Artist Lecture: Tim Gaudreau

I attended Tim Gaudreau artist lecture back on February 15th with my friend Leah. I went into the lecture expecting Gaudreau to be a photographer who was going to talk about his photos and his methods. Instead I was surprised when he called himself an "eco artist", saying how he want to connect people to the world around us through his art. Once he started showing us some of his work, I began to understand what he meant by Eco artist. Some of Gaudreau's work was done by working with children and helping them learn how to help the environment through art. For instance, Gaudreau mentioned how he worked with many children to create recycle bins for their local town. The children painted tiles and then placed them around the outside of the recycle bins to create mosaics. These children were able to learn the importance of recycling as well as get to relate it to art by making the tiles. Tim also worked with children at a local school to create an outside classroom for them. The kids got to help carve the wood of the benches, that would create the outside classroom. These children also got to learn about the environment, since the wood they were carving used to be an old tree on their school property. I thought that it was very creative of Tim to come up with these two ideas since he had to find a way to get the children involved with the project, teach them about the environment and do it in an artistic way for him and the children.
Also during the lecture, there was some projects that he showed us that I had a hard time seeing as art. For instance, he talked about how he dressed up as a polar bear and walked around the street talking to people about global warning, for one of his projects. I could see how making the polar bear costume would be an art project, but I couldn't see how the rest of it was. I guess it makes sense for an "eco artist"to do something like this, but I think because it was just so far from what I was expecting him to show us, that I had trouble accepting it as art. One of the other projects that he showed us towards the end, that I had no trouble seeing as art, was when he took a picture of everything he threw away in a year. He displayed these pictures in a very interesting way where they created a mosaic pattern that appeared as different colored swirls. I thought this project was very interesting because it was able to be artistic in the way the photos were displayed, and since it gave a "green" message to its viewers, showing them how much they throw away in a year. I also liked how he labeled the project as a self portrait since it showed who he was, through his trash. Overall I did enjoy listening to Tim Gaudreau's lecture though it was not what I expected to see in the beginning.