Hartford, Connecticut

I was back at the Hartford School of Art this week, where my “Koopman Chair” students and I hung the traveling exhibition “MIX06: One Step Back, Two Steps Forward” in the school’s Silpe Gallery. This exhibition is the culmination of the “Migrant Immigrant eXchange 2006” cultural exchange project undertaken jointly by the Hartford School of Art students along with students of senior lecturer Russell Kennedy of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. The aim of MIX06 has been to encourage contemporary discourse between Indigenous and non-Indigenous designers/collaborators in AUS and the USA, in recognition of and respect for both First Nation and Aboriginal culture.

The opening was attended by an enthusiastic crowd of several hundred (including many parents and friends of the students), who took in the 30 individual works on display and enjoyed the sumptuous food the hosting students had prepared. Consensus of all who attended the opening: a resounding success!