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Signs and Designs: Christine Goodchild, Coordinator The Art Gallery of Windsor is temporarily located next to a discount store in a bustling shopping mall. Naturally, the things most frequently read in the mall are commercial signs designed to attract people to a product and place. In contrast, the objects most often read in the gallery feed our minds and spirits and are considered works of art. From fall to winter 1997, the Art Gallery of Windsor and the Multicultural Council of Windsor and Essex County collaborated on Signs and Designs: The Art in Identity, a project that linked the gallery, visual art and advertising design. We began by asking the nineteen adult learners participating, and for whom English is a second language, to point out ways the gallery advertises to its public. On our first mall excursion we searched for shop signs that clearly advertised their goods. Everyone kept a journal of images and words and each learner had a primer that described the basic elements of design, including line, shape, colour, form and scale. We took a close look at two exhibitions, "Ian Wallace: Clayoquot
Protest" and a show of Quebec abstractionists. The participants also
talked about the art gallery and its role as a community resource. Their
favorite signs were photographed and they wrote about an abstract artwork that
had some of the same qualities. Personal taste and judgment were
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As this dialogue process grew, the learners moved from a superficial discussion of visual art and advertising to a more in-depth analysis based on their own lives. The conversations led us to action and everyone sifted through reproductions and advertising copy to make a phototext collage. We also read our work aloud, questioned the art work and discussed what advertisements and visual art could and could not do. The learners then worked very hard during the preproduction of a back-lit sign and neon sign. They met with an artist and graphic designer for a "zooming session" and played with scale by enlarging and diminishing the figure-ground of our designs to manipulate our vision. Issues of copyright law and artistic property confirmed the need to hire a model and photographer. We visited the neon shop, used its computer graphics program and also met with the designer of the back-lit sign to finalize our design. Both signs were exhibited at the gallery, one in a main window that fronts the mall, the other in a corridor/display area of the gallery. For their last assignment, the students were asked to collaborate in writing a statement about the two signs. The connections made revealed the strength and confidence they had gained in expressing their opinions throughout the project. They felt an affinity with a work of art and had a clear understanding of what it means to read art and advertising. Questions about how we display our own personal identity and how we understand individual experience were the key questions at the centre of viewing both an exhibition and advertising design. By bringing first-time visitors to the Gallery for this project, we brought new eyes to art and we took several steps closer to closing the gap between the two buildings, the art gallery and the mall. There is now much local interest in the three-hour tour session that has been developed from the core exercises of this pilot literacy project. Two of the learners have become active in the gallery's Animateur Program, which assists visitors in becoming familiar with current exhibitions and gallery facilities. The commercial company that fabricated the back-lit sign has encouraged us to bring another "masterpiece" for them to work with. Both the back-lit and neon signs are scheduled to be exhibited in a downtown store window in Windsor. |
