“Border Crossing” … Luis Jimenez

On August 2, 2010 when I arrived in Ames, I was very nervous because I was very worried about studying as a graduate student raising children without my husband’s help. Even though this is not the first time living in the United States, I felt great responsibility for my graduate study and children at once. When I first came to the United States in 2001, I relied on my husband who takes good care of our family. But this time, my husband stayed for two weeks to help us settle down in Ames. After he left, I was so afraid of being left with my kids. In addition, there was lightning and thunder almost every night since our arrival in Ames. One night, my family experienced a blackout on account of a horrible thunderstorm.  

For several nights, I could not sleep tight because of not only jet lag but also scary weather changes.  On one day, the rain poured and flooded the west areas of Ames. The night before the flood day, I saw dark and sinister clouds spreading all over the sky of Ames. It was a really horrible scene. It looked as if devil spirits were coming down on to Ames. Because of the flood, puddles formed in front of my house and a number of mosquitoes attacked our house.

                                                                            

As I lived in fear for several nights, I had several times to think about going back to my home country. I could not have peace of mind and could not enjoy the natural beauty of Ames.

One day, we were driving around the ISU campus. We found a small lake called Swan Lake Laverne. The lake was beautiful, picturesque and calm, reflecting the shining sun on the surface; it seemed like some shining marbles rolling on the surface of the lake. The beauty captured my heart all at once. When I saw two swans floating on the water, I felt like I was a protagonist in the fairy tale of Swan Lake. We pulled over our car near the lake and had a great time taking pictures together.

After that we started to walk to central campus and suddenly I found out a big beautiful sculpture on the green grass in the middle of the central campus.  It was “Border Crossing”, one of Luis Jimenez’s signature works of art. This artwork gave me a huge impression touching my heart at that time. This sculpture is of a man crossing the border carrying a woman on his shoulders.  The woman holds a crying infant in her arms, sheltering the child from harm.  This sculpture commemorates the huge number of immigrants who travelled across the southwestern border from Mexico into the United State in search of a better life.

Even though I was not one of the immigrants, I came here with the same purpose and had had difficult time to adjust and set up a new life in Ames. I think this is the reason why I felt this artwork so beautiful.

After experiencing such a wonderful moment, peace came filling into my mind and I decided not to come back to my home country. Because of  the Swan Lake Laverne and the sculpture, “ Border Crossing’  in ISU campus, my negative first impression of Ames turned into positive one and I was fully convinced that it is worth living in such a small campus town, Ames.

Today I watch this artwork with different eyes and mind however I still remember the moment when I met this sculpture at the first time.

-  by Sodam Lee

The Moth by Mac Adams, Coover Hall

The bright colored leaves, yellow buses, and passing ISU students make the campus dance. The walking speed of students gets faster and faster as the air gets colder.  Today, I decided to tour the artworks on the ISU campus instead of sitting in front of the desk at my place, despite the tough wind.

The freezing wind bit against my cheek, but an encounter with a beautiful fall scene while walking made me forget the cold of the fall. Whenever I met a beautiful campus scene or artwork I became a photographer.

When I returned to the Design building, I suddenly remembered one of the artworks standing quietly

 across the Design building. Three huge pieces of heavy stones…  It looked like three puzzle pieces

nobody could make sense of until all the pieces fit together.

One day when I had just started the graduate program, I was riding the bus and saw a beautiful white butterfly flying away. The “white butterfly” as I call it, is not really a white butterfly, but empty space forming the shape of butterfly.  This butterfly sculpture gave me a good impression two years ago.

 Today was the first time I stood next to this sculpture to observe its detail.  The white stone has a very beautiful edge with a gray colored pattern on the surface reminding me of moving waves or wind.

I wondered why the artist chose to display a butterfly on our campus. A few questions sparked in my

mind about butterflies which I have answered them below.  

•  How long do butterflies live?

 It depends on the size of the butterfly, the species of the butterfly, where it lives, and what time of year it became an adult. If the butterfly is smaller in size, it will probably not live as long as the large butterfly. Now of course, the size of the butterfly is not going to be the only factor affecting the life-span of a butterfly, but is a major factor.

• What is the average life span of a butterfly?

 It is usually about one month. However, butterflies perched on flowers in our yards will live only about one week.  Tropical Heliconians and Monarchs are the only butterflies that have an average life span of about nine months.

• How do some butterflies survive the cold winter without migrating?

 If the butterfly eggs were laid just before the cold weather, the egg will stay in egg-form until the weather warms up. If the weather starts to turn colder and the adult butterfly does not migrate south, the butterfly will hibernate somewhere until the weather warms up. Because of this, a butterfly could technically live for many months past the average life span, depending on the climate and stage in their life the butterfly is in when winter comes.

The White Butterfly on campus we have now does not consider the weather change. It is always on

 the ISU campus in the winter and summer as a wonderful artwork. The size of this artwork matches

the building right next to it and the gray color pattern on the stone pieces goes with the color of the

 building as well.  

The bottom of the pieces are wide and heavy while the top is narrow and light, making the heavy stones look stable and well-built. I think the gray pattern shows the natural shape of a moving butterfly.  The three different sized stones make the artwork more interesting and attractive. The edges of the stones are well- polished and not too sharp nor too dull.

The sculpture of the butterfly does not impact viewers during the cold weather as people focus on hugging their jackets closer to keep themselves warm from the cold wind. But when the weather lightens up, more people will open their eyes to enjoy the butterfly’s beauty. Despite the cold weather today, the butterfly on our campus still stands in its usual spot reminding us of the beauty of spring that is to come.
- by Sodam Lee

The Joys, Trials, and Tribulations of Bringing Working Over Wood to the Smithsonian FolkLife Festival

The Joys, Trials, and Tribulations of Bringing Working Over Wood to the Smithsonian FolkLife Festival - Nine Reasons to Take Your Art on the Road

 

1. Testing the durability of your art against a tornado.  Four days into the festival, a tornado hit the National Mall at 2 am, flattening tents, destroying university exhibitions, and endangering the lives of innocent goats (Grand Valley State U from GA brought 2 goats).  Happily, thanks to the vision of ISU Industrial Design Professor, David Ringholz, with his boatload of steel, our tent was A OK.

2. You think you’re speaking with a normal “festival-goer” about Iowa State and your work, only to find out that said person is a physicist for the Department of Defense.  When probed, your guest smiles politely, and says that everything he does is completely classified.

3. During your lunch break, after eating either fried catfish and collard greens from the Southern Comfort Food Tent or stuffed grape leaves from the Azerbijani Food Tent, you can catch a performance of West Virginia University’s Steel Drum Band.  Who knew?  Fifty fresh-faced West Virginia kids playing recognizable classics on their steel drums.  One of our professors (who will remain nameless) was moved to tears.

4. You get a sense of just how many very proud, very nice Iowa State alums there are in this country.  And just how happy they are to see their alma mater represented as one of the seventeen land grant universities represented on the National Mall as part of the Smithsonian FolkLife Festival.  Hell, we even had an informal gathering of recent Grinnell alums gather under our tent for an hour.  They were so thrilled to see anything Iowan, they didn’t want to leave.

5. Magnets, Maker-bots, painting, and cool architecture projects trump baby alligators.   The only two other universities to show up early were the University of Hawaii and the University of Florida.  Hawaii was busily building their own thatched-roof hut and planting a yucca garden.  Florida, our (ahem) competition, brought in their own eco-system, water-treatment facility, orange trees, live clams, and baby alligators.  After several incognito trips to their installation, we concluded that ours was, in fact, cooler.

6. Never underestimate the power of the zip tie (aka there is something to be said for simple technology).  By the end of the Festival, we unanimously concluded that, despite our steel structure with its endless joints and components, our IPads, and our generators, the MVP award went to the measly little zip tie. That, and our beloved water cooler.

7. The opportunity to meet former governor and current Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, as well as Senator Tom Harkin.  NBD.

8.  You can test just how many smoothies and bottles of water you can consume in a six-hour period.  Due to the record-breaking heat (multiple 100+ degree days), we spent most of our Euro bucks (free lunch tickets) on smoothies, ice cream, and bottles of water.  It was a little obscene.  If there is still any debate folks, let me verify, global warming ain’t no joke. This year’s festival was a full 11 degrees warmer than any other on record.

9. The free museums, galleries, and memorials. And the fireworks on the National Mall on the Fourth of July.  Washington DC is chock FULL of free, fabulous stuff to do.  It’s spectacular, really.  As soon as we got of work in the evening, we would venture to the National Gallery, one of the many Smithsonian Institutions, any of the memorials, the Holocaust Museum, etc, etc, etc.

- Jennifer Drinkwater

Glean III by Tom Stancliffe

                         

For the last two years, I have commuted from parking lot #29 to the building of College of Design almost every day. When I am passing by the Roy J Carver Co- Laboratory building, I can see a sculpture that looks like a space shuttle in emergency that, I guess, landed on the earth. The space shuttle is displayed in a small square surrounded by the walls and sky. The space shuttle is catching my eyes every time, because it strikes my imagination. One day, the space shuttle may take off and disappear into the sky, leaving nothing in the square: instead emptiness fills in. I think that it is a forgotten fortune: we can see the space shuttle every morning as it is. What a relief!

In addition, this sculpture reminds me of one of the funny Korean folktales that I heard in my childhood.

 Once upon a time there were two brothers in a small village, Nolboo and Heungboo. While HeungBoo was nice and humble, but his older brother Nolboo was mean and greedy. Nolboo was a notorious boy annoying people and animals in the villages. After their parents died, the older brother NolBoo kicked out his younger brother HeungBoo from the parents’ house, taking all the inheritance.  

HeungBoo became poor and lived miserably with his wife and nine children. One day, HeungBoo and his family were so hungry that he went to his brother's house and asked for some food. But his sister-in-law smashed him on his face with a big scoop and forced him out of the house. While greatly disappointed on the way home, HeungBoo found a little swallow with its one leg broken on the ground. He brought it home and took good care of it. Several days later, he released the bird in the air.

                  

Next year, that swallow came back to HeungBoo’s house and dropped one pumpkin seed to the hands of HeungBoo. He buried it in the garden, hoping that he could harvest some pumpkins for his family.  The fall came.  He picked up one of pumpkins and cut it in half. Surprisingly, there burst out all kinds of treasures such as gold and silver from the pumpkin. Overnight, HeungBoo became super-super rich.                                                                     

 NolBoo heard how HeungBoo became rich. He wanted to be as rich as his brother. So he captured a swallow and broke and then treated its legs. He also released it several days later.

Next year, NolBoo received the same pumpkin seed from the swallow. He planted the seed in his garden too. When the fall came, NolBoo cut one pumpkin. The moment the pumpkin opened widely, a group of scary monsters came out and started to punished NolBoo and his wife. The monsters took away all the money and treasures from his house.  However, HeungBoo had pity on his brother. He invited his brother and family to his house and lived together happily ever after.

The sculpture, Glean 3, reminds me of the swallow whose legs HeungBoo took care of.  The space shuttle is a swallow lying on the ground, waiting for somebody’s help. Just as HeungBoo fixed the legs of the swallow, one day someone may appear to fix the wings of the space shuttle and help it fly into the sky.

Meanwhile, the space shuttle is just shining to catch our attention: the combination of shiny metal and green grass create some sort of mysterious fairy tale story like the swallow or space shuttle I have in my imagination. It could be another creature from fairly tale story books.

 I love the beauty of the lines. The lines have different shapes and thickness. The S-shape of the lines enhances the softness of the sculpture. The round bottom holds the lines stably and reduces the sharpness that otherwise straight lines may render. And the little square where the sculpture displays helps the audience to fully appreciate the beauty of round curves of the sculpture which is surrounded in straight lines of square walls and sky.

If you run into my space shuttle, think about your fairy tale story just as I did. 

- Sodam Lee