It’s the best time of the year for Academy of Visual and Performing Art (AVPA) high school interns— touring season at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Emily Wood, Edna Vogel, Marilyn Liu, Michelle Bac, and Azalie Welsh have been working on designing their own interactive tours, focusing on a special exhibition of surrealist art created by women artists from Mexico and the United States.
Groups of high school and middle school students from all over Los Angeles are being led on the tours researched and designed by the five interns. They enthusiastically introduce their peers to “In Wonderland!”
“This past Friday, April 13, we had the good fortune (contrary to what custom would predict for Friday the 13th!) of being able to tour forty art and music students from Culver City High School,” says Azalie Welsh.
Each tour group, led by one of the high school interns, participated in guided discussions of several artworks in the exhibition. Students were encouraged to share their thoughts and feelings about each piece, becoming comfortable with the idea of voicing their personal interpretations of the artwork.
At the end of the interactive tour, the students took part in a game called “The Exquisite Corpse”. The technique invented by Surrealists, was a kind of collective collage of words or images called the cadavre exquis. Based on an old parlor game, it was played by several people, each of whom would write a phrase on a sheet of paper, fold the paper to conceal part of it, and pass it on to the next player for his contribution.
“We worked together to draw funky, discombobulated monsters and further reflect on the themes in the exhibition,” says Welsh.
“As a second-year LACMA intern,” Welsh continued. “I found that touring students from CCHS, both those who had never been to LACMA before and those who had, was an incredible experience. Students who participated in the tour also enjoyed learning about Surrealism and the women artists who created the work.”
“I thought it was pretty interesting to see how all these artists were trying to distance themselves from other people’s image of them and influence on them so they could fully be the people they saw themselves,” says Senior Suranga deSilva. “I know this fieldtrip was equally thought-provoking for everyone who was part of it!” AVPA enjoys tremendous support from many organizations, including Sony Pictures Entertainment, Center Theatre Group, Playa Vista, West Los Angeles College, as well as from the Culver City community. For more information about the Academy contact Co-Executive Directors Tony Spano at 310-842-4200 x6094 or Kristine Hatanaka at 310-842-4200 x6001. Or visit the website at www.avpa.org
