We hanged art on the bus! 

On October of 2011, me and some good friends took advantage of the open call for events that Culture Days Canada put out and made a mobile gallery out of a bus.


It all started with running into a friend of mine, Kira Koop (awesome coincidence). She mention that it would be a good idea to put some art on the bus, take it out of the gallery (DEMOCRATIZE ART) and at the same time gain exposure as art students. I was terribly excited since I believe taking art and inserting it into the streets should be done more often -yes, I am a fan of graffiti.


Art should be accessible to all. To a degree, through the advancement of graphic design and technology, it is safe to say that almost everybody actually has access to it. The problem is that the computer screen (or any other screen for that matter) and the glossy pages of a magazine don't quite cut it. it is a completely different experience than viewing original art with your own eyes, being there in person in front of a hand drawn piece of art, of a photographic print, of a rich textured painting. Being surrounded by its 'aura'.


The idea of transforming the bus riding experience was also interesting. It has been done in some other parts of the world, like here, where public transportation serves as the gallery walls.


So we made the phone calls, spend tons of time hanging out on Google+, sitting on a corner table at Stella's eating chocolate torte, emailing and texting, and IT HAPPENED.  On October 1st we collected the works from young artists, some of them had shown their work publicly before, but most hadn't. By the evening we hanged all the works from the bus windows and we let it run! 
The overarching theme of the show was Transit, all of them talked about the experience of traveling from A to B, capturing the experience quite nicely. Here are some of them:

Megan Wilson- Photographic print

Francesca Carella Arfinengo- pencil and ink drawing

Megan Wilson-photographic print

Megan Wilson-photographic print

Kira Koop-painting

Alicia Di- collage

Courtney Gregorchuck- Photographic print

This project turned out good and definitively gave us tons of things to learn; one of them is to document the process and the show itself better!!-although what I like of our crummy pictures is that they were taken fast, glancing at the artwork-just like the people who rode the bus experienced them.


The only disappointing thing was that Winnipeg Transit refused last minute to lend one of their buses for the project because our art, with its 'dangerous pointy corners' could hurt the passengers so they sent a Beaver bus (private contract) instead; which of course wasn't exactly what we had set out to do. It reflects once again the power of art interventions in public spaces (oh is it scary for those who manage those spaces!!!) and the lack of interest when it comes to support the arts- no news here.