Field Trip to ICA 3/3/11

I was so glad to be able to go to the Institute of Contemporary Art because I had been wanting to go for a while.  I did like the building quite a bit, although I was somewhat disappointed in that only one of the floors was being used for exhibit space.  It just seemed like quite a large building to have only one floor of exhibits.  I think my two favorite aspects of the building were the huge glass elevator and the wonderful long glass window at the back of the fourth floor, looking out onto the water.  It was too bad that it was so dark out at that point because it was a little hard to see the view.  

Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA

As for the exhibits, I enjoyed some of Mark Bradford's work.  I liked that he used found materials and that his pieces were often brightly colored and map-like.  Some of them had a wonderful fuzzy depth to them created by the repetition and overlapping of the small rectangular pieces of paper/posterboard/fabric/etc that he used.  The other exhibit was amusing at times--I thought often very stereotypically "contemporary art."  My favorite pieces were the enormous receipt blankets.  I also liked the can on the conveyor belt.  

drawing from "The Lost Thing"

Seeing the animated shorts was so fun!  I loved all of them so much...they were so creative and such wonderful stories.  Madagascar had absolutely gorgeous animation--I loved how all different types of media were included in it.  Let's Pollute was clever and really sad at the same time.  It was very effective at using humor to bring home how much we waste as a society.  I had seen The Gruffalo before and enjoyed seeing it again.  I think one of my favorites was The Lost Thing.  I was just really drawn to the quirky animation and the somewhat distopian world that the animators created. 


Overall I had a lovely time and am so glad we went!