AIGA at the Utah Arts Festival
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
We had a great time at the Utah Arts Festival this past weekend. It was great to see old friends of The Leo and meet new ones. If you happened to catch a performance from one of our partners, if you made a star box, or if you just perused the origami wall -- thanks for stopping by!
Visitor after visitor came into our space toting messenger bags with just the right hint of DIY flavor. On forays into the festival at large for food, fresh air and entertainment, I made it a point to track down the source of the bags -- the AIGA "Re:Design" booth on Washington Square.
Check out those bags! That shiny material is vinyl from local, reclaimed billboards. Refashioning the vinyl into messenger bags keeps the vinyl out of a landfill, uses up local "trash," provides a great chance to make something useable and hip, and gives visitors a wearable piece of art.
The color options included everything in the rainbow, but this one was my favorite:
(I love that green!)
Kudos to AIGA SLC for making the project happen. I hope to see these things around town for a long while.
The Leo at the Utah Arts Festival
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Over the last several days, staff and volunteers at The Leonardo have been assembling the origami wall that will sit inside the building during the 2009 Utah Arts Festival (which opens today!).
The very first row of the entry wall, early Monday (the first day of installation).
Putting up the diagonal origami wall late Wednesday night.
I want to thank the dozens of volunteers, family and friends who folding thousands of origami star boxes. We've been folding in earnest for about three weeks, and just finished the last star boxes last night in time to lay out the final portion of our wall. I enjoyed stapling together the wall -- reliving the hours spent folding the pieces, as well as seeing the donated paper from Infinite Scale Design Group, Axiom Design Collective, Willow Canyon Elementary School, Pentad Properties and The Leo office itself! This has truly been a community project!
Another giant "thank you" goes to the volunteer installation crew and the late nights fueled by sugar, caffeine and cheap pizza -- you all were champs! And the final "thank you" goes to Chris Henderson, our volunteer graphic designer who offered hours of high quality work -- he's the brains behind the wall engineering, dot graphics and general cool factor of the entire installation. Thanks, Chris!
To everyone else: see you this weekend!
The very first row of the entry wall, early Monday (the first day of installation).It's been a long, arduous process filled with caffeine, close calls and some very late nights. And now the finished product is up inside the building.
The entry wall "mapped" out on the floor, waiting for the graphics on the dots, Tuesday night (second day of installation).
We'll be open from 3 to 9 p.m. starting today through Sunday (festival admission required). Be sure to stop by to see one of our performing groups, too! Another Language will be performing Thursday, Saturday and Sunday at 7 p.m., and Movement Forum will be performing Friday at 7 p.m. and Saturday at 4 p.m.
Putting up the diagonal origami wall late Wednesday night.I want to thank the dozens of volunteers, family and friends who folding thousands of origami star boxes. We've been folding in earnest for about three weeks, and just finished the last star boxes last night in time to lay out the final portion of our wall. I enjoyed stapling together the wall -- reliving the hours spent folding the pieces, as well as seeing the donated paper from Infinite Scale Design Group, Axiom Design Collective, Willow Canyon Elementary School, Pentad Properties and The Leo office itself! This has truly been a community project!
Another giant "thank you" goes to the volunteer installation crew and the late nights fueled by sugar, caffeine and cheap pizza -- you all were champs! And the final "thank you" goes to Chris Henderson, our volunteer graphic designer who offered hours of high quality work -- he's the brains behind the wall engineering, dot graphics and general cool factor of the entire installation. Thanks, Chris!
Assembling the entry origami wall, late Tuesday night.
To everyone else: see you this weekend!
Origami and the Utah Arts Festival
Thursday, June 18, 2009
With one week to go before the 2009 Utah Arts Festival opens on Library and Washington Squares, The Leonardo is hard at work creating an art installation for a brief exhibit inside the building. If you've been following our tweets of late or our Facebook fan page (and, please do!), you may have noticed an appeal for volunteers to help us fold thousands of pieces of origami.
Wednesday night's folding party, with a small wall sample in left foreground
Why origami? Because we found this beautiful wall created by Ohio State University architecture students and wanted to recreate it (with a few adjustments) to teach visitors about reusing, recycling, and some other core Leo concepts. Plus, their wall is undeniably cool and eye-catching!
To pass the time (and re-use a piece that didn't quite turn out), a volunteer came up with a creative cup holder for her water cooler cone.
While ours won't be mimicking the consistency and uniformity of the OSU wall, we are pulling recycled paper from local businesses and schools to reuse resources that would have ended up in the trash bin otherwise. The resulting patchwork wall will be a product of the community that contributed the paper, hours and fingers to fold.
The finished bags from Wednesday night's session are but a fraction of what we'll eventually need! If you'd like to help us, you can find the folding instructions here. Feel free to stop by our offices for a quick demo if you get stuck, or come to one of folding parties -- tonight and Saturday we'll be folding as quickly as we can!
So, please stop by and help us add to our star-box stash:
- Thursday (tonight!), from 4 to 8 p.m.
- Saturday, June 20, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Both folding parties are at our administrative offices at 120 S. Main Street in Salt Lake City. As an added bonus, we're giving volunteers the chance to win free tickets to the Utah Arts Festival. (Last night, three lucky volunteers won two tickets each to the festival -- thanks volunteers!)
Stop-motion animation
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
As The Leonardo susses out its exhibit plans, the staff are talking more about how to interest visitors with what happens inside the museum beyond just a static, "typical" museum experience. When we try different applications, workshops and exhibits, one thing we keep coming back to is stop-motion animation.
In a workshop back in February 2008, we did a short stint with some stop-motion animation cameras. These were a HUGE hit with visitors of all ages, to put it mildly, both back then and in a few events since then. And it appears that the art form is making a bit of a mainstream come-back as well. It's been great to uncover little gems, and to see animation become a creative vehicle in ways that the Wallace and Gromit of my childhood didn't quite capture.
This run-away YouTube hit by Oren Lavie is incredibly whimsical. Guaranteed* to melt your insides. (*almost)
MUTO from blu on Vimeo, is a little disturbing, a little pretty, and totally fascinating. Technically this is a wall-painted animation, rather than stop-motion, and it boggles my mind to consider the work and planning that went into this.
Finally, I love this designer's interpretation of a deadline (and it's a bit how I feel at the moment with the Arts Festival installation rapidly approaching!).
Labels: art, technology, video
Zer01 and Eric Dorf
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Museum hopping in San Francisco can be exhilarating and exhausting. Fortunately, a couple of staff members made it to the city by the bay last weekend to check out a few choice science and art museums. Among other trip highlights was a trip to the California Academy of Sciences sustainability exhibit, a visit to the Cal Academy's famed living rooftop and the chance to play with the butterflies in the rain forest globe.
Another great highlight of the trip was a visit to the SubZERO Festival in San Jose. The festival, run by the folks at Zer01 (who also do a tres cool biennial), was an eclectic collection of street art, low-tech displays, audience interaction, and performance. One thing that caught our eye was a video installation by Eric Dorf, who filmed people's reactions to popular ads and edited them together.
The result is a strangely mesmerizing mosaic of Madison Avenue and mouths. The video we saw at subZERO was slightly modified from this YouTube clip, but you'll get the general idea from this version. We tip our figurative Leo hat to Dorf for his creative mash-up that stopped us in our tracks and kept us engaged, focused and interested with all the distractions of a street fair happening around us!
Labels: art, technology, video
Five years on the road
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Part of The Leonardo's mission is to provide curriculum support for public schools. The Leonardo on Wheels, a program operated in collaboration with our partner the Utah Science Center, brings hands-on science activities to between 8,000 and 10,000 junior-high and middle-school students throughout the state.
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Staff member Jeanne Huelskamp shows off the wind tunnel she helped build
The week, the program celebrated its five-year anniversary! To celebrate, the outreach crew set up at the Salt Lake City Public Library in conjunction with Air Force Week.
A young visitor heads in to "land" at the Salt Lake International Airport via a flight simulator
They guided people through making the best paper airplane possible (including distance and hang-time contests!), explained the science behind bubbles suspended above dry ice, and allowed budding pilots to test out a flight simulator from Rockwell Collins, among other activities.
Staff member Mary Anter helps a visitor fold a paper airplane to celebrate the Air Force's Flight Week
Happy anniversary! And thanks to all the great partners, sponsors, staff and volunteers who have helped make the program possible over the last several years!
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