flat x II-D

improvisatory / pop-up exhibit
Wednesday 12 October – Tuesday 25 October 2016

377 pushpins, 54 columns x 7 rows.
12-inch grid.
pushpins not in perfect alignment, but close.

exploratory work by Design Seminar students

Eleven fourth-year students (designers and a book artist) revisit concepts introduced in their 2D Design foundation class, 3+ years ago, and/or rehearse/develop ideas being explored in their seminar thesis work.
Their content is material — collaged or handled in other ways — that is drawn from, or reflects cultural, personal and other issues and sources that are important to them.
Form and content are in oscillation with each other. Something like matter and energy.
The 12-inch grid of black pushpins is an arbitrary structure, relating to the background arbitrary structure of 14 vertical homasote panels, 4x8 foot but covered – top and bottom – by a 1x4-inch frame, and whose outer two panels are less than 48 inches. (Other arbitrary background structures include the course and the learning institution in which this work takes place.)
Installation started from the center (Taylor’s typewritten names), and spead out, left and right, from that initial move.
Pushpins could be removed where they were inconvenient; enough remain to suggest the underlying grid — a kind of forcefield in which disparate materials come into relationship with each other, and in which negative (unused) space is activated.
Students related their material to the grid as they wished. The work is subject to change throughout the two weeks of the exhibit.

John McVey, instructor
Senior Design Seminar

Alexandra Bonin
Taylor Bowen
Adela Bukva
Li Yun Chen
Lauren Cox
Katie Dygon
Ziyi Feng
Britney Payton
Chase Terranova
Devon Unwin
Elise Walsh