Traveling Scholars Exhibition

My favorite traveling scholar at the MFA was a toss up between Leslie Hall and Will Peppenheimer both for very different reasons. I appreciated Leslie Hall for her over-the-top, loud statements and the creative and humorous ways she expressed her ideas. I feel as though I can more easily analyze the work of Will Peppenheimer, as his work seems to speak in a less obvious way. His work immediately caught my eye as I was drawn to the thousands of tiny "pom poms", each individually hand dyed and stragetically placed to form a larger image. This is a clear use of pointalism, as thousands of tiny dots form the picture. The pom poms reminded me of being in first grade and working on a class art project where we used pom poms, pipe cleaners and colored construction paper. It is such a simple grade school craft object, these pom poms, but the artist uses them as his medium as very effective way to portray a much larger vision. I saw some irony in the relationship between the medium and the origin of one of the artists images. The computer looking image (a modernized machine) comprised of pom poms (traditional, simple, nothing to do with science or technology). They seem like opposites to me, especially because the pom poms remind me of being six years old which was at a time when computers were first being used in classrooms and in homes. I also think of socialism when looking at Peppenheimer's pieces. There are thousands of tiny particles that make up the existance of the larger whole. These particles are not seen as individual, but rather the collective.