Yale School of Art Exhibits Artists at Work in Real Time

New Haven, Conn. — Visitors to an upcoming demonstration/exhibit at the Yale School of Art, 1156 Chapel Street, will be able to observe the creative process unfolding as a group of artists figure out how to “make do” with a material of their choice, and then later see the artists’ achievements on display.

The demonstration/exhibition, titled “Making Do,” explores the creative process as much as it spotlights the object that has been made. The five young artists participating in the show will be limited to working with materials they have chosen beforehand. The artists can be observed this week, October 15–22, in the act of creation when visitors will also be able to ask questions about the process. The artists’ creations (sometimes a type of performance) will then be on display October 24–November 7.

The exhibition is curated by Robert Storr, dean of the School of Art, and Samuel Messer, associate dean. Storr, a leading curator and critic as well as an artist, sees the exhibition as exemplifying “neither a return to the purist traditional concept of ‘truth to materials’ nor to the purist modernist one of ‘less is more.’” What each artist produces in this exhibition, says the dean, “can be an art of ‘muchness’ or an ‘ultra povera art of extreme spareness; it can be lasting or totally ephemeral. In essence, though, it consists of anything the artist chooses to do while making do with a given material of his or her choice.”

Featured in “Making Do” are conceptual artist Matt Johnson, video-performance
artist Traci Tulliius, sculptor Kate Costello, photographer Demetrius Oliver and graphic artist Jorg Lehni.

Johnson describes his work as “the assemblage and manipulation of raw material … generally reclaimed from the urban/industrial environment” and in many respects bearing testimony to its “previous lives.”

Tullius makes semi-autobiographical videos reflecting her self-described “ongoing fascination with the absurd, the banal and the intensely personal.”

Costello is a widely exhibited artist who specializes in three-dimensional portraits (busts).

Oliver’s photographs have been exhibited in solo shows at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, Atlanta Contemporary, P.S. 1 MoMA and Inman Gallery, as well as in group exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem and Zacheta National Gallery of Art in Poland.

Lehni, a native of Lucerne, Switzerland, is an independent designer and engineer who explores the way people interact with technology in the software/art he creates. He collaborated with the engineer Uli Franke to create Hektor, a “Spray-paint Output Device” for laptop computers.

Johnson, Costello and Lehni can be visited as they work in studios in the School of Art’s Green Hall, 1156 Chapel St. Tullius will make videos at various sites in New Haven, and Oliver can be observed taking pictures of himself at the Duncan Hotel, 1151 Chapel St. in New Haven. The artists can be observed in the process of creation on weekdays between October 15 and October 22, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

Their works will be on display weekdays between October 24 and November 7 in Green Hall, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.