Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
Hauswerk, a series of installations by 15 Tyler students (with some alums also involved), continues until Jan. 4. I took the train to Paoli last Saturday for the opening and hopped the free Tyler shuttle to the Haus — the train/shuttle connection was wonderful! The place was abuzz with students, friends, family and others. A jolly good experiment in Haus beautiful, Haus scary, Haus friendly, Haus that’s not home.
The students are from Jennie Shanker‘s materials class, an occasional offering, says Shanker. (Last time she taught the class her students curated a show at Sharktown — see post). This time, they’d been looking around for places to work and nothing much was happening. They had but three months to pull it together. And one of the students, Athena Christakis, offered that her parents house in Paoli was being demolished and they could put something on there. The show was done with permission of the owners and because one outdoor work involves fire pits, with approval of the fire marshall, Shanker told me.
Everyone worked collaboratively which is nice and some of the students acted as curators for the others. The basement crawl space piece by Sarah O’Donnell and Andrew Brehm was one of my favorites. Tricked out with a translucent scrim, some lights and piles of dirt the crawl space became a miniature landscape evoking a desert and the ends of the earth.
The show’s been getting great pr. I heard an indepth report by WHYY’s new arts reporter, Alexandra Schmidt, and the Inquirer had a nice story with a video by Ron Tarver of the works in progress.
Hauswerk is up to January 4, 2008 by appointment. Contact Athena Christakis for an appointment by phone 215-900-0175 or by e-mail athena.christakis@gmail.com.
