
For this project it was decided that Scott and Sean would create and maintain the blog with Susan, Menseh and myself having complete access to it in order to make any changes we would like made. But primary responsibility went to the “boys”. It was each and every team member’s responsibility to get their assigned project in by the pre-determined deadlines for week one and all of the subsequent weeks. When we have something to submit we usually send it around via email to all so that they have a chance for input and an opportunity to make any edits prior to it being posted.
As far as collecting, the art photographs this has actually been fun. For the first submission I already knew that I would photograph my Behren’s paintings because of my love of the way he worked color. However, the beauty of this project is making me keenly aware of my surroundings and where I might have just walked by a piece of art in the past it makes me stop to pause and take a look and snap a picture and find out who actually created the piece and what went into it. This truly to me is “Art Appreciation”. With that said, if every one of your students comes away with that mindset you truly taught us what it means to Appreciate Art.

TEAM PROGRESS – SUSAN MAGENTA
We scheduled a group meeting to begin our Team Project. We had reviewed our options prior to our gathering so that we were ready to plan the process. Strangely enough, from all of the options, we had all selected the Art Journal. So, from there we discussed the requirements and filled the jobs necessary to move through the project. It has been interesting to think about the submissions to our site and the art that we will add to the blog as we have a clean canvas (blog) to make our own.

Team Inspire

Which piece of art most intrigues you?

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Thursday, August 30, 2007

"Survival Series -Truism" 1995 - Allentown Benches by: Jenny Holzer

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Team Inspire Progress