University of Arkansas at Little Rock

This morning we made two three foot long workbenches to stand on so I could reach the top of the sculpture with large tools. We also started on two large hand paddles so I can pack and form the large surfaces of the clay. After that I made two large trowels for shaping the clay out of stainless steel scrap. I’m getting quite a collection of tools now but my set is not complete.  I gathered some hardwood scraps from one of the wood carvers so I can make some of the wooden tools I need. The wood is similar to mahogany so it should perform well for strength and flexibility.

We continued to pack another 700 pounds of clay on the sides of the lower cranium, the back of the cranium, the jaw and the mouth. I smoothed out the top of the cranium fairly well to the point that it is close to the shape and texture that I want. Much is yet to be done on the overall form and face.

This afternoon Barry and I went to two large enclosed shopping spaces to locate hand files, sponges and a good quality carving knife. It reminded me of a covered flea market that I visited in North Carolina this early May. This place was much bigger. Each of the buildings was an entire city block square with stuff in every shape, size and color. Negotiating prices on things was a new way of shopping. Again, the taxi drive back to the park was the most intense part of the trip. It’s a constant game of chicken with nerves of steel. My right foot only tried to hit the break four or five times.

I’m still giving my right hand a rest. Anti-inflammatory medication and bags of ice are my constant companions.

My studio assistant Pong worked the whole afternoon by himself on the portrait “Visionary.” During dinner Ryan from Aruba asked me what the piece meant. I told him the story of a proposal that I had written about four years ago and how I had submitted it to different agencies to try to get funding. There was no success at funding but I told him about what inspired the original idea behind the work. At first I wanted to create a series of monumental terra cotta and bronze busts that honored people that I thought were visionaries. In considering whom I wanted to honor I thought of MLK and Mahatma Gandhi. In May the symposium committee told me that they had accepted my application to come to the 9th International Sculpture Symposium. But, they wanted something figurative instead of the organically inspired forms that I had created over the December holiday break. I had two weeks to develop a concept that I was hoping to create on a monumental scale. Five days of those two weeks were spent in Kansas carving stone. Numerous days were involved with teaching classes and giving exams. In reviewing that four-year-old proposal I considered another visionary that I admired.  He was Don Miguel Ruiz who is the author of a book called “The Four Agreements.” After a few days of considering which person to portray I felt that I didn’t want to create a portrait of an individual. Instead I wanted to create a person in meditation. Who the person was is no longer important. Instead the act of meditation surfaced as the idea behind what I wanted. In the process of considering how I wanted to portray the person I referenced two of my favorite pieces that I’ve seen at the Arkansas Arts Center. The first was a monumental individual portrait from the work “The Burghers of Calais” by Augusta Rodin that was on exhibit in the early nineties.  he second was a monumental bust called “Matteo” by Daniel Rhodes that’s in the permanent collection at the Arkansas Arts Center. Both were somewhat bald or bald men. I took this as part of my queue and decided to eliminate the ears in the portrait so that the viewer would only focus on the expression of the face. Another part of my queue was from a life mask taken from one of the sculpture students. He shaved his head for the occasion of making a life mask. This life mask was used as a starting point for one of the two busts made for the committee proposal. Once the two portraits were complete I sent images to the committee. I didn’t know which they had accepted until I stepped into the studio here at the sculpture park.

Jacek Lubecki, professor of political science and director of the International Studies and the Middle Eastern Studies Programs, has been spotlighted in the UALR Magazine. The article also focuses on the benefits of study abroad. Take a look!

UPDATE: To read Michael’s travel journal, click here.

Michael Warrick, professor of art, recently returned from China, where he participated in the ninth Changchun China International Sculpture Symposium in late July. Warrick created a sculpture that is on display in the city.

“The work ‘Visionary’ was inspired by a person in meditation or prayer,” said Warrick. “It is a 6’ to 9’ form in bronze.”

Changchun is one of five international “sister cities” of Little Rock. According to the Little Rock Sister Cities Commission website, Changchun is constructing an International Sister City Sculpture Park in the southern part of the city:

“The theme of International Sister City Sculpture Park is ‘Friendship, Exchanges and Development.’ The purpose of building the park is to promote exchanges with Sister Cities, offering an international platform for showcasing the national culture and art of its Sister Cities.”

For more information, contact Warrick at sculpture@michaelwarrick.com.

Michael Warrick with a model of Visionary

Updated 9.16.2008

Last night at the symposium I was told by one of the committee directors that this may be the last year for the symposium.  He said that they plan on creating works for major thoroughfares in the city next year.
We made progress on my sculpture today.  I got close enough to a finished bust model for the project.  It’s a reproduction of one of my proposals that I sent to the Changchun Committee. We roughed it out so that the features and the shape are distinct.  The other part of the day I started to lay out a grid pattern on my armature pallet so I could measure and scale up the piece.  My tools were straight cut boards, electrical cables, hammer and nails, triangulated paper, chunks and strips of wood, a crayola stick and a metric tape measure.  It all worked just fine.
    

At 5:30 p.m. (we finish at 6) today I made the rounds to see the progress of many of the artists. Structural armatures were coming along well for many and it was exciting to see the progress.  I shot numerous photos of the beginning of many pieces. I plan on continuing the documentation of a number of artists work.  I think it will make a great presentation to the students.  At dinner folks relished their progress and the start of their work.  Much laughter and drinking of Chinese beer took place.  For the fourth night in a row I sat in the dining room hanging out and talking with a variety of artists till the porters asked us to leave after two and half hours.

A number of artists and I are talking about taking a field trip to Victory Park in downtown Changchun.  If we go we’ll have a picnic and explore the park where our work will reside for three years.

The sun continues to monitor my wake and sleep times.  Up at 4:30 and to sleep at 10 p.m.  Not my normal times.  China is on one time zone.  The Internet is off and on in the conference hotel.  After breakfast I spent the morning talking to a U.S. citizen form Sai Pan. Originally he’s from Idaho and is the art department in a small two-year college.  It’s amazing how similar students and schools can be and how we all face challenges of quality and improvement.

Jet lag got me.  Woke up to a group of six young twenty year old ambassadors knocking on my door to deliver promotional booklets, catalogs about the 9th symposium, t-shirts, work vest, note pads, a billed hat and an umbrella. This evening there was a formal reception for the 9th International Sculpture Symposium. There were a few speeches, six or seven TV cameras, a dozen newspaper photographers a big dinner, and many toasts and laughter.  Afterwards there was even more laughter, stories and sharing of fresh watermelon and peaches. 

Saturday we go to the sculpture park meet our studio assistants and make requests for tools and materials.  And so we begin.

About a dozen of the artists and our interpreters took a tour of the sculpture studio and garden this morning.  We walked through the garden for an hour and a half and only saw about a quarter of the park.  An amazing place.  There are over two hundred monumental works scattered throughout the park.  All made of stainless steel, bronze or stone.  The clay studio is part of a complex and has about 5,000 square feet of space for the bronze artists to create their clay models.  From there the works will be molded and then cast in bronze off site.  I asked for a 3-meter wooden pallet to create my clay study on.  I’m honored to be in such a phenomenal place. For me it was a garden of delight to walk amongst such a cultural Mecca of creative energy. The centerpiece of the ¾ mile by ¾ mile sculpture garden is a 100 feet high granite column with earth mother figures and a dove.  A large granite circle surrounds this work with five studies in low relief in white marble and five studies of two figures 1.5 size bronzes dancing to music.  Each of the relief works and figure groupings represent five different parts of the world.

In the afternoon, another sculptor and our interpreters went looking for souvenirs at a large five story mall.  An amazing visual overdose to be sure, but the taxi drive was more exciting than any I’ve had in NYC.  Very daredevil driving next to folks cutting in inches away and barley missing pedestrians, bicyclists, scooters, buses, and cars.  All the while not a single flinch or gesture from anyone.  A roller coaster ride if ever I’ve had one on a flat surface.

Sitting at the gate and waiting for our plane to arrive and take us to Seoul.  It was a reunion happening.  I have not been to one for a while but loved them when I did as a young sprout.  Met a teacher from northern Indiana.  She was in her sixties and traveling to Seoul with her adopted Korean daughter of many years.  She was from Auburn, Indiana.  Wonderful prairie town.  I felt right at home there when I visited last summer during a three week residency at the University of Saint Francis. The town had rented an exhibition of sculpture by E.S. Johnson for a display in downtown Auburn and I happened to have pictures of it on my laptop.  It sure got us into a number of interesting conversations about towns and teaching. Click here to continue reading this entry from Michael. 

Another elderly (not much older than me) gentleman I met was a retired psychologist.  He said a most interesting thing during our visit.  “Life is like a sculpture.  You can build a masterpiece if you choose to.”  We looked at photos of my portfolio for a while and talked about what its like to create a life. 

Got on board to fly to Korea.  Sat a few seats from away a recent high school graduate who was given the gift of a tour around Korea to see all her family members.  She liked to draw and was considering architecture and pre-med for college.  She had decided to not worry about what direction she was going to take.  Wanted to relax and just discover things and figure it out as she went along. I encouraged her do what she loved.  

Next day….
Did not get but a few hours of sleep on that 13 hour plane ride and I’ve only got a few minutes left on my laptop battery.  Leaving Chicago in the dark, flying in the dark on top of the world and arriving in the dark is a bit strange.  I’m half way through my new book Art In America by Ron McLarty.  Time for a short rest.

Back on my feet again from Seoul to Changchun.  I was well received at the Changchun airport with flowers and a party of four.  Lunch was with 10 other sculptors from around the world.  There will be 50 sculptors here by the end of the week.  Wow!!!  After lunch eight of us sat around our rooms and looked at each others proposals and portfolios in stone, clay and bronze.  There was lots of translating between Chinese, French, Spanish and English.  My exhaustion was overcome by the excitement of meeting so many sculptors in such a new place all at once…

This is a live journal of UALR Art professor Michael Warrick’s travel in China. Check back for frequent updates! The most recent entries are on top. Archives can be found here.

Journal Entry #7

We finished two layers of the chicken wire and a hundred or wood/wire crosses to hold the clay on the new metal armature addition this morning.  It’ll take a few days to get back on track with the back and sides of the cranium.

This morning and this afternoon I looked at stone and considered proposing a two part stone piece for my next four and a half weeks.  Part of what I was looking for was a stone or stones that I find aesthetically interesting in their own right.  I wandered around the large stone yard and began picking up small pieces of stone and setting them on a level surface.  After a while I began to look around to see what types of shapes of stones there were available in marble and granite.  I found one 2.5 x 1 x 3/4 meter planar white marble and one 1.5 high pyramidal gray/green granite form.  Neither piece has enough mass to carry off a monumental concept but together they could create an interesting relationship in stone.  Tonight I’ll write my proposal and develop a model.  If I get something done that I’m happy with I’ll submit my proposal to the committee and see how they respond.

I didn’t write a proposal.  Instead I created a clay model and asked Barry for some feedback on the composition, idea and materials.  We went back and forth on what I could do to improve the piece and came up with a solution that I think is interesting and can be done primarily with an angle grinder and a hammer in less than a month.

Journal Entry #6

Four TV crews and the Mayor of Changchun came through the studio today to check up on the progress of the artists work.

We added more clay to the back of the cranium this morning.  If the clay does not dry soon I may need to rip off most of the clay in the back and revise the armature to better support the cantilevered lower part of the cranium.

Marko from Serbia came into the conference today.  His wife attempted to teach me Chinese Chess during our lunch break.

After lunch we took a cab to an art supply store and bought a few small clay tools.  On the way back we stopped at a Mc D’s for a large order of fries.

I came back from my tool and fries sojourn to a failure on the sculpture.  A massive section of the back of the cranium fell off the back of the head.  Not enough armature.  Clay too wet.  We stacked all the clay off to the side, ripped out more clay and got a welder to help us rig up a better armature.  I went out and celebrated my terrific failure.  Tomorrow we rebuild again.  I’m still a student of large-scale sculpture armatures.

Journal Entry #5

This morning we made two three foot long workbenches to stand on so I could reach the top of the sculpture with large tools.  We also started on two large hand paddles so I can pack and form the large surfaces of the clay. After that I made two large trowels for shaping the clay out of stainless steel scrap.  I’m getting quite a collection of tools now but my set is not complete.  I gathered some hardwood scraps from one of the wood carvers so I can make some of the wooden tools I need.   The wood is similar to mahogany so it should perform well for strength and flexibility.�

We continued to pack another 700 pounds of clay on the sides of the lower cranium, the back of the cranium, the jaw and the mouth.   I smoothed out the top of the cranium fairly well to the point that it is close to the shape and texture that I want.  Much is yet to be done on the overall form and face.

This afternoon Barry and I went to two large enclosed shopping spaces to locate hand files, sponges and a good quality carving knife.  It reminded me of a covered flee market that I visited in North Carolina this early May.  This place was much bigger.  Each of the buildings was an entire city block square with stuff in every shape, size and color.  Negotiating prices on things was a new way of shopping.  Again, the taxi drive back to the park was the most intense part of the trip.  It’s a constant game of chicken with nerves of steel.  My right foot only tried to hit the break four or five times.

I’m still giving my right hand a rest.  Anti-inflammatory medication and bags of ice are my constant companions.

My studio assistant Pong worked the whole afternoon by himself on the portrait “Visionary.”  During dinner Ryan from Aruba asked me what the piece meant.  I told him the story of a proposal that I had written about four years ago and how I had submitted it to different agencies to try to get funding.   There was no success at funding but I told him about what inspired the original idea behind the work.  At first I wanted to create a series of monumental terra cotta and bronze busts that honored people that I thought were visionaries.  In considering whom I wanted to honor I thought of MLK and Mahatma Gandhi.  In May the symposium committee told me that they had accepted my application to come to the 9th International Sculpture Symposium.  But, they wanted something figurative instead of the organically inspired forms that I had created over the December holiday break.  I had two weeks to develop a concept that I was hoping to create on a monumental scale.  Five days of those two weeks were spent in Kansas carving stone.  Numerous days were involved with teaching classes and giving exams.  In reviewing that four-year-old proposal I considered another visionary that I admired.  He was Don Miguel Ruiz who is the author of a book called “The Four Agreements.”  After a few days of considering which person to portray I felt that I didn’t want to create a portrait of an individual.  Instead I wanted to create a person in meditation.  Who the person was is no longer important.  Instead the act of meditation surfaced as the idea behind what I wanted.  In the process of considering how I wanted to portray the person I referenced two of my favorite pieces that I’ve seen at the Arkansas Arts Center.  The first was a monumental individual portrait from the work “The Burghers of Calais” by Augusta Rodin that was on exhibit in the early nineties.  The second was a monumental bust called “Matteo” by Daniel Rhodes that’s in the permanent collection at the Arkansas Arts Center.  Both were somewhat bald or bald men.  I took this as part of my queue and decided to eliminate the ears in the portrait so that the viewer would only focus on the expression of the face.  Another part of my queue was from a life mask taken from one of the sculpture students.  He shaved his head for the occasion of making a life mask.  This life mask was used as a starting point for one of the two busts made for the committee proposal.  Once the two portraits were complete I sent images to the committee.  I didn’t know which they had accepted until I stepped into the studio here at the sculpture park.

Being asked to complete a writing assignment for class can be an intimidating, or even scary, task for some students. Often, before a student puts one word to the page, grammar rules, quality of content, and comparisons to “better writers” can overshadow creativity and create a lifelong aversion to writing. The National Writing Project aims to change that by first getting teachers comfortable with the notion that they, too, are writers.

“The National Writing Project (NWP) is a big movement across the country,” said Sally Crisp, Director of the Little Rock Writing Project (LRWP) and faculty member in the Rhetoric and Writing Department. “Many teachers do not consider themselves writers, but writing is a human activity like reading. They, too, can write.”

The NWP began 30 years ago in Berkeley, California, with the mission of improving student achievement by improving the teaching of writing and improving learning in the nation’s schools. Today, there are nearly 200 university-based writing project sites in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The NWP model begins with local leadership through an annual summer institute at each site, led by university faculty and K-12 teachers. The idea is for the teachers to take their expertise in teaching writing back to their schools and districts. The local NWP site, the Little Rock Writing Project, began 11 years ago and has thus far worked in partnerships with schools in Little Rock, North Little Rock, Benton, Beebe, and Haskell, providing professional development for teachers and/or activities such as Young Writers Camps. “In our school partnerships, we hope to see schools move toward a writing culture,” said Crisp. “A writing culture leads to a spirit of inquiry and, of course, widespread use of writing in the school.”

Each summer, UALR hosts the Summer Invitational Institute for K-12 teachers. According to Crisp, the four-week Institute is intensive. The application process is competitive, yet yields enormous pay-offs for those chosen to attend. “Teachers who attend the Summer Invitational Institute can earn six hours of graduate credit, with their tuition, fees, and books fully paid for through our grant funding. We keep the Summer Institute small enough for in-depth teaching demonstrations and lots of collegial interaction among the teachers.”

These interactions and experiences create a community of teachers who are excited to take what they have learned back to their schools and to other schools as “teacher consultants.” “The effectiveness of the Summer Institute is that it results in teachers teaching teachers,” Crisp said. “These are the folks on the ground in the classroom, so to speak. Thus the Little Rock Writing Project is a year-round endeavor.”

Stephanie Moon teaches Advanced Placement English at Sheridan High School. She heard that participation in the Summer Institute was a life-changing experience both professionally and personally. “The benefits from the LRWP are endless,” said Moon. “What I have learned is that the ‘word on the street’ about the LRWP is true. This has been the greatest professional development and growth I have ever experienced in my teaching career.”

2008 participant Amanda Brucks has been teaching 7th and 10th grade English at Perryville High School for one year. The new teacher is already reconsidering her lesson plans. “I have completely changed the way I look at grading and teaching writing assignments,” said Brucks. “I am totally revamping my curriculum for the coming school year.”

For more information about the LRWP – the Summer Invitational Institute or school-year partnership possibilities – contact Crisp at 569-8022 or at sccrisp@ualr.edu or visit the LRWP’s website at https://rhetoricandwriting.ualr.edu/lrwp.