Search   FAQ   Contact

Amherst, September 27, 2005

On Friday, September 30, 2005, well-known New York artist/designer Allan Wexler will be holding a workshop with 20 students at the Fine Art Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

The subject—to design and prototype a garden tool storage shed in an eight- hour group brainstorming effort known in architecture as a ‘charette’. Beginning with the activity of raking a small area of lawn, students working with Wexler will creatively rethink the elements of tending, nurturing, sheltering, of the implements of cultivation and their care, and our relationship to them.

Reflecting the mission of the new Master of Architecture program at Umass, Amherst, students will come from a variety of disciplines including architecture and design, studio arts, art history, public history, landscape architecture, building materials, engineering, and the liberal arts.

The public is welcome to come view their efforts and even to throw in an opinion or two. The Workshop is an exciting supplement to the University Gallery’s 30th anniversary Lecture Series that highlights the contributions of artists like Wexler over the years. To quote from the Gallery announcement: “Allan Wexler is a sculptor and industrial designer known for applying his unique vision to making structures, furniture and usable objects. His provocative body of work, spanning more than thirty years, is comprised of studies and experiments in modes of building and design -- meditations on form and function.” The Department of Art/Art History/Architecture+Design, and the Western Massachusetts Chapter of the American Institute of Architects are also co-sponsors of this workshop.

The workshop will run from 8:00 a.m.-10 a.m. and then continue on from 11:30-3:00, in front of the Fine Arts Center main theater lobby.

Allan Wexler’s lecture for the series will be the on the previous evening, Thursday the 29th, 5:30 at the FAC lobby.

For questions, please contact Prof. Ray Kinoshita Mann at rkinoshi@art.umass.edu.