As the sun slowly begins to set on a cold February evening in Berlin, Miya Ando straddles a patch of snow in front of the Reichstag building. With luminous paint, she fills in an outline of numerous tiny cherry blossoms spread on top of the snow-covered lawn. The blossoms go unnoticed in the daylight and are only visible later on for just a few moments in the dark until disappearing into the night. What she’s working on will never hang in a gallery and never go on sale. It won’t be featured in a glossy book, or even be seen by more than a few people. It won’t even last more than 24 hours. But still, Ando says, it’s a work of art.

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Installation Art Gallery

When mixed-media and installation made its debut in the 1960's, many artists were rebelling against the typical museum set up. Artists previously or currently located in Kansas are keeping this attitude alive by expresssing their own unique works of art.

“I don’t think it would be possible to create this feeling with a painting,” Ando says. “The ephemerality of the melting snow and the people walking over the piece was something that was very important to the piece, as was the fleeting nature of the viewing time frame of the work.”

Mixed-media and installation art has never been more interactive and accessible because of the freedoms allotted to the modern artist. Spaces are being filled at an alarming pace, never being imagined to be occupied with an artistic intention. Artists are doing whatever it takes to fulfill their personal, artistic aesthetic while still, and more importantly, maintaining a connection with the viewer.

Maria Velasco, associate professor of installation art within the School of Arts, says mixed-media and installation art emerged in the 1960s, when artists rebelled against the authority of museums by finding other venues to display and express their work.

At the same, time this offered a more direct and refreshing way to connect with their audiences. “They would question the power of the art establishments and museum curators. Because of this, the artist’s work was considered much more action- based and ephemeral,” Velasco says. “This generated a lot of energy that’s been since ongoing, but has ended up being a little more polished these days. If you call an artist mixed-media, you want to see that in his or her work is inter-disciplinary and offers an alternative viewpoint to what art is and can be.”

Nathan Hoffman, Oregon, Illinois, graduate student, is experiencing first-hand the potential effect and ever-evolving possibilities that mixed-media art, including today’s technology, can offer.

For example, whereas images used to consistantly be just static, now artists such as Hoffman utilize video. “It’s a more photogenic process,” he says. “I don’t think technology or multi-media has hurt the art world but only transformed it more.”

Aaron Storck, local installation artist, says the artists of the 1960s and ’70s paved the way for modernizing installation art and helped mold artists like himself. “I feel grateful to pioneering, twentieth century artists who made some of the first happenings, installations, performance pieces etc.,” Storck says. “They really opened up a lot of new territory for artists to explore.”

Storck grew up in New York City. After graduating from the Bronx High School of Science, Storck came to Lawrence to attend the University to escape the East Coast pace. He completed a BFA in printmaking from the school of art in 2001. He returned to New York after graduating, but returned to Lawrence in 2006 for the easy living and inexpensive space so he could develop some art projects. Since his return to Lawrence, he has worked intensely with his collection and even helped find a local Lawrence alliance of artists called the Fresh Produce Art Collective.

Storck’s artistic livelihood is dynamic and hyper-evolving thanks to the technological advances offered to today’s artist. Installation art is a young discipline and is extremely flexible and powerful way to think and work, he says. It can get the artist thinking spatially and architecturally about the viewer’s experience with the work. “There becomes a time-based, programmatic unfolding of the experience for the viewer as they move through the space and discover their way through its intentions,” Stork says.

When developing his work, Storck says he deals with interlocking mediums. Within one piece of installation Storck has staged performances, which are photographed and videotaped, which then become the basis for more work. “I take the photographs and arrange them in the computer,” Storck says. “I print them out and collage them to canvas and proceed to paint on them to make a new kind of hybrid painting. I write poems and speeches which become printed narratives for my shows or performance pieces which are done within the installations.”

Storck says he wants his art to reach people, especially those who care about art. In the long term, however, Storck wants his art to be able to communicate and connect with people in different cultures, present and future, about the qualities and issues pertaining to this culture. “Art has a power like that,” Storck says. “When you walk through a museum and check out works from all over the world of all ages, you can get a feeling for what the people were thinking about, what they cared about. I want to take part in that cultural exchange.”

Kyle Davis, Alma senior, is a prime example of embracing the rule of no limitations. As an architecture major, Davis says his designing motivations can derive from artistic origins. Davis has always been interested in building furniture. After taking an independent study course focusing on tensegrity, non-gravitational based structures made from smaller parts that are suspended in tension apart from each other, he found that the separation between installation art and architecture can be pretty blurred.

“Good architecture should excite and delight the senses, or at least cause some kind of emotional response,” he says. “Architecture can be considered a little more permenant of an installation.”

Nick Cave, graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute and director of the graduate fashion program at the School of Art Institute of Chicago, made the Kansas City debut of his Soundsuit performance art production at Bartle Hall on Feb. 20 for The Kansas City Art Institute’s 125th Anniversary Gala.

Raised in Folton, Mo., Cave says he always felt a satisfaction in performance, even at a young age. “I remember feeling so much joy performing for my family at picnics when I was a little boy. I remember feeling a family connection, even then.” Cave says.

It wouldn’t be long until his feeling would drive him to apply for the Kansas City Art Institute where he studied painting, drawing, textiles, dancing and performance art. Within a few years, Cave has established himself in the art community with the introduction of his soundsuits. Cave initially built his first soundsuit

as more of a sculpture piece, collecting and compiling tiny twigs into a handmade, one-piece body suit. It wasn’t until later, when he tried the suit on, that he realized its true capacity. “I want people to associate something familiar with the sounds of the suit by making a direct connection or reference, not necessarily a western civilization connection,” Cave says. “It’s more of a ritual, carnivorous dress.”

Cave says that he feels fulfilled in his mixed-media collaboration of the Soundsuits and dance performance he directed. “I’ve done what I was set out to do,” he says. “I came here and allowed the community to build this show. The 32 performers and I bridged the gap together of gender, race and sexuality. It was an outreach process, as a medium, to exercise my expression.”

Cave believes the application of mixed-media art has always been fair game and artists are continuing to use what they will to best support a particular project.“Nothing has changed in that sense. Artists are operating the same way as ever by opening themselves up to anything in order to complete a vision and express an idea. We’re just seeing it in ever-evolving forms.”

Jessica Molina, 2009 graduate, isn’t shy about dipping her finger into too many projects. Molina graduated with a BFA in expanded media with a focus in dance and sculpture. While at school, she had installation and mixed-media work shown in the art and design gallery as well as Murphy Hall. Molina performed as a dancer in Nick Cave’s Soundsuit performance in February in on of his hand-made, multi-colored suits, resembling a tribal dance. “Working with Nick Cave was a ground-breaking experience for me,” Molina says. “The massive production scale and integration of different mediums he put together in just one show blew my mind. It also showed me how to put together a huge artistic collaboration into an amazing multi-media performance.”

Molina has not only had experience with performance art, but also dove head-first into her own interpretations of mixed-media and art installation. Molina’s work can range anywhere from site-specific installation art to performance art pieces with interactive elements.

In discussing installation art, Molina says it doesn’t matter whether it’s a virtual reality or 800 pounds of human hair weaved into a massive braid, installation has the advantage of creating an interactive experience. “Installation artists today are continuously embracing new technology and mediums to incorporate into their work,” Molina says. “They’re always taking information in and utilizing their surroundings.”

Molina says she was drawn to mixed-media and art installation because of the artistic freedom. She tries to transform space and create an experience that the participant can embrace.

“My main goal is to get people to think in ways they’ve never confronted before,” Molina says. “I try to avoid telling them what they should necessarily think or believe. I want people to use their brains to form their own opinions and thoughts.”