A HI-C Avenger in C3

John Hernandez, HI-C Avenger, 1992, acrylic on wood, Dallas Museum of Art, Texas Artists Fund

The Center for Creative Connections was honored to host two workshops this weekend with the artist John Hernandez. Hernandez, a well-known artist based in San Antonio, received his MFA from the University of North Texas under the tutelage of artist Vernon Fischer. His work is accessible to people of all ages, and a reminder of a pop-culture past. Our visitors were thrilled to have the opportunity to talk with Hernandez about his work and engage in a hands-on experience on Thursday evening during the C3 Artistic Encounters workshop.

Hernandez answering questions about his work

The workshop guided participants through a process Hernandez uses in his own work to design maquettes for his larger installations. Combing through magazines, participants pieced together images in a surreal way, affixed them to cardboard, and then transformed them to pop out of foam core.

John Hernandez giving a demonstration

Deborah creating her collage

Hernandez joined us again in C3 during our Late Night on Friday evening for a toy sculpture workshop. Similar to the way in which Hernandez creates, visitors pieced together vintage toys to create new creatures of their own. Morphing one toy into another, cutting pieces of something that once was in order to create something new and different, gave visitors a closer look at the process of the guest artist.

Toy creations

The next time you are in C3, stop by to admire Hi-C Avenger by John Hernandez and take a closer look! What will you see?

Amanda Batson is the C3 Program Coordinator at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Coming Soon: The New C3

There are some changes taking place in the DMA’s Center for Creative Connections. We have expanded our “making” space in C3 to include a work of art to inspire creation, and we are enlarging the area to allow room for more visitors. We have recently added a new staff pick, and we are in the process of installing the Urban Armor Street Art Camp panels in the Tech Lab and Young Learners Gallery. We’re also changing out the monitor wall images with visitor photo contributions. DMA staff has been preparing the walls in C3 for the installation of a piece by John Hernandez called Hi-C Avenger. We are thrilled to announce that Hernandez will be teaching workshops in C3 this January!

Amanda Batson is the Program Coordinator for the Center for Creative Connections at the Dallas Museum of Art.

We’ve Looked at Clouds

If you’ve come into the Center for Creative Connections (C3) within the past month you may have noticed a few changes in our space. Aside from new artworks in our Encountering Space exhibition, we have transformed one area into a Prototyping Station. What does that mean exactly? Well, in this space we use reproductions of works of art to engage our visitors in conversations. These conversations allow us to better understand visitors’ perspectives and inform our thinking in the development of exhibitions. For the past month, we have focused on three works of art from our collection.

We often have so much background information about a work of art that it is difficult to decide how much of it visitors need to know. There is a delicate balance between providing information and allowing visitors to learn through their own observations. While we did these tests, we only provided a minimal amount of information besides the image.

Our dialogues have included both face-to-face conversations and written responses to questions we’ve posed. We have documented these responses and decided to make word clouds to show you what we have received so far. Word clouds, or tag clouds, are a way of visualizing data. You enter text into a computer program, and it generates a visual representation of which words are repeated most often. The words that are used most often appear larger. Take a look at the following word clouds we generated based on visitors’ responses to the following:

“The title of this work of art is The Minotaur. Tell us what you know about the Minotaur.”

“We are looking for descriptive words for this work of art. List what comes to mind when you look at this picture.”

Marcel Dzama, “The Minotaur,” 2008, plaster, gauze, rope, fabric, chair, bucket, and paintbrushes, Dallas Museum of Art, DMA/amfAR Benefit Auction Fund, 2008.43.2.a-e, (c) Marcel Dzama

Jerry Bywaters, “Share Cropper,” 1937, oil on Masonite, Dallas Museum of Art, Allied Arts Civic Prize, Eighth Annual Dallas Allied Arts Exhibition, 1937.1

Visitors noticed many things, ranging from objects to emotions.Why is this process important? We want to gather input from visitors. Putting this testing area in the middle of the gallery allows visitors to see the process we use to develop interpretive components for a work of art. It also gives Museum-goers a chance to contribute information and a perspective that may be different from the staff’s, which is an important component of the C3 mission.

The next time you are at the Museum, stop by the C3 and share your responses in our new prototyping area.

Jessica Nelson is the C3 Gallery Coordinator at the Dallas Museum of Art.