collaboration station

Rice's public art program looks to science as it prepares for major JamesTurrell unveiling

Artist John Sparagana with Geronimo, currently on view in the lobby of Rice'sBioScience Research Collaborative (BRC).
Photo by Tyler Rudick
Sparagana's massive photo-collage uses various pieces of software to deconstructa black-and-white image of a crowd in Times Square on the night of Osama binLaden's death.
Photo by Tyler Rudick
Dana Frankfort's open studio on the ground floor of Rice's Brockman Hall forPhysics allows passers-by to watch the artist's public art project evolve.
Photo by Tyler Rudick
Leo Villareal's Radiant Pathway located in the building's second floor cafe.
Photo by Tyler Rudick

As it awaits James Turrell's much-anticipated "skyspace" — set to open in early summer next to the Shepherd School of Music — Rice University's Public Art Program has been looking to the BioScience Research Collaborative (BRC) building as the backdrop for a string of site-specific pieces that speak to the innovative science center's interdisciplinary focus.

Designed by renowned architectural firm SOM and nestled into a corner of Rice's campus adjacent to the Texas Medical Center, the BRC was envisioned as a meeting place for people working in a variety of scientific fields to interact and share ideas. Situated at the center of building, a multi-story cylindrical core dubbed the Collaborative Hub encourages intellectual and social cross-pollination with student workstations, a large lounge and an open stairwell that promotes communication between floors.

John Sparagana's Geronimo uses computer technology to deconstruct a black-and-white image of a crowd in Times Square on the night of Osama bin Laden's death.

After opening in 2009, the BRC and its Collaborative Hub quickly gained two iconic pieces from Rice's Public Art Program, both of which attempt to define and exploit a shared common ground between visual art and science.

Leo Villareal's ultra-techie Radiant Pathway, situated on the second floor of the Hub, employs 92 LED light tubes to display changing sequences of 16 million different colors. James Surls' Walking Molecular Flower, on the patio just outside the building's main entrance, offers an atom-like interpretation of the artist's well-recognized plant forms.

In 2012, two more pieces will make their mark on the collaborative environment of the BRC.

John Sparagana's Geronimo

Late March saw the Hub's newest addition, a work by Rice art department chair John Sparagana located in the building's main lobby off University Boulevard. Titled Geronimo, this massive photo-collage uses computer technology to deconstruct a black-and-white image of a crowd in New York's Times Square on the night of Osama bin Laden's death.

Exploring that awkward terrain between art, mass communication and technology, Sparagana has digitally reprinted the picture to match the exact 10-by-16-foot dimension of two works by color field painter Morris Louis, Beta Kappa and Mu, which the artist subsequently has recreated in acrylic on either side of the print.

"John take media-driven images, slices and dices them, and repurposes them," Rice public art director Molly Hipp Hubbard said at Geronimo's unveiling. "The addition of iconic compositions, in this case by Morris Louis, places the artist in between mediums, which is what makes this work so engaging."

Dana Frankfort's new contexts

Across campus in a vacant ground-floor room of Brockman Hall for Physics, the Public Art Program has given abstract artist Dana Frankfort a large temporary studio to complete a piece that will fill a blank wall inside BRC's open staircase.

Frankfort typically centers her work around a single word painted on the canvas — a piece of text spelling out L-I-F-E or P-E-O-P-L-E. For the Collaborative Hub stairs, she is working on two pieces simultaneously and will decide which suits the space when she finishes the artworks this fall. For the BRC, she's painting around the words "think" and "test."

"These works involve a lot of free association for me," the artist told CultureMap during a studio visit. "It's about merging text with total abstraction, about creating a picture of the word rather than a sign."

As a professor of art at Boston University, Frankfort said this continuous process of painting in and around the text might often happen in plain view of her students, not unlike the very public studio set-up she maintains at Rice when she is not teaching. The technique balances the artist's deep personal considerations with a desire to remain open to any interested parties, a method very much in line with the interdisciplinary ideals of the BRC.

"In the end," she said, "a new context for the original word has emerged."

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Movie Review

Fawning Michael Jackson biopic Michael ignores the singer's complexities

Photo by Glen Wilson

Jaafar Jackson in Michael.

Michael Jackson remains among the most complicated figures in pop culture history. On one hand, he’s responsible for some of the most enduring music of all time, thrilling generations with his voice and dance moves. But his later years were marred by accusations of child sexual abuse and erratic behavior, including his premature death at the age of 50.

So the new biopic Michael is a tough one to judge from a critical standpoint, not least because director Antoine Fuqua and writer John Logan have elided — perhaps temporarily — the thornier parts of Michael’s history. Instead, this film focuses on the 20-year period in which Michael (played as an adult by Michael’s nephew Jaafar Jackson) goes from the prepubescent lead singer of the Jackson 5 to one of the biggest music superstars of all time.

That choice puts an overly sympathetic tint to Michael’s story, as he spends most of that time under the thumb of his domineering father, Joseph (Colman Domingo). Joseph has a vision for Michael and his brothers, and he pushes them hard in a quest to become rich and famous. Even when they achieve that goal, though, Joseph refuses to let up, holding onto Michael even when it’s clear he should go out on his own.

As a reminder of the enormous impact Michael Jackson had on the music industry and world at large, the film is successful. Fuqua and Logan include plenty of music, naturally, but they seem to be most interested in depicting Michael as a human being. They lay it on thick, whether it’s showing him spending time among his family members away from the stage, hanging out with bodyguard Bill Bray (KeiLyn Durrel Jones), or visiting sick kids in hospitals. The message that Michael is a harmless, good person couldn’t be clearer.

The film hints at but doesn’t really explore Michael’s oddities. His obsession with kids literature and movies, especially Peter Pan, are seen as inoffensive quirks, as is his menagerie of animals, including a creepy CGI version of Bubbles the chimp. His arrested development seems to be partially blamed on his parents treating him like a child well into his adulthood, and the resulting fallout is not (yet) addressed.

Many viewers will be most interested in the music sequences, and — save for some repetitive shots of fans fainting at the mere presence of Michael — they are handled well. Whether it’s at home, in the studio, on the set of the “Thriller” video, or at live performances, the film manages to fully get across just what a phenomenon Michael was at his peak. The staging and editing of each scene is dynamic, complementing Michael’s other-worldly abilities well.

If there is one reason to see the film, it is the performance of Jaafar Jackson. Whether he’s capable of doing any other kind of role is undetermined, but his portrayal of his uncle is compelling, as he demonstrates singing, dancing, and acting skills in equal measure. He’s aided by an equally great performance by Domingo, who — with the help of facial prosthetics — overcomes the trope of the bad father. Nia Long and Larenz Tate are also good in smaller roles, but Miles Teller is an odd presence as Michael’s manager.

There are reports that legal complications prevented the filmmakers from using previously-shot scenes delving into accusations against Michael, and there are rumors that a second film will be made about the last 20 years of his life. But that speculation can’t absolve Michael of showing all the positive aspects of Michael Jackson’s life and not even touching any of the negative ones.

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Michael opens in theaters on April 24.

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