New audio art tour opens at CLC
GRAYSLAKE -- The College of Lake County's new audio-guided art tour kicks off with a special multi-media piece that was created from a $150,000 state grant. The creators wanted to show the passage of the rural Lake County countryside into how it changed and developed, combining images and sound to achieve the finished 16 panel work of art.
"Passages" is the first of 15 pieces featured in CLC's self-guided audio tour.
(Thomas Delany Jr./News-Sun)
To take the virtual tour of the exhibit, visit http://gallery.clcillinois.edu/audiotour.cfm.
"I'm not sure where the original idea came from, but we thought it would be nice to have an audio tour. It's a good way to make artwork more accessible to the public," said Steven Jones, art gallery curator.
Pieces in the audio tour were selected for their location at the Grayslake campus. The Chicago area artists have exhibited at the Robert T. Wright Community Gallery of Art, Jones said.
Jones, along with gallery preparator Jane Ellefson, spent about a year and a half putting the audio tour together. Utilizing information from conversation with the artists, essays and personal research, Jones and Ellefson labored over the audio scripts to get them just "write."
"I think we just think about the piece and what we feel the artist was trying to communicate and find the words," Jones said to describe the writing process.
The idea was to engage the audience and discuss the pieces visually, Ellefson said. The general public is the intended audience, so narrations give artists' backgrounds, discuss the pieces visually and explain techniques used to make the pieces.
Each narration is about two to three minutes long. The entire audio tour takes about 30 to 40 minutes, they estimated.
"As a whole, if you listen to the entire collection, you'll learn a lot about art," Ellefson said.
The audio tour is narrated by the executive directors of the CLC Foundation and the James Lumber Center. The audio files are on three iPod Nanos the gallery purchased exclusively for the audio tour.
The audio files can also be downloaded to people's iPods and MP3 players, Ellefson said.
Jones noted that the CLC Foundation paid for the iPods as well as most of the college's permanent art collection.
"Private, not public money supports the wall artwork," Jones said.
Selections in the audio tour are part of the college's permanent collection. The entire collection has 495 pieces, about 200 of which are at the Grayslake campus, Jones estimated.
The entire audio tour is also available online, complete with images.
"It has taken down the walls of our traditional gallery and opened it up to the world. Few colleges and universities have anything like this," Ellefson said.
Jones said the audio tour would likely be expanded to include the performing arts center and outdoor sculptures within the next year or two.
CLC student Don Hughes Jr. of Waukegan described the audio tour as "informational" and "insightful."
"I've walked by these pieces of art and read the descriptions, but I never really got it," the 21 year old said.
