DESCRIPTION: This activity explores the use of private and public space and how artists incorporate this in their work.
Keywords include: private, public.
space , place, location, site.
function: building, house, home, dwelling. shelter, protection, safety, security.
sculpture/architecture/designing spaces: interior design, porch, garage, add-ons. scale, shape.
hide & seek, secret spaces (public vs. private),
memory, making rooms of memories... and many more.

OBJECTIVES: To familiarize students with the idea of private and public space and the many different ways that artists choose to use and design space as part of their work.
To learn that art can be personal, yet often have a shared meaning across cultural, age, and racial boundaries.

PROCEDURE: This activity presents the concept of space as used in a variety of sculptural and two-dimensional artworks from the Walker Art Center's collection. Space is the occupied or unoccupied area surrounding us. The illusion of space can also be created or recreated using two-dimensional media, such as in painting or drawing. All space within a drawing or painting is said to be in one of these three areas: the foreground, which is the area nearest to the viewer, the middle ground, which is farther back from the viewer; and the background, which is the area farthest from the viewer. In painting, occupied space is called positive space and unoccupied space is called negative space?

GO TO THE INTERACTIVE ACTIVITY

Look at examples of artworks that explore rthe ideas public and private through the spaces of various kinds that they create. After viewing examples, students can create their own "memory spaces", ie. places to house their memories and ideas, a space filled with their memories. They can collect photos, items, found objects and other personal imagery that embody memories/meanings for them. Artists find meaning in personal items, items that bring childhood memories or memories of place: pebbles, beads, feathers, fabric, letters and words, old maps.

As part of this on-line interactive unit, the three-dimensional model of Atelier Van Leishout's sculpture, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is presented in VRML format. This model is full of private and public spaces that invite exploration.

MINNESOTA GRADUATION STANDARDS:
(1) Read, View, Listen
(2) Write and Speak
(3) Literature and the Arts
(4) Math Applications
(5) Inquiry
(7) People and Cultures

Age Level:Appropriate for students at grades 6 and up.
Artworks Used:

1. Brower Hatcher Prophecy of the Ancients: look at the space Brower Hatcher chose to build, made up of collected imagery, many of which have universal meaning.
2. Judith Shea's Without Words : doesn't look like a space as we know it, but creates a space which symbolizes many memories.
3. C. Oldenburg, Upside down city
4. B. Saar, House of ancient memory
5. P. Osario, 100% Boricua: In a cabinet, P. Osario managed to fit everything that reminds him of his home country, Puerto Rico.
6. Ben Vautier, Ben's Window: Ben created a house for himself in the window of a gallery. In his window, he presented himself on "the stage of life," with all the daily necessities: a chair, a bed, a table, a stove, and other everyday objects bearing his humorous, handwritten phrases about art and life.
7. Edward Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, Portrait of a Mother with Past Affixed Also
8. George Segal, Diner
9. Edward Hopper, Office at Night
10. Dan Graham, labyrinth

© 1998 WALKER ART CENTER