Crossing Students:Please add your thoughtful, substantive reflection on this statement. What does it mean to you? We’d like to include your comments in the exhibit, and perhaps in follow-up documentation.
“Take the Streets with You” explores the artist as a part of the community by using artwork on boxes, arranged architecturally, along with altered found objects, a collaborative wall drawing and original artwork offered for free.
Artists have been invited to submit boxes transformed into artwork as well as found objects configured into art. The boxes and found objects will be displayed at the back of the Betty Rymer Gallery; boxes will be arranged architecturally and found objects will form a floor or table display. Outside the gallery, at the Columbus entrance to SAIC, a wall-like structure will be assembled with plain boxes. As the day progresses, the traffic of incoming visitors will be invited to draw on, paint, cut, or manipulate the wall of boxes in any fashion they wish. This wall serves as a stand-in for a public wall where artists and others may make their mark. In the back of the Betty Rymer gallery, the found objects and boxes will be offered to the public as they come through the gallery. Visitors may opt to choose only a box, or an object, or the box could serve as a carrier for the object. At the end of the day, the wall outside the Rymer will be taken down and each of these boxes will also be offered to visitors of the exhibit. The idea is to have students and community artists understand that regardless of differences, we all play a role and contribute to the whole of society. Another theme includes the notion that ephemera or detritus in our community, even if commonly seen as garbage, can be art and in this exhibit it is considered as such.
This exhibit is coordinated by a community of students in “The Art of Crossing the Street” Fall 2007 semester course. Throughout the semester the class visited and studied many ways in which current artists in Chicago assume roles, such as activist or community leadership roles, presenting various models of artist involvement in contemporary practices.
The Art of Crossing the Street Weblog 
I feel that this exhibition is direct a reflection of the concepts that our class has been discussing all semester. The exhibition is dependant on audience involvement; it utilizes the social components of art as building blocks to a diverse community of creative ideas. We have dealt a lot with public works of art and issues of accessibility and community involvement. In “take it to the streets” the instillation is a composite of individual found pieces and reused boxes that are all revamped by members of society. One of the goals of this instillation is to draw attention to what is disregarded in an urban setting… all the pieces of our environment that city occupants have become desensitized to.
These objects that are typically overlooked are claimed by members of the community (manipulated) and then combined into a gallery setting, which mirrors a social collective: diverse and individually creative. The show exposes all the overlooked pieces to an innovative and stimulating city environment. I think that as a class we have all developed our awareness to the social components of art making. And the reciprocal relationship between artwork and audience and how they lend to one another’s context and meaning.
This is nice, but my question is with the two paragraphs. They start off saying basically the exact same thing. Is this meant? One seems like the short descriptor, while the other seems like the full blown explanation. Did I just miss this, or is it an accident. Once I get this answered, I’ll have something more constructive to say. . . for the time being, I can’t get over this. Sorry
‘Take it to the Streets’ is a synthesis of re-occurring ideas and themes that have run throughout the class. The exhibition address issues of ownership, materiality, and challenges the traditional approach to art making. Who makes art and who sees it? How does the context of a show change the contents?
‘Take it to the Streets’ is an exhibition featuring everyday objects. By using objects of familiarity, participants can engage and connect with the work as there is a common knowledge base from which to draw. The exhibition challenges both the artists participating in the show, and the viewers experiencing the show, to examine everyday objects and find beauty in the mundane.