"New Cornucopia and the Big IOU"
- Ongoing: until Sunday, October 16, 2011
- Sunday:
- Monday:
- Tuesday:
- Wednesday:
- Thursday:
- Friday:
- Saturday:
- Where: Grand Arts, Kansas City, Mo.
- Cost: Not available
- Age limit: Not available
Grand Arts, a non-profit public arts space in Kansas City, Mo., presents a two-part project from ASU professor of art John Salvest. The exhibition, "New Cornucopia and the Big IOU," opens Friday, Sept. 2 at 6 p.m. The Big IOU, or IOU/USA is a temporary public monument in Penn Valley/Memorial Hill Park, facing the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. IOU/USA will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week through Sunday, Oct. 16, 2011.
New Cornucopia, a sculpture, will open on Friday, September 2 at 6 p.m., and can be viewed thereafter during regular gallery hours, Thursday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m, and Saturday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. A gallery talk with the artist is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 3, at 2 p.m. at Grand Arts (grandarts.com) for additional public programs and workshops connected to the project.
Towering over visitors at a height of almost seven stories, IOU/USA is comprised of 105 multi-colored steel shipping containers, stacked seven high and fifteen across. The containers will be used as mosaic tesserae, with "I O U" spelled out on one side of the massive structure, and "U S A" on the other. Developed over the course of the past year, this striking installation is unfolding in Kansas City at a moment of exceptionally divisive national politics and public discourse. Says Salvest of IOU/USA:
"The placement of the project near a regional branch of the Federal Reserve Bank, one of the main components of national economic policy, comes at a time when concern about the United States' ballooning federal budget and foreign trade deficits is a major part of the national conversation. Its location between the Fed and the Pioneer Mother Memorial is also fitting in that, whereas the permanent public monument rightfully celebrates America's and Kansas City's triumphant past, the temporary public sculpture may generate meaningful discussion about where we, as a nation, are heading."
Grand Arts artistic director and project curator Stacy Switzer describes how the project is designed to embrace a multiplicity of viewpoints: "While some may interpret its site and orientation in proximity to the Kansas City Federal Reserve as a direct critique aimed at the activities of the central bank, others may view the project as a cathartic response-perhaps defiant, perhaps submissive-to the stresses of mounting personal debt which millions of us know intimately. Of course neither of these takes is exclusive of another, and activists of most any persuasion could read the work as a rallying cry for their own ideals. This multivalence is what makes IOU/USA so potent as a work of art in the public sphere."
At Grand Arts, New Cornucopia will feature a single shipping container with its contents spilling out into the gallery space. Harkening back to Flemish still life paintings of the 17th century, New Cornucopia offers a revised vision of plentitude and decay for our era of globalized trade.
Grand Arts is located at 1819 Grand Boulevard, Kansas City, Mo. E-mail the gallery (gallery@grandarts.com) or call Seth Johnson (seth@grandarts.com), Communications and Public Programs coordinator, at (816) 421-6887 for more information.
This event was posted Sept. 6, 2011 and last updated Sept. 8, 2011
