This past weekend, nearly 30 Asbury students traveled to Chicago, Il. for a three-day class trip. The trip is part of the Contemporary Art Seminar course and gives students in the class the opportunity to explore the city and its museums, even through the rain storms that the class endured while there.
The course is taught by Josh Smith, professor of Graphic Design in Asbury’s Art and Design department. Other professors in the department chaperoned, including Dr. Linda Stratford and Professor Keith Barker.
Leading up to the trip, the students learned about different eras of art, specifically those that have heavily influenced contemporary art. Part of the preceding work in the class has been to find artists that the students connect with and then connect to an artist found in one of the museums they visited in Chicago. After the trip, each student will make a piece in response to both of those artists and where they intersect.
The group squeezed into two Asbury vans and left campus early on Thursday, April 3, in the midst of the thunderstorms that went well beyond Wilmore. They spent the majority of their trip being rained on, but that did not deter them from having a good time exploring Chicago. In fact, it provided a great opportunity for them to spend even more time in the museums, specifically the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) and The Art Institute of Chicago.
“We got to see works from Picasso, Monet, Andy Warhol and Georges Seurat, just to name a few,” said Vanessa Fischer, a junior Art and Design major from Columbus, Ohio. “The MCA was a lot smaller and had just a few exhibits from several artists that focused on different topics in their art, ranging from racial prejudice to the human body, the impact of war, the relationship of man-made objects and nature, to the personal lives of the artists themselves. The Art Institute was full of a lot more art ranging through human history. It has art from many worldwide cultures, from ancient to modern day.”
As an artist herself, Fischer primarily paints and sketches, but has recently gotten into linoleum prints. She felt more connected with the artwork in the hotel they stayed in, the 21 Museum Hotel, which houses various galleries of contemporary art.
“There were several works that involved carefully cutting pages of books and aligning them to make images,” Fischer recounted. “The artist likened it to taxidermy, saying, ‘The book must die so it can be preserved.’ I found that really fascinating.”
Outside of the art museums, Fischer and the other students spent their time in the streets of Chicago, surveying local spots and touristy areas. As a major city, Chicago offered up various cultural cuisines (such as staples like hot dogs, or something more ethnically diverse like Pad See Ew in Thai restaurants), street musicians scattered throughout the city and big attractions like CloudGate, more commonly known as the Bean.
“I really enjoyed getting to spend some time with friends and just getting to observe the world around me, while also seeing how other people have interpreted the world around them through their art,” Fischer concluded. “Chicago is a lovely – and windy – city, and I’d love to come back and visit again sometime. On multiple occasions I found myself just stopping and taking a closer look at the intricate designs on the buildings around me. There was a beautiful church covered in ivy – that was probably my favorite.”
The course is offered every spring semester, which many Art and Design students look forward to as a part of their academic plan.
Photo courtesy of Vanessa Fischer.
