President Griffith builds a site-specific installation on the quad.

It’s good to be president—especially if you’re president of Columbus College of Art & Design, you’re also an artist, and you have the impulse to create a site-specific installation on the campus quad.

CCAD President Dennison W. Griffith recently completed a snow fence sculpture on the quad, which will be in place until spring.

The installation was built over two days and is the seventh such piece Griffith has undertaken in the last several decades. Construction of the sculptures is fairly improvisational, and largely driven by observation and responses to the sites where they are installed.

“In the case of the CCAD piece, I have been gazing at the quad from my office here on the second floor of the Canzani Center,” said Griffith. “There is a gently curving seat wall that bisects the quad, which is surrounded by a bed of crushed, brick-red, gravel-like material. The general arc of the CCAD piece and the way it is perforated near its midpoint, with a break that one can walk through, are meant to generally mirror the seat wall.”

Griffith and a crew of students laced together the snow fencing to form undulating waves that work with the natural rise and fall of the surrounding grounds.

“The piece uses the elevation to good effect, and this elevation is amplified by the ever-higher stacking of shorter fence pieces,” said Griffith.  “At that focal point the fence functions less organically than the surrounding sections, and it begins to compare itself more to the adjacent architecture. Thus, this piece lives a bit in both the natural and architectural worlds.”

With the plan to leave the piece up through the winter, Griffith hopes students and visitors will come and stroll through it.

“This was fun to do, and it was really satisfying to have a number of students pitch in to help,” said Griffith. “I’m eager to see it covered in snow and melding seamlessly with the snow on the ground around it. However, it’s also satisfying to see how, both at ground level and seen from the upper floors of surrounding buildings, the red of the snow fence echoes the red of the decorative gravel bed nearby.”

Griffith’s first snow fence piece was an indoor installation in the Short North, Columbus’s arts district. He has done outdoor pieces in Amesville, OH (just outside of Athens); in Cleveland at Edgewater Park; in Mentor, OH, at the Holden Arboretum; at ArtPark in Lewiston, NY, and at SUNY Buffalo (when it was Buffalo State College.)

Image from www.lr.edu

Jon Hair (CCAD, ’76-’78) has sculpted a 12-foot granite statue of Martin Luther that is being dedicated Saturday, Oct. 9 on a North Carolina college campus.

Hair’s project began with a 36-inch tall clay maquette as a guide to sculpting the full-size stone statue of the religious leader. Molds of the preliminary scale model then were made in order for a plaster casting of the piece to be poured, which served as a guide to sculpt the final piece.

The statue, a gift from a Charlotte, NC philanthropist, will be placed on a pedestal in front of Shaw Plaza, the highest point on the campus of Lenoir-Rhyne University.

Hair began his sculpting career in 1999 and has since completed 30 major public art commissions, including a 35-foot bronze and steel monument in front of the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado.

More information about the sculptor is available at www.jonhair.com. For additional story coverage go to LRU News.

Image from www.cleveland.com

Alumna Olga Ziemska (CCAD, ’00) has a large public art project of flying, swimming, and diving figures installed in a lobby at Kent State University.

The Light Which Can be Heard consists of 14 acrylic human silhouettes traced from the bodies of KSU students. Roughly 1,300 tiny acrylic globes are affixed to each life-size silhouette and on the back of each globe the artist has fastened small color photographs of KSU student performances, events and activities over the past decade.

With inspiration from the aurora borealis, the artist sorted the color photographs to create overall patterns in various hues. The project will adorn roughly 45 feet of wall space in the new Roe Green Center for the School of Theatre and Dance.

To learn more about Ziemska’s art go to her website. To read additional coverage of her KSU project go to www.cleveland.com.

Hair proposed the show “It’s Monumental” to provide viewers with a look inside the world of creating monumental sculptures from his North Carolina studio and at casting foundries throughout the U.S. To see Hair’s 3-minute video submission and to vote by July 3, 2010 go to http://myown.oprah.com.

Horn was one of 445 student entrants from 176 colleges and university sculpture programs in North America and abroad. The jury, paneled by Creighton Michael, Rocio Aranda-Alvarado, and Oliver Herring, reviewed over 1,100 images of sculptural works.

Horn graduated in May 2010 and was recognized as an outstanding senior in Fine Arts. His thesis work, which was a two-floor installation housed off-campus at the site of an old addressing and machining factory in Columbus, can be seen online at http://ccad.digication.com/Whitecellproductions in the section Adonta ta mele (her still singing limbs), 2 Crescent Lane.

For more information about the award program go to http://www.sculpture.org.

Fire Within by Curtis Benzle

Two porcelain sculptures by Curtis Benzle, Fine Arts professor emeritus, have been acquired by the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art for its permanent collection. The signature-style sculptures are of translucent porcelain and are constructed using Benzle’s personal variation on the nerikomi color inlay technique. Other recent museum acquisitions of Benzle’s work include the Tucson (AZ) Museum of Art and the Crocker Museum of Art (Sacramento, CA).

Benzle’s studio is in Huntsville, AL. His current work can be seen online at http://benzleporcelain.com and at http://www.sherriegallerie.com.

Filming with Ming Fay (CCAD '65)

By Chad Hughes

Well, we made it to New York. Even made good time and did not have to have a water landing in the Hudson River. Got all checked in at our beautiful hotel and were even greeted by King Kong hanging out on our beds. Then the real adventure began.

After a quick lunch at Lindy’s (who claims to have the best cheese cake in the world) and an interesting adventure trying to decode the mass transit subway signage and walking a few 30 blocks through China Town. We made it to our first interview and were warmly greeted by Ming Fay.

Buckeye nut on right was inspired by time spent at CCAD.

Ming Fay, a 1965 Columbus College of Art & Design graduate in industrial design, was eager to tell us his journey and gave us lots of good advice for art students.

First we went to the Lesley Heller gallery where there was a solo exhibition of Ming’s work (it was the closing day of the exhibition).

Seeing his work on display is even more thrilling then it is in pictures. The work sucks you in and takes you to a magical jungle of sculptural art. The turning and twisting pieces are made to mimic brush strokes on a blank canvas. Imaginary and factual plants and seeds are scattered throughout the exhibition. There was even a special buckeye nut that was inspired by his time spent in Ohio. The exhibition was great.

Then he took us to his home studio. Can I just say, WOW. His home is filled with his work and his studio is a mass of inspiration. He showed us many projects that he was working on and some that were already on display. He still references the things he learned at CCAD when it comes to building his more industrial art sculptures.

Ming Fay gives us his words of wisdom.

As Alex and I sat eating frozen grapes with him and his wife and sipping green tea. (Yes, this really happened and it was amazing.) He told us that the best thing about CCAD is that it sets you up with a strong work ethic that will last a life time. Our time spent with Ming Fay and his wife was AMAZING and Alex & I will never forget this experience.