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Tomorrow afternoon in my museum studies class, half of the class will be presenting our virtual gallery projects. I will also be showing my own exhibition to my professor and classmates, and I’m super excited about it.

Virtual gallery is a semester-long project for my museum studies class, which requires me to curate a virtual exhibition on the computer. I had to choose 15 objects that I had access to, and then come up with a theme, or storyline, for the exhibition to connect the objects together. I was also responsible for object documentation, label writing and gallery space designing. If you think it is complicated, then congratulations, technical problems of the software and computer was just a bonus added on to all these!

The objects of my exhibition are 15 pairs of shoes. I bought them in different times and situations, and each of them contains at least one of my personal stories. As a whole, the exhibition almost forms a biography of me, and every time I look at these shoes being displayed in my gallery, I get a reminiscent feeling toward these past moments of my life.

For me, the documentation process was the most complicated and time-consuming part of this project, because I had to deal with Photoshop…well…as an art history student who is always “stuck in the past,” I just can’t master any photo-editing software like this. Ok…so I took an individual photo for each of the 15 objects, opened these photos in Photoshop, and followed the instructions on the Photoshop handout step by step. After hundreds of mistakes, I finally managed to get rid of the backgrounds of my messy desk and keep only the objects themselves. Compared to this, label writing was much easier.

Designing the arrangement of the gallery, I would say, was the most interesting part of the project. I felt like I got full control over everything in the gallery because I could move them wherever I want. I got the freedom to choose the color of the walls, ceiling and floor too, or add some benches, signs, or shelves. It was as if decorating a new apartment, when thinking about how nice the apartment would be after furnishing could easily make me excited.

Viola! So the pictures below show how my final exhibition looks like, and tomorrow will be its formal “opening.” Although it is costly to rent an actual gallery space and to furnish it the way I want, and even harder to gather a large group of visiters who are interested in looking at my old and worn shoes, I could do all this on this virtual site. Reflecting upon the efforts I put on this project, it was like a process of realizing a dream, and I myself was the one who made all the sketches and plans in my mind come true.

 

This past Saturday, I was originally planning to check out the Japanese prints exhibition in Toledo. I’ve studies for my exam ahead. I’ve found a car and a friend who could drive me there. And I’ve informed everybody around me how excited I was to finally be able to see this exhibit…but, wait, Helicon was gonna present a student art exhibit on the same day! And I definitely should help out to set up! Fortunately, my benign friend promised me that he would drive me there during Thanksgiving break, so sorry to disappoint you guys, but let’s just put those Japanese prints aside for one more week. And, here comes the coolest art show, presented by Helicon: Incognito!

Different from the one we held last year at the Warren Robbins Gallery in Art & Design Building, this year’s exhibition took place in a lovely house. This little compromise in location (cuz it was too late for us to reserve any campus gallery spaces) turned out to be a huge success. Artworks, music, a constant stream of visitors, and a more relaxing atmosphere—that’s all we could expect for a remarkable night.

One of the most eye-catching and interesting pieces of the exhibition—trust me, all of them are just fantastic!—5/13, is a installation featuring a collection of jars. Each jar contains certain liquid that represents the artist’s mood of a certain day in May 2013, which is indicated by the date on the label on the cap. It impressed me at first glance because I’ve seen an awesome installation which also featured a series of jars in MOCAD (Museum of Contemporary Arts, Detroit) last year during a field trip with Helicon kids. The artist was Kristen Pieroth, and what she did was putting the residual liquids of boiled books into jars. All books that were boiled were the big names like Huckleberry Finn’s Adventure and Pride and Prejudice (I remember? Not sure…).

Anyway, let’s look at these “diary jars”. Jasmine tea. Chips immersed in water. A paper calla lily. It’s enjoyable to see how the artist’s subtle feelings are embodied by liquids of different colors and transparency. And since he/she doesn’t tell us the actual emotions, we could only guess or try to interpret the meanings of the liquids by our own cognition, and there are no correct answers. Moreover, some of them got opaque or volatilized over the past several months, and the objects inside either shrank or corroded. To be honest, this straightforward and candid presentation of the passage of time thrilled me.

 

Sitting on my favorite circle, I am bent

And dangling over a square, with holes

On the sides, a lateral plane in white space, built

With white bricks and white pipes, I sit

Under white lights, listen to white fans

Breathing white air onto my white hands, my

White face. I’ve been throwing white paint

 

At triangles for hours, dripping

And flowing, there are pockets of air for one moment when

I splash at them and snuff

Them out. They go without one word, not

One wet plea, a last will, a sore thumb

Against their fate, a full blink, it must be so fulfilling

To be globular; made of light and true float, lucid

Beads of soap in an iron sink

A glowing ring on the end of a wand

in a child’s hand, pockets

Buried underwater, motion stirring them from

Sleep. I want to effervesce and fill myself

And claim one square inch of air, it’s mine

And I will disperse it amongst my form

And I will become spherical. I will be even

And luminous and brimming like

A perfect white, like an even coat

Thrown on canvas or panel, wall

Or window? I am standing in a field

Of white grass before the frontier, I hold color

In one hand, light in the other.

 

I muse on the Creator (standing on the far side

Of the field) making his first circle, discoid

Enough that he surprised himself, and saw that it was good so

Drawing in the deepest breath of all time and curling

His forefinger and thumb into a loop he blew

The most triumphant breeze of all time and all the planets

Went forth expanding into spheres, some landing near

Others of the same charge

And they began to sway, orbit and dancing,

Sonorous all the while expanding

In an everlasting exchange of force

And swelling verve! I like to think of the Creator

As the first Abstract Expressionist, who’s just

Trying to find the true nature

Of his medium, this time on spheres because

Flat surfaces had grown dull. I like to think

He was on a roll and surprising himself and planning

For his spherical masterpiece when he

Looked closely at the green and blue one and it

Was moving. And the Creator

Was so bemused with the little moving things that he

Forgot about his masterpiece.