From Street Art to High Art

Caledonia Curry started her career as a street artist, but moved to museums and galleries. Now she has expanded her work to include installation and performance art, often with an activist inclination.

Self-study activity:
The video is not easy at all. Caledonia talks fast and she gets quite conceptual when expressing her views on art. Anyway, we can give the activity a go. Just remember to use the questions as anchors so as not to get lost in Caledonia's speech.

The activity is suitable for (strong) intermediate 2 students.



1 When did Caledonia start doing artwork?
2 How did Moma contact her?
3 How did she take her stuff to the museum?
4 Where is Caledonia best-known as an artist?
5 What sad event in her life does she talk about?
6 What is her collection in the Brooklyn Museum about?

You can self-correct the activity by reading the transcript below.

My name is Caledonia Curry. I also go by the artist name, Swoon. When I started making work outside while I was in school (1), I would actually sell things out of my apartment to people who will like managed to find me, and then like their sister-in-law and then their neighbor, and like I would just somehow like get through six months that way and be like, OK, this is working.
Then, I got this e-mail (2) from MOMA and they were very like, Can you stop by? and I was like, What do you mean? They were like, just bring a couple of things. I remember that I biked (3) all that stuff there on my backpack. And it was like stacking like eight feet on my backpack. And it was just funny to me at that time. Look, here I am bringing my work to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art on my bicycle, on my backpack (3). It was just funny, anyway.
Pretty shortly thereafter, I did my first solo show with projects and everything changed. In the fine arts world, I've done a lot of projects. In the street art community (4), I think that's where I'm most well-known.
Street art had this kind of explosion recently. The way that I feel about it is that it is like a healthy practice that a healthy city to have people making things and putting them outside and like being a part of the visual creation of their neighborhoods.
When you're sort of like looking at your life and your society and the problems that were beset with, I think that for me, I always really struggled with how to be who I was as an artist and yet be able to interact directly with some of those issues. My relationship with image-making is such that sometimes, the only way to really move through something is to make work on the subject.
Just last year, when my mom passed away (5), she was struggling particularly hard with her dictions and mental illness in the couple of years before her death. And so, I had sort of started directly dealing with some of that stuff, and so a whole section of the imagery that's in the Brooklyn Museum is both about that struggle, and then is about the process of her illness and death, and then is also just about kind of thoughts on motherhood (6) and sort of creating images of nurturing that were perhaps missing from the original picture. That piece had such a personal significance about this most recent period of my life, and so it felt like the show was just able to have a more complex narrative.
I do kind of feel like the function of the artist, sometimes, can be to be in a mental and an emotional sort of processor for some of these thoughts and then to try and share that. And so, for me, taking on some of these subjects is my attempt to do that first wave of processing about what is it? How do we understand this psychologically? How do we understand this emotionally and instinctively and in all these other ways, besides logically? Because we are going to have to understand it in all of these ways if we are going to find ourselves in a position to really take it on.

Madrid Teacher: Painting the town

In this week's Madrid Teacher video three teachers discuss the problem of graffiti in our cities. Once again, we can use the video as a springboard to get familiar with some features of spoken English.

First of all, watch the video through to get the gist of what the conversation is about.

Watch the video again. This time, pay attention to the following characteristics of spoken English we can hear.

• Giving emphasis to the information we give: quite; really
• Use of fillers to gain thinking time: erm; er; sort of
• Hedging our opinion so that we don't sound so categorical: I guess
• Showing the speaker that you're paying attention: Yeah; Was it a nice fountain?; Oh, OK; Oh , I didn’t know that; Right
• Use of actually to introduce a piece of surprising information
• Use of so as a linking word

Now it's over to you. Get together with a relative or friend and discuss your take on graffiti. Is it art? Is it vandalism? Don't forget to use some of the features of  spoken English we have heard on the video.

Have you both heard about Keith Herring?
Erm, rings a bell.
Yeah? He was a very famous artist, no longer living, he was a graffiti artist, and a lot of people were quite impressed with his work and he would leave a lot of erm… works, I guess you could say, all over the streets, on subway cars etcetera. And then it was something that sort of created an art movement, and different people were, also thought it was really cool and then of course I’m sure you’ve heard of tagging, for people, then to write codes in different places, to communicate. But then of course, erm… in different countries, different kids for example they wanted to be bad, so instead of smoking, they decided they’d get out their spray can and write, I don’t know…
Anything.
… I don’t know “ Pepe loves Wilma”.
Yeah…
The other day I was in, I was in the park, and I was there with my dog and I saw these two people, a father and a son… doing something. I said, “What is that?” And they had a spray can, and they were... graffiti, putting graffiti on the fountain, and I was shocked, and I said to all the people around me, “Shouldn’t we do something just other than watch them?” It didn’t phase anybody else….
Was it a nice fountain?
It was a nice fountain. It was a nice park! It’s upsetting.
I would, I would take issue. No it’s funny but the way graffiti is an actual legitimate art form, it’s actually, yeah, branched out of the delinquency factor… Because nowadays it’s actually quite a worthwhile investment, if you have, if you happen to own a piece of art by someone like Banksy, who’s a graffiti artist of renown in London and Birmingham.
Oh, OK.
And actually, recent er, recent acquirers, celebrity, erm, fans of his include Cristina Aguilera and Angelina Jolie.
Oh , I didn’t know that.
And they have works of his in their own homes, so, I don’t know if that means they have bits of wall all around.
Right.
But yeah it’s worth really quite a substantial amount of money.
So then… artists should start branching out!
Yeah, I suppose so.