Wagner Launches Fall Metz Series

by Jingwen Zhang 19 PH

“If you are serious about being an artist, you must endure being in quicksand for long periods of time and recognize that gold stars are few and far between.” This sobering advice was offered by visiting photographer Catherine Wagner, who opened the Photography department’s Gary Metz Lecture Series last Tuesday night (October 3) in the Metcalf Auditorium.

The California-based Guggenheim winner—who serves as dean of Fine Arts at Mills College in Oakland—is currently showing work at Brown University in a collaborative project called LUMEN. Wagner describes the installation as an “immersive, site-specific, multisensory experience” that reflects on light as a metaphor for change and spiritual contemplation.

Wagner frequently uses her work to explore the built environment and question the spaces that define us as a culture. She shared images of early work, including Early California Landscapes (1974, top two images) and American Classroom (1986, below) and spoke about her groundbreaking 1995 project Designing Disney’s Theme Parks: The Architecture of Reassurance (above), which exposed “the hidden seams of magic and illusion, shifting the scale and exploring the fiction of reality and normalcy.”

Wagner told students that she sees photography as a form of language—“a common denominator” that allows people to communicate cross-culturally. As an educator, she draws inspiration from seeing students discover the language of photography and “begin to claim their adulthood.”

LUMEN is on view through November 5 at Brown’s Granoff Center.

Red Eye ceiling renovation

Hey, we can blog now! Will it turn into a 'thing'? Time will tell. I thought I'd start with what's going on with the Red Eye gallery right now. For those that don't know, the Red Eye is Photo's main gallery that introduces the department to the work of the incoming MFA students at the start of the Fall, hosts various shows throughout the school year, and wraps up the Spring semester with the BFA thesis shows.

Photo moved from Benson Hall during the 1980's into what was at the time a newly created space in the Design Center. Over the years the aluminum drop ceiling in the Red Eye has become literally bent out of shape. There's also been more of a call to get above the ceiling to install equipment for installations (audio, video, computers etc). There's nasty insulation up there covered in decades of dust. The tiles aren't always easy to remove and even more difficult to put back in place—often times they're not reinstalled properly and it shows. I've personally scratched my arms and ripped my shirt sleeves moving the tiles all while inhaling dust(?) particles that I also get in my eyes.

So we decided to remove it. Unfortunately, it reveals the rat's nest of plumbing and cables the drop ceiling was hiding. So after it got tidied up as best as it could, everything up from where the drop ceiling used to hang was painted black.

Chris D.

The ceiling right before its removal.

It's scary up here.

Farewell old ceiling.

The drop ceiling removed.

Apparently there's been a jet engine up there we weren't aware of.

The real ceiling painted black. Installing the lighting is next.