"American Idol" Derek Miller
| In a world full of voices, how does an artist become an individual when speaking out? How does a person become an active member of an inactive community? And how does a young student become aware of the decreasing numbers among peers involved in civic engagement? |
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| For dditional information, contact: Michael Crane, Director Art Center Gallery University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 660-543-4498 crane@ucmo.edu To subscribe to our listserv: http://listsrv.ucmo.edu/archives/ about.php3?list=acg-l |
Using the curatorial team of Michael Crane, Kathleen Desmond, Nancy Weant, and Ashley Waite, Raise Your Voice is a diverse display of artists creating an individual voice about issues that reach many people on the UCM campus and around the country. Many of the works reflect social issues that are of personal importance, and other works pertain to political issues to which many people can relate. Whatever side the artist is advocating, often it is the advocation that is important and not always the issue at hand. It is the concern of the curators that many of the students and members of the UCM community have become quiet about issues that are of great importance, and Raise Your Voice serves as a platform to be loud about a particular issue. Raise Your Voice and ADP grow out of a concern about the decreasing rates of participation in the civic life of America in voting, in advocacy, in local grassroots associations, and in other forms of civic engagement that are necessary for the vitality of our democracy. ADP and Raise Your Voice rest on a core belief…that civic engagement is critical for the preservation and vitality of American democracy.
In addition to advocating the First Amendment through Raise Your Voice, Michael Crane added a second exhibition to the UCM ADP project; a traveling show aptly named, Adding Insult to Imagery, curated by Dr. Robert Sweeny of Indiana University of Pennsylvania. This exhibition, first shown last January at the Kipp Gallery at IUP, explores the limits of acceptability, and generating new ways of seeing. The works have a common theme: all the artists interact with, and respond to, images from the mass media. Adding Insult to Imagery asks the viewer whether or not the process of appropriation, which is evident in much of 20th century Western art, “is an insult to the initial image, changing meaning in an aggressive manner that shocks or offends. What if the initial image is shocking to begin with? Can the meaning of mass-produced images be changed, or does meaning resist such change, building defenses in a manner similar to the human immune system?” This exhibition is not subtle. The works are poignant and clear with statements leaving strong, often shocking images of those in the media.
With the immediate sting left from the bite of Adding Insult to Imagery, the two exhibitions compliment each other nicely as Raise Your Voice lingers more quietly, and while its context is sometimes less direct Raise Your Voice is sometimes more disturbing, to more people, while it concerns itself with farther reaching issues under the First Amendment. Raise Your Voice and Adding Insult to Imagery both seek to reach as many people as possible with advocating aspects of civic engagement in mind. Both shows reach many people on the UCM campus and surrounding community, while the affects are easily experienced through the work of artists who feel that there is a critical and timely need for advocating issues of personal and societal importance.
Ashley Waite
September 2006
