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