John Grade - Capacitor

I was given an amazing opportunity at my internship a couple weeks ago. I was able to work with John Grade on his newest piece Capacitor. 

Capacitor is based on the single-cell algae, called cocolithophore. Coccolithophores are one-celled marine plants that live in large numbers throughout the upper layers of the ocean. Unlike any other plant in the ocean, coccolithophores surround themselves with a microscopic plating made of limestone (calcite). These scales, known as coccoliths, are shaped like hubcaps and are only three one-thousandths of a millimeter in diameter. So although they are really, really small; they also congregate in HUGE groups. They stay alive for a few weeks and then their white calcium shells float to the bottom of the sea. If you're wondering how many group at once, take a look at this picture:

That is a picture from space. Those milky turquoise parts of the water are the cocolithophore. Those cocolithophores can be seen from space. Think about that for a minute. Nature is awesome.

We started the sculpture with a wooden skeleton type thing. I took pictures most of the days I was there, so you can see how the sculpture takes shape. Each piece of wood is unique, because the sculpture starts smallish and gets gradually larger and curling, like a nautilus shell.  

After the bones of the sculpture were put together in their pods of four, we put sleeves made of tyvek (flashspun high-density polyethylene fibers) over the nose of the cone. With in the cone, there is a light bulb and that's where the sculpture starts getting crazy! Outside of the building there are sensors, when the temperature deviates from the norm, the lights get brighter and dimmer. AND when the windspeed deviates from the norm, the sculpture will actually move, blossoming with the abnormal speeds of the wind. 

After the cones were given their socks, the sculpture was ready to be put together.  I was not actually there for this part of the process, but from what I gathered it was full of problem solving and frustration. Eventually, the sculpture was assembled!

After a lot of work, Capacitor is ready to go! There's an opening tomorrow (Friday) from 5-8, so come and check it out! It's amazing and beautiful.

Also here is a fun shot of me putting one of the cones together!

It was a really great experience working on this installation and John Grade was really nice.

Internship Update - Week 10?

I haven't done an internship update in a while, so I figured I'd get you up to speed on what I've been up to! 

Things have really picked up for me as an intern. I'm helping out with the Arts/Industry program now, so I'm transcribing interviews with artists in residence. There have been nearly 400 artists, so I have my work cut out for me! It's been really awesome listening to what the artists have gleaned from the program and how things they did in the residency made an impact on the rest of the career. One of the artists talked about how before she worked in the factory, she almost always worked on the pottery wheel exclusively and that the factory really opened her eyes to mold making and expanded her knowledge base in pottery. It's really fascinating hearing so many points of view on the same program. It's all in the same place with relatively the same structure, yet every artist has a completely unique experience. Those experiences really come out in the interviews and I like being able to share in those memories.

Another thing I've been doing is helping install exhibitions. The first exhibition install that I observed was Kate McDowell. She created these toads during her residency with Arts/Industry and the install process was pretty intense. The toads were really fragile and had to be attached so that no one could just pick one up and walk off with it. It was a really interesting process to watch.

Photo courtesy of John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan. Artist: Kate MacDowell

With Lauren Fensterstock's exhibit, I was able to take a more active role and help with placing grass as part of her installation Celebration of Formal Effects, Whether Natural or Artificial. It was a really amazing experience to be able to work closely with an established artist. I'm also preparing for my senior seminar gallery show with my peers, so it's been an eyeopening experience to witness what happens in the gallery during an install of an exhibit. 

John Michael Kohler Arts Center is in the process of installing a series of new exhibitions under the name Uncommon Ground, which has a lot to do with ecological art. If you've been following the blog at all, you know that's my thing! One of the exhibits in this theme is John Grade's Capacitor, which is such an amazing idea, I'm going to save it for it's very own post. I've been helping install that and it's been a crazy, complicated process but it's definitely going to be worth it! 

Here's a sneak peek of what we're dealing with. I've been posting stuff on my instagram page pretty often so if you want to check it out, my name is _jenny_bee_. 

What's John Grade got going on? Guess you'll have to wait and see!

Other than helping install and transcribing interviews, I've been doing research on objects in folk art like memory jugs and smoking stands. 

I've been pretty busy here, but it's so great. I'm learning a lot and having fun!