#IBmakingart

In late October the current IB classes were given the opportunity to visit the Contemporary Art Museum (CAM) in downtown Raleigh.  This field trip was not all that it seemed; we had to write a blog post about what we saw there! For this blog post we have to analyze one exhibit in the museum and I chose one of the firsts one I saw.  When you come into the museum and look to the left you see a truly amazing piece of art.  One thousand bells hanging from the ceiling is definitely not something you see everyday, which is why I chose to analyze The Temple of One Thousand Bells.

Pictured below is a picture I took with my phone of The Temple of One Thousand Bells (The corner is messed up because I used panoramic mode) :

Below is my interpretation of The Temple of One Thousand Bells:

The title of the exhibit I am examining is The Temple of One Thousand Bells.  It was created by Laura Belem in 2010.  It was made with 1000 glass bells hung from the ceiling at different levels.  There are also speakers that play a sound recording that goes along with the bells.  The whole piece put together is about 14 feet long by 8 feet wide.

This piece of art is Latin American and the bells were put together collectively as a piece of art in 2010.

At first sight this work of art seems only like a visual piece of art, but after our tour guide turned on the sound track that goes along with the exhibit you can grasp a deeper understanding of this art.  This sound track gives the bells an meaning and makes them represent something.  There is a Latin American folklore story told about these bells that withheld an amazing sound.  These bells and the island they were on disappeared into the ocean, but people still said they heard the bells.  The bells in the exhibit do not have a clapper (the thing that hangs in the middle and makes the bell ring) and yet you can still hear bells ringing.  The sound of bells ringing is sounded though the speakers, but it creates the illusion that the bells above you are ringing just as the people in the story heard the bells.

The message in this art is really created through style.  The element that makes this art contemporary would probably be the art's simplicity.  The whole exhibit has black, white, or clear and there are no other colors.  The lack of color and complication forces the viewer to pay attention to the story being told.  The layout of the bells hung from the ceiling is very appealing because the bells are hung from different levels.  The other interesting element of the bells is that the amount of light in the museum changes the viewing experience.  The later in the day it gets the darker the exhibit gets and the brighter outside it is the more light there is that reflects off of the bells.

The purpose of this art is to represent a story and was created by the author to tell this story.  One function of this art is to display how art can be simple at the surface, yet have a deeper meaning below the surface.  Although this art looks cool and is appealing to the eye, there is a story behind it that I would have never thought was there at first glance.