Marching up to the Fairhaven dining hall, students have been confronted by oversized, three-dimensional vegetables and fruits pierced by black paper spears that appear to be sprouting corn.  Pieces of black paper sprawl out from each painted cardboard morsel, clinging to the stairwell’s walls like ivy.  Students who have eaten dinner in the Fairhaven dining hall in recent weeks, whether they acknowledged the giant eggplant, broccoli, pineapple and tomato, have been a part of second-year Fairhaven student Jack Lipke’s installation art piece.

Other installation art pieces have been appearing and disappearing around campus in recent weeks as part of two installation art classes, one being taught through Fairhaven College and the other through Western.

The Fairhaven class has put out the majority of pieces that may have been spotted near south campus, including Lipke’s piece and others.  A parade of students dressed in buckets stomping around north campus and a piece that was shown May 14, 2009, titled “I hate my mother … I don’t want to clean my room” in the B Gallery of the Fine Arts Building were the cooperative effort of the eight-student Western class.

Fairhaven assistant professor John Feodorov and Western associate professor Sebastian Mendes said both classes have taken time to look at the history of installation art for examples, but the classes are primarily taught as workshops for the students. Feodorov and Mendes both require the students to produce a few pieces during the quarter to explore the purpose, meaning and application of installation art.

Lipke said everyone seems to have their own definition of installation art, which it can incorporate a broad range of ideas.  Other students from both classes agreed that installation art can be hard to define.

 “[Installation art is] usually something that exists in a space and defines it or redefines it,” said Western senior Matt Crosbie, who is enrolled in Mendes’ class.  “Decorating a bathroom can be installation art depending on how you do it and why you do it.”

Crosbie’s description met the broad definition of installation art described by Mendes and Feodorov.  Mendes said installation art transforms the ideas of space and time. Feodorov said installation art aims to create an environment that includes the viewer in the piece.

Mendes said there are almost no constraints on installation art.  He said installation art can include objects, sound, video, performance, scent, texture and even temperature and humidity to change the viewers perception of a space.

“One of the most interesting and appealing things about installation art is that it is totally open-ended,” Mendes said.  “Whatever constrictions there may be, they are only constrictions that are imposed upon the space by the artist themselves.”

The final pieces for Feodorov’s class are due during the remaining weeks of the quarter, so he said to expect to see more pieces around south campus, turning the space into an interactive art gallery.  

Mendes’ class will be taking over the Northwest Computer building at 1211 Cornwall Ave. to turn the area into an installation art exhibition.  

The class will start transforming the space May 26, 2009, which will give them time to see the space and design pieces that work within it before the exhibition opens on the evening of June 5, 2009, Mendes said.  The exhibition will open during one of Bellingham’s downtown art walks and is expected to stay open until June 12, 2009, Mendes said.

Many installation art pieces are site specific, which means a specific location is selected for the piece to be built and viewed in.  Installation art pieces make the space they are in part of the piece, so even if the same piece were moved and viewed somewhere else, it would not represent the same message or necessarily be the same piece, Feodorov said.

The site-specific element often places installation art outside of galleries or transforms starch-white gallery walls into a piece themselves, Mendes said.

The idea of placing art outside of where viewers are expecting to see it often changes the experiences and understanding of viewers, Lipke said.  

“Art in a room that says ‘this is art’ is something totally different than art that’s kind of left ambiguously outside, and is on the active part of the viewer to decide what it is,” Lipke said.

First-year Fairhaven  student Ruthie Taylor and second-year Fairhaven student Dillon Thomson constructed a piece that formed piles of trash with the word “away” written above cut-out human silhouettes, who were posed digging through the piles.  The piece was installed, nearly filling a tunnel walkway, near Fairhaven College.  Taylor said piece was site specific, and they thought their message was more effectively conveyed by the location.

It was meant to make students question where their waste goes, and why humans are the only creatures that produce waste that does not get reused in the natural lifecycle, Thomson said.

“Rather than it being a painting hanging nonchalantly on the wall that no one really sees, it’s standing up in the middle of where people go,” Taylor said. “People have to walk around it, or through it, to get where they are going, so it’s forcing people to confront the idea.”

Thomson said the tunnel guaranteed their piece would have a big audience and almost gave a sense of claustrophobia to people walking through the tunnel.

After putting their piece up, Taylor said she witnessed various reactions.  While some of the reactions were positive, Taylor said she heard some students walking by complain about the piece, saying it was just garbage and not art.

Taylor said even though the piece did not fully convey their message to those students, it at least made them confront the topic at some level.  She said the piece literally was garbage and was meant to be disgusting to point out how unpleasant our waste is.

“We’re reaching those people because whereas they would probably normally look past something like that, they noticed it and it pissed them off,” Taylor said.  “Whether or not they know the reason why it makes them angry to see all that trash there, on the most basic level, at least we reached them.”

Mendes said installation art often receives a stronger reaction than other forms of art because of its interactive nature.

“The best installation art has a direct and transformative effect on the people who go there,” Mendes said.  “Gallery art, except for the activity that occurs within your mind, is a very passive kind of experience, whereas the best installation art often invites direct participation with the artist, or between the artist’s work and the viewer.”

Mendes said there are no themes specific to installation art, and most installation art pieces in the genre deal with the same subject matter as other types of art.  

Installation art has almost no restrictions or qualifying factors except that the piece affects the viewer’s perception of a space, he said.  

By the standards outlined by Mendes, garbage piles in a tunnel can be art as long as the piles change the space they are in.

The idea that some viewers did not accept piles of trash in a tunnel as art exemplifies that installation art can often make viewers ask where the line between art and garbage is.

“Our professor says all the time, ‘Well, what is art?’  You can grab a toilet and say it is art, so I don’t think really there is a line,” Lipke said.  “I think it’s if [the piece] is effective or not, and putting some garbage in the tunnel was effective, but is that art?  I think it is.”

Lipke said he thought Taylor and Thomson’s piece was art, but it took a guerilla approach, which he said he considers a less effective route.

“I think there has to be an element of mutual respect by the viewers and the artist,” Lipke said.  “You can go the guerilla way … or you can propose something that might be attractive to look at, and that might get people thinking instead of turning them off.”

Thomson said he could tell someone had tried to tear down some of the silhouettes in their piece, which is part of the negative reaction Lipke wanted to avoid.

Mendes said installation art is almost always temporary because its unconventional location prompts either the artist or someone else to eventually take the piece down.

“Sometimes those ongoing dynamics are an important element in the artist’s consideration of what they do, and where they do it,” Mendes said.  “The element of change can be a welcome part of it.”

Lipke said he tried to make it apparent he had spent time constructing the vegetables for his piece, so viewers would give his piece a chance.  He said he spent time painting the vegetables and making them visually appealing.  Lipke said he has had students ask to keep the vegetables when his piece is taken down, which shows students appreciated the visual aspect of his piece.

Lipke said his piece was about a recent paranoia he developed about how corn, in some form, seems to be in almost every manufactured food product today.  From what he heard in passing, Lipke said most students seem to understand the piece, although some walk past it without taking a second glance.

While waiting in line for the dining hall Wednesday night, Western freshman John Dobler said he liked the piece.  He said he thinks the site specific location helps to convey the message behind the piece.  Before reading the artist’s statement posted on the wall, Dobler said he interpreted the piece to be about how corn is taking over the agricultural market.

The collaborative pieces done by the Western class held an environmental theme as well.  Both “I hate my mother…I don’t want to clean my room” and the costumes for what Mendes called the bucket people were created using recyclable materials, which the Viking Union dining services had saved for Mendes during the quarter.  

Hundreds of metal rat cage feeders that the university had ordered, but was not using, were also included in both pieces.

“We weren’t attempting to achieve any particular goal except that maybe people would see that it was all made from discarded, recycled materials, and that there was an abundance of them,” Mendes said.  “So it might make people aware of the fact that there is so much stuff that Western throws away, and perhaps needlessly, because here we have used it as creative material for an art course.”

 The recurring themes of reusability and environment are not the only themes that installation art can convey but have been coincidentally expressed in the recent pieces on campus.  The students in both classes were allowed to make pieces about any topic, but the pieces displayed so far have portrayed similar themes.

Mendes said it is likely that the materials used for their previous pieces will be used in their upcoming exhibition as well, but the materials will be used in different ways because of the different space.  The exhibition will be done in conjunction with Mendes’ Art 494 class, Advanced Studio Seminar.

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