Jo Edmondson who has been a Kidspace intern for the past half year or so will be leaving us soon and offers these reflections on her time at Kidspace and MASS MoCA.

Before we go into the museum let’s all take out our keys. Wait… you can’t find your key. Dig deeper, mine is bright orange with gold glitter, it is sticky and bendy. This key will be used to open our imaginations. Sometimes your key is on top of your head, or maybe sitting on your shoulder. Now that we all have our keys, let’s put on our big museum hats. My hat is three feet tall, black velvet, with red and orange polka dots, these hats will transform us to a new place. Today we are going to be transported into the sky, fly with the birds.

In my work at Kidspace I have tried to reflect diversity, global social issues, and our contemporary culture through the art that I teach; allowing students to express their own voice through their art and to question the world through observation of artists and their works. Art teaches us valuable lessons in life and a certain logic in thought process which can be translated to other areas of study. Kidspace provides children with a great sense of accomplishment and self esteem. We are in the business of stimulating the imagination and causing children to dare to dream.

Each child has brought something new to my life, a new question, a new answer, a new interpretation, a new perspective. If you watch close enough you will see a trail of magic dust follow each of children as they skip and explore the gallery space.

A magical pipe cleaner tree for caterpillars, a blue robins egg nest made from a coffee filter, a wire rollercoaster made for ants and of course a wood block with a painted circle, a portal to the universe.

This is what I take with me when I leave MASS MoCA, the stories of a world that exists in our imagination. In a time when life can be a little hard, when we are challenged as a community and as a people, it is important to learn from these kids. A little imagination and creativity can go a long way to making the world a better place.

“Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, nor the winds of change…”

The Shop HARDWARE Holiday Party is still happening tonight from 5-9 PM. Bring your family and friends for great bargains, products from local artists and craftspeople, and a whole lot of shopping fun (including a cash bar and refreshments)!

See you at the party!

Cheers,

Brittany

Sol LeWitt Wall Drawing #999

We have been delighted to see so many glowing reviews of the Sol LeWitt Retrospective since we opened the new building last month. My Google Alert has been filled to the brim with reviews from bloggers and websites and we have amassed a collection of reviews from newspapers and magazines around the country.

Check out what the critics have to say about the installation:

Included here are links to some of our favorite reviews including Sebastian Smee’s review for The Boston Globe,  the review on art/design blog Cool Hunting, Holland Cotter’s review for The New York Times, and Richard Lacayo in Time, Andrea Shea’s piece on NPR, and Roger Catlin in The Hartford Courant.

We’d love to hear what you think of LeWitt.

From fabulous Marketing Intern Caitlin Foster:

Today I peeked into Building 5 with a few of the other interns to check out the latest phase of installation for The Nanjing Particles, Simon Starling’s upcoming show at MASS MoCA. Being able to witness the actual installation of a show as massive as Starling’s has been fascinating, and something I have been making a point to check out from week to week. Building 5 is open to the public during the process of setting up the show, something you don’t usually see in most museums, making it all the more worthwhile to observe. The installation is based on a photograph of Chinese workers brought in to break a strike in a shoe factory that was formerly housed in what is now MASS MoCA’s campus. This week saw Starling and the crew applying wallpaper depicting the expounded photograph to the large forms that you see when you first enter the room.

The Opening Reception for The Nanjing Particles will be held on Saturday, December 13 from 5:30-7:30 pm (remarks at 6:30 pm). The event is free to members/ $6 for not-yet-members. RSVP to the Opening Reception by calling 413.664.4481 x8112 or by e-mail. 

After the opening, join us for a work-in-progress showing of we become by dance company-in-residence LAVA.

Of all the recent articles on the LeWitt show, my favorite so far is Chris Cobb’s recounting in The Believer of his experience being one of the lead installers of the retrospective. (Only an abstract is available online, but we’re selling the issue in Hardware.)

You’ll get to learn all sorts of facts, like “Once the project started, there would be up to three people a day doing nothing but sharpening pencil leads.” Or “It also occurs to me that [Leonard] Nimoy, like LeWitt, had a fictional self—for Nimoy it was the dispassionate and logical Spock, for LeWitt it was his somewhat impersonal and abstract geometric wall drawings.” (Read the article to understand that one.)

Comment on this post and tell us what you think of the new Sol Lewitt Retrospective.