BYU Art Museum

I was able to visit the Dan Steinhilber exhibition at the BYU museum of art. I thought the artwork of Steinhilber was interesting and seemed to get my daughters attention (Balloons, what do you expect). What was interesting is that Steinhilber used things that we commonly used and made pieces of artwork out of it. I mean, artwork made completely of balloons or duck sauce packets…Genius! Well, maybe that was a little too sarcastic. There were two pieces of artwork that I found more interesting than the others included the Latex balloons piece and the Styrofoam and fans piece. What really neat that these pieces of artwork continually change. Obviously, the Styrofoam changes a lot more than the balloons piece but nether pieces of art will be viewed the same on at least day-to-day bases. As the balloons get older, they will begin to lose air and shrink. This causes the artwork to transform and become a new piece of artwork with a new interpretation. The fact that the latex balloon artwork piece was also made into a circle also adds meaning to the interpretation of the artwork. To me, the circle is used to represent our current world, including all societies. Therefore, the changing balloons represents our own changing world and society. A progressing or declining society causes changes to occur in the way we live our lives and the way we make decisions. These changes occur on a gradual base and are therefore demonstrated by the slowly changing balloons and resulting artwork. The Styrofoam peanuts and fans was just cool. It was neat to be able to watch the blowers push the pile of peanuts up the wall and suspend then in the air. The peanuts would circle around in the air for a few moments before returning to the pile of peanuts after the blowers had turned off. Is this artwork? Although some may not think this to be artwork because it is essentially the same thing you see when you use a leaf blower working in the yard, I do consider it art. Again, the interesting thing about it is the arts ability to change every time the blowers turn on. The peanuts transform into a different shape and interpretation than the previous pile of peanuts. This concept of the work gives the spiraling peanuts a sense of value. To me the pile of peanuts again represents life. When the blowers turn on, that is when the trials and stressors that we as humans experience come into play. These blowers (or life’s trials and complications) cause the peanuts to change from their state of rest to an explosion of spiraling and suspending peanuts (the chaos that these stressors cause in our own lives) to eventually setting as something new. What I am trying to get to is that the piles of peanuts represent our own lives. We live in a state of comfort and relief until we have to address certain stressor or trials that chaos to enter into our lives. When we are able to overcome these trials, we usually are a different person or are in a different state, as represented by the ever-changing pile of Styrofoam. Another piece of artwork was the blown up trash bags with the trash can on top. Okay, so looking at the artwork it was as if a normal trashcan with a black trash bag came alive. The Trash bag expanded from the can causing the formation of a trash bag monster with a trashcan on top as a helmet. No longer does the trashcan wear the bag but the trash bag now wears the trashcan. Essentially, I saw a change in roles between the trash bag and the trashcan. What was also interesting was the different shapes of the bags that were used to make the trash bag monster as I like to call it. I would assume that the artist did not have complete control over the shape of the trash bags that were used to make the piece of artwork. Steinhilber’s use of everyday objects as well as trash connected with me more than other artwork is able too. The material that he used made me feel as if I also have the ability to build my own artwork and that artwork exist in things that we used for normal day activity.