Introducing the Identity Sculptures Project: Week 1

Week 1 of the Identity Sculptures Project has begun and marks the beginnings of the project's first phase: 1) the call for submissions soliciting writing from Vanderbilt faculty, staff, and students and 2) the creation of a web presence for the project. In addition to this blog, the project now has facebook and twitter pages (naturally). Eventually, there will be the official project page where major parts of the project's "product" will live. But that part will happen later, after ideas, words, conversations, and interactions have manifested themselves into forms both written and sculptural. For now, the project's virtual life will be predominantly rooted in this blog, where updates will be posted and then fed to its various satellites (the aforementioned facebook and twitter). 

I plan to use this forum to document the project as it unfolds. I welcome comments and audience participation and hope the blog will open itself up in that way. If there is one word I would use to describe the way I am thinking about the project, it would be "fluid"; much of the joy of being part of a project like this is the opportunity to be open to any and all developments. To say yes more than no and to allow myself (and hopefully the other participants) to dive headfirst (to allow ourselves to be led) without knowing where I (we) might land.

The project is one of this year's Creative Campus Innovation Grants at Vanderbilt University. Funded and supported by the Curb Creative Campus, the project will evolve, develop, and morph throughout the 2012-2013 academic year. I am really excited to be a part of it and to have the opportunity to work with the Curb and my fellow-"Vandyans" as both an artist and Vanderbilt staff member. I can't begin to say enough about how fantastic Curb Creative Campus is to encourage the ideas and visions of the Vanderbilt community. At the risk of sounding sentimental, how wonderful to simply have a place that is committed to the uncommon, the spontaneous, the possibility of unexpected campus moments. What a rarity!

For those of you who don't know what the Curb Creative Campus is about, their website is here. Vanderbilt and Nashville are lucky to have this initiative, which "places creativity and innovation at the center of a 21st-century higher education" making its home in the city.

Stay tuned .... (and, of course, be sure to like the project on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheIdentitySculpturesProject)!

-- LAP-D