Community can help create art installation with award-winning artist
The community can help create an art installation during this Saturday’s “Whispers of the 41 Latitude Community Art Project.” The event will take place from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the River Raisin National Battlefield Park outside of the Battlefield Visitor Center, 333 N. Dixie Highway.
Reinhardt also will conduct workshops at the Workshop Hub, 52 S. Monroe St., from noon to 4 today and from 1 to 5 p.m. Friday. Other sessions will be set up in the Monroe area in the coming weeks.
The project is open to people of all ages.
Artist Beatrix Reinhardt will guide participants through a free, 30-minute workshop to learn the early photographic method called cyanotype. Cyanotypes are one of the oldest photographic printing processes in the history of photography using sunlight (and water).
The cyanotypes created by each participant will be exhibited in the Workshop Hub on Monroe St. in Downtown Monroe throughout the month of September. At the end of the installation’s run, the collection will be scanned and printed on vinyl for a public open-air display that will be permanently housed on the campus of MCCC.
Reinhardt has created similar installations in Vietnam, Spain and Iran.
Dr. Gordon Marsh, a composer and pianist who has collaborated with Beatrix on previous projects, will curate an audio compliment to the temporary installation.
Participants should bring a plant or weed and the coordinates where it was harvested.
“The whole process, depending on sunlight conditions, will take approximately 30 minutes,” organizers said.
“This is a beautiful opportunity for people of all ages and areas of interest to be involved in something that will live on for years and generations to come. Those who like photography, art, printing, music, sound, energies, history, community, horticulture, habitats, farming and much more can be touched in some way or another by participating in this activity," Reinhardt said.
Reinhardt grew up in Jena, formerly in East Germany. She is interested in looking at what she calls “charged sites,” sites endowed with significant histories and spaces that endure drama and/or tensions.
“However, her images offer little or no discernible evidence of this history, either the past event or any current tensions associated with it, the implications being that significance can only be materialized by human experience. Her works explore the relationship between space, memory and history and increasingly the notion of the trace," organizers said.
A space that sparks her interest is battlefields. She has investigated battlefields in South Africa, Spain and Serbia among others. When working with these historical spaces she has focused on the element of grass and weeds, the last entity a soldier sees and the first sign of life that returns after soil experiences a major violation.
“In her works she elevates these plants and weeds to be a type of witness, historian or author and create imaginary spaces that allows an exchange and conversation amongst them,” organizers said.
Reinhardt has lived, worked, exhibited and taught in different parts of the world. She currently works for City University of New York/ College of Staten Island. She has degrees in photography, media studies, linguistics and psychology.
She has exhibited in Europe, North America, Africa, Australia and Asia and has received several awards, including artist fellowships and artist’s project grants from the CUNY Research Foundation, John Anson Kitteredge Foundation and Australian National University.
To learn more about Reinhardt, visit https://www.beatrixreinhardt.com/.
Dr. Gordon Marsh is the department chair of fine arts at Roanoke College in Salem, Va. He has a doctorate in composition from the University of Chicago, a master’s in composition and a bachelor’s degree in applied piano.
Funding for “Whispers on the 41st Latitude” is from The Foundation at Monroe County Community College and workshop hosts. Other sponsors are Consumers Energy Foundation, DTE Energy, First Merchants Bank, La-Z-Boy Inc. and ProMedica Monroe Regional Hospital.
Other workshops can be set up.
“I welcome any organization that is interested in hosting a workshop to contact me to schedule a session,” Reinhardt said. She can be reached at (347) 968-1357 or at Beatrix.Reinhardt@csi.cuny.edu.
This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Community can help create art installation with award-winning artist
