WIGA 2010
Is art just a pretty picture or can it change the world? Should it make you think? Should it make you act?
Team Kenan invited Duke students to submit original artwork that demands change, makes viewers laugh, squirm, grimace, cry, or wonder – and ultimately want to live better.
The winners of the inaugural What is Good Art? Competition were unveiled at the exhibit opening on April 5.
Top prizes went to:
Michael McCreary, “Tension in Yellow” (1st place)
Stephanie Vara, “The Dinner” (2nd place)
Colin Heasley, “Stop Signage” (3rd place)
Kirstie Jeffrey, “Love, Love, Love” (Honorable Mention)
Marissa Bergmann, “Veins and Brains” (Honorable Mention)
Zach Blas, “Queer Technologies” (Gallery Choice)
A prestigious panel of experts judged competition submissions on their ability to fuse ethical and aesthetic dimensions into one statement. The scope of work solicited for the competition was intentionally broad: students were free to interpret the ethics-art link in many different ways.
Panel of Judges:
William Fick, Visiting Assistant Professor of the Practice of Visual Arts
Margaret Mertz, Executive Director, Thomas S Kenan Institute for the Arts
Louise Meintjes, Associate Professor of Music
Noah Pickus, Director, Kenan Institute for Ethics
Thomas S. Rankin, Director, Duke Center for Documentary Studies
Kimerly Rorschach, Mary D.B.T. and James H. Semans Director of the Nasher Museum
Suzanne Shanahan, Associate Director, Kenan Institute for Ethics
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Chauncey Stillman Professor in Practical Ethics
Read the full 2010 statement for What Is Good Art? below:
See the rest of the 2010 What Is Good Art? Exhibition below.
Marissa Bergmann, Veins and Brains
Honorable Mention
I see patterns in nature. Trees especially fascinate me. The way they branch makes my eyes pop every time. It's like a thousand little sparks flying at me and inside me, tiny synapses firing between the dendrites in my brain. I began to see this branching pattern everywhere across a very wide scale: from river patterns, trees and twigs to our very own veins and brain cells. Whoever separated "man" and "nature" must have been half-asleep. We are so connected to the earth, the trees.... We have the same veins that carry blood to every part of our body. We need water and room to grow, space to breathe. Our bodies are in fact made up of almost the exact same percentage of water as Earth itself. Our eyes are perfect spheres, like small scale models of stars…and did you know that the word "dendrite" comes from the Greek word for tree? I believe that trees are the brain cells of the earth.
The more I think about it, the more I am confident that the world really is just one big organism. I am just a small scale model of a larger whole.