day 2: andy warhol

Elsewhere’s celebrating its receipt of the Andy Warhol Foundation grant for the next two years, and we worked with the Weaver class to create a window installation recognizing the Warhol grant.  Andy’s said: “someday all department stores will become museums,” so we decided to put a department store in our front window.  Andy’s love of the commercial object as a transcendant aesthetic phenomenon (aka ART) is an inspiration to Elsewherians, because we are also interested in how everyday objects become aesthetic and can become ART if you look at them in that way.

We talked Warhol history.  Everyone knows about Warhol, but it often stops at the name, soup cans, and brillo boxes.  The most fascinating parts of his work—experimental video making that pushed the video into life, the factory artists and his relationships with them, art as a business model—fly under the public radar.  It was good to introduce the students to some of these media and ideas.

As I said before, the group seems most interested in making things together, and I can imagine playing with these materials being very satisfying after a full day in the classroom.  We set out for a full day creating a department store in the front window.

Danna and I already run a “pretend” department store in Elsewhere, so it was no big deal imagining how to expand.  Danna and her group grabbed old chandeliers, tested xmas lights, and began wrapping the chandeliers to create a window glow.  Meanwhile, Aliya and Kaylan led an expedition to our fabric storage to pick up some yellow carpet for the floor and white to wrap our particle board furniture.  Kara spraypainted silver frames and printed out photos of Warhol for the Warholwall.

We added most of the things in later.  And then, voila! A window there was.