What Do You Mean Trash Can Be Beautiful?

The First Master Class
Our quest to create a series of public art projects throughout Krasnoyarsk would take place through workshops. Each workshop is tailored to the needs and information necessary to move to the next step. The first workshop was a get-to-know-you, get-to-know-me with a bit of what makes public art, public art. This workshop started with a discussion about site-specificity, an important component of public art. I used some of the images I showed the previous day to illustrate how projects can relate to a site in a number of different ways. Once we were comfortable with the concept, we discussed that various ways we can approach sites and discussed homework.

The Homework
1. With the new found knowledge about site-specificity, each artist was to return the next day with some ideas for artworks. They can elect to work on either site or both. The ideas did have to be completely formulated but a basic concept had to be established.
2. Everyone had to bring paper, which will be used as the base for the broken down shack building in the courtyard of the teachers college.

The Uproar
The next day, prompt and enthusiastic, the young artists all did their homework and brought in discarded paper of various sizes, shapes and uses as they were instructed. We'd begin the day by discussing how we can use the paper as the starting point or base for creating a work of art out of an undesirable building.

Then it sank in.

Olia, one of the more enthusiastic of the bunch, and an English speaker at that, did not understand why we couldn't cover the shed with a more permanent and more desirable material like paint. Newspaper and used paper was not good enough and it will not last long enough. Why not make it permanent and with more traditional materials. Others piped in including Vladimir, an artists in his 40s, one of the older participants and expressed a similar opinion. In a flash, everyone was speaking at the same time, each voice raised higher than the other, trying to be heard. One's first instinct would be to give in and paint the shed instead of collage but I wasn't going to have it. The point of theses workshops was to to do something new and learn something new in the process. After an impassioned speech about ugly art created out of beautiful material and vis versa, I asked that they trust that Luisa and I knew what we were doing. They agreed, I shared some cookies, thanked them for being so passionate, and we continued.