by Monica Schwarze
Staff Writer
Do not be surprised next week if a musician is playing Mozart from within the perimeter of a giant gold frame. And do not be startled to see a pile of ice melting away behind a similar border.
The musician, the ice and 21 other objects, people and scenes that will be scattered around campus from Dec. 11-15 are part of the “Art Frames Life” exhibit, the final project in “Introduction to Contemporary Art,” a University of La Verne class being taught by Bob Kitzmiller, associate director of education for the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.
Kitzmiller organized the project with seniors Elizabeth Alapizco and Pauline Bonille, CAPA students Barbara Gonzales, Patti Manjarrez and Cheryl Rogers and alumnus Ian Scali. He said that the purpose of the assignment was to introduce the La Verne community to contemporary art in a way that is fun and non-threatening.
“I’m trying to introduce a concept,” he said. “I want to make people think about the possibility that these objects are art.”
New pieces will appear each day. In all, there will be 23 pieces displayed.
Kitzmiller emphasized that the framed objects have personal significance to the students.
“Most artists get their ideas from their life,” he said. “We decided to take these images and frame different things like some of the ideas artists had historically. Art can come from anything.”
Alapizco, whose pieces are inspired by everyday objects on campus, said that “I like that we’re going to get people to see art. I feel like people think they need to go to a museum or a gallery to see art, and I like that they’re just going to see it. They don’t have to look at it for a long time, they just need to see it.”
Alapizco and the other students hope that the project will also inspire recognition of the University of La Verne Art Department, which they feel is under-represented.
“Hopefully, this will make people aware that we are on campus,” said Alapizco. “I’m not asking for the whole world to see this. Just somebody, anybody.”
Rogers agreed, adding that before she took Kitzmiller’s class, “I always enjoyed art, but I didn’t know I could take it here.”
The class chose to frame each piece in gold because, according to Kitzmiller, “A frame is a great signifier. It’s a signifier of art. It’s very traditional. All the great masterpieces have gold frames around them.”
Each piece will be accompanied by a sheet of paper that explains why the student chose to frame that particular object, and asks four questions that are intended to make the viewer think about the piece.
Kitzmiller wants these student-written flyers to be the primary explanation of the artwork. For this reason, he has not organized a formal art opening, and has not publicized the project.
“I think some people will miss [the frames], but I think it will get a buzz going. Half of this project is just trying to get people to figure out what’s going on,” he said. “This is really about spreading ideas throughout the community in a way that might not be accessible otherwise. We just want the frames to kind of appear. We want this to be subtle.”
Subtlety has not always been a keyword for Kitzmiller. An unconventional educator who prides himself on never teaching the same thing twice, he graduated from the Art Institute in Chicago with a bachelor’s in fine arts, and went on to earn a master’s in sculpture from Claremont Graduate School. His first jobs were teaching art in the New York City projects.
One of his “most interesting assignments” in New York was teaching a group of school-age children the art of sculpture. They studied the works of Claes Oldenberg, an artist known for his larger-than-life sculptures of ordinary household items.
“We brainstormed for a project, and decided to create Oldenberg-inspired paper-maché sculptures,” said Kitzmiller, who guided the students in making and displaying colorful, seven- and eight-foot statues of toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes and fast food. “It was this very enchanted, Disneyland, carnival-esque kind of thing.”
After teaching in New York, Kitzmiller taught high school-level art in Chicago, where he first came up with the idea of “Art Attacks,” a project where he would direct students to come to school in the middle of the night to transform a hallway into an impromptu art gallery.
“We would do all kinds of crazy Pee-Wee Herman-esque kinds of things,” he said. “It got everyone in the school abuzz and excited.”
The surprise aspect of “Art Attacks” inspired “Art Frames Life,” even though the class decided that a low-key approach would be more appropriate for the conservative ULV campus. Scali was instrumental in this decision.
“I had seen projects come and go with art on campus,” he said, referring specifically to an abandoned mural project. “If this was going to happen, I wanted it to be successful. So many times things haven’t been successful, and I wanted to make [the rest of the class] aware of what had been tried before. I was trying to figure out what hadn’t been tried.”
Kitzmiller understands that, even with its low-key approach, not everyone will appreciate “Art Frames Life.” He believes that art is something to be experienced and understood, if not necessarily liked.
“The bottom line of art is purely educational. We’re not asking anyone to like anything, but anytime I hear someone criticizing contemporary art, it’s usually because they didn’t take the time to understand it. That’s why I’m in education. That is the one thing missing in the art world. Art is seen as exclusionary. Most people don’t have any kind of background in understanding it.”
Because of these beliefs, Kitzmiller makes art criticism a regular part of his class. He emphasized that these discussions rarely come to a conclusion.
“It’s not about coming up with the answers,” he said. “It’s about coming up with the dialogue and the questions. It’s about issues of diversity.”
Even though he agrees that art should foster discussion, Kitzmiller does not believe that all works of art should be controversial.
“If you do something confrontational, you’re not going to get people to open up. Art should be fun. I don’t like the idea of doing things that are offensive. As an educational tool, that doesn’t work,” said Kitzmiller, who prefers humor over controversy.
“We all like humor,” he said. “It’s a great icebreaker.”
For this reason, Kitzmiller has tried to incorporate humor into “Art Frames Life.” One of the humorous pieces frames a pile of candy that observers are encouraged to take.
“You can’t lose with that one, as long as you buy good candy,” he said.
Even though humor is important to Kitzmiller, he is serious about education.
“I think teaching is an art,” he said. “It’s really about the experience. This piece wouldn’t have happened in another class. It just came together with this group of people. The students came up with the concept.”
Even though the project was the result of a brainstorming session at Lordsburg Coffee Roasters, Gonzales was the one who first thought about incorporating music into the project. She was inspired by an experience she had at another college, when she was working on sculpture while jazz musicians were practicing nearby.
“It was a very aesthetic thing,” she said. “It was very beautiful.”
Kitzmiller has organized a number of other projects in the ULV class. He has had the students remake a 1950s collage about home life to be relevant to life in the 1990s. He has also had the students go through art books in order to choose and study one piece they love and one piece they hate.
“I try to have the class discover art on their own. I’m trying to teach the process of looking at art and understanding it and trying to figure it out. The number one thing I’m trying to teach in this class is how to look at art.”
In his teaching and in staging “Art Frames Life,” Kitzmiller has received considerable support from the ULV faculty and administration.
“Ruth Trotter [assistant professor of art] is great. She’s a very innovative educator, and I have a lot of respect for her. Because she is so supportive and open, things like this can happen. I think La Verne is going to be a very supportive environment for this kind of art. These kind of things should happen in a college environment.”
Even though Kitzmiller believes that art exhibits should appear in public, he has a mixed opinion regarding pieces designed as public art.
“It’s very difficult for public art to work because the public is made up of so many people,” he said. “It’s out there in public, and the public feels an ownership of public space. That’s why it’s important that it [the show] is not going to be up for a month. It disappears in a week.”
Another one of Kitzmiller’s concerns about public art stems from the fact that the class is worried about possible theft during the exhibit, something that has been a problem with several exhibits in the Student Center art gallery and the Irene Carlson Gallery in Miller Hall.
“I hope the pieces stay where they are,” said Gonzales. “When they are all up on Friday, the whole thing will be complete.”
Kitzmiller thinks that the short length of the exhibit will also affect the way it will be perceived.
“The goal of this project is to present something in a way that people will think about it. I want people to say, ‘You know what? That’s actually pretty,’ or ‘That’s beautiful.’ I want these pieces to be just a little poetic moment or a reflective moment.”
The students also hope the pieces will inspire reflection in observers.
“I hope people will get out of it that you don’t have to be some crazy weirdo to do art or to feel art or to want to do art. I hope it makes people not as intimidated for works of art,” said Scali.
Manjarrez added that, “Art can come from the common student body. It isn’t all art majors who are creating art at the University.”
Although Kitzmiller does not plan on creating “Art Frames Life” again, he would like to teach at ULV again.
“The students are very eager and very open. It’s an enriching environment and that’s what a school should be,” he said.
The first pieces of art will appear on campus on Monday, Dec. 11. Maps of framed works will be available in the Art Department on that date.
Monica Schwarze
