Dark Fairy Tales

We have an awesome new exhibit at the Frist called Fairy Tales, Monsters, and the Genetic Imagination. Our chief curator, Mark Scala, conceptualized this exhibit. It took about three years to realize. Fairy Tales, with their presumed innocent nature, actually convey many disturbing qualities about people, behavior, and society. Many convey moral and instructional guideposts for initiates into a culture. One such story, that is represented in the collection, is Kiki Smith's renditions of the Little Red Riding Hood tales.

Digitization

Some of the amazing iphone apps that I have been exploring over the last two weeks are: stopmotion and 8mm vintage camera. I have developed some interesting ideas while playing with the stopmotion and have done quite a bit of footage. None that I like so far. As soon as I have something viable, I will post it. My vintage camera app worked out well for the globalization topic. It captured the homogenizing effect of the highway. It could be anywhere in the world, right? Here's a link to my vintage movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCHtjRZo03c

This week teaching goes digital too. Here is my link to an instructional video on using the historic egg tempera medium: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngzmdl112w0

Human Dignity, Social Justice, and Globalization

What global issues are important to me? Human dignity is at the top of my list. Respect, grace, and compassion are qualities that can create an environment where human dignity prevails. Of course, this is an utopian wish. The reality is that individuals are powerless when in conflict with individuals who have acquired power in some collective capacity. There are many artists and organizations that have formed to try to counterbalance the negative aspects that have arisen from these circumstances. I explore these in an essay and have critiqued one outcome of this dysfunction in a poster. You can check this out on my website:

http://susanstriepe.weebly.com/posters.html

Sir Ken Robinson in Nashville!

Today Sir Ken Robinson was in Nashville and I was lucky enough to get to hear him talk. He is amazingly witty. I recorded the lecture, but unfortunately anyone who listens to it will have to contend with my obnoxious laughter. I used my iphone microphone app. and I am trying to work out how to get it off my phone and into my itunes. I tried to share it, but it it said the file was too big. I am working on solutions and hope to post it to my podcast site. As soon as I have it, I'll post a link to the my site. Here's a pic. of me & Sir Ken.

Human Dignity, Social Justice, and Globalization

I have just completed an annotated bibliography of online sources dealing with these issues. Five of the sites relate to internationally renowned artists that deal with this topic from different perspectives and five are organizations or resources that approach the topic from a global perspective. Here is a link to my website that houses the pdf document: http://susanstriepe.weebly.com/links.html

Phillips Collection

How much does a patron/collector influence the course of art history? We have a new show at the Frist from the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. What a daring collector Duncan Phillips was! He collected so many of the modernists before anyone else and established a modern art museum before the Whitney or the MOMA.

Social Justice

What is social justice? It seems that it can mean many things to many different people:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice

iPhone Apps

I recently acquired two trés cool new apps for my iPhone that I have been playing with. The one is an 8mm vintage movie app and the other is a stop motion app. Boy, does my crazy Blythe doll move like lightning. I am going to have to refine my skills somewhat!

Community

I learned a lot more about the Frist Center these last two weeks through the community study that I undertook. Some surprising things that I learned were that: A city is not viably of high status if it does not have a world class symphony and art gallery and that these attributes are important to the business community as it allows various other facets of the city to grow and advance; I also learned that other growth factors in the city have an impact on the art gallery, e.g. the almost completed Nashville Convention Center.