Living & Arts

Teaching the campus to breathe through art

Teaching-the-campus-to-breathe-through-art

Olivia Natan

The above piece, found on the second floor of Kohlberg, is an example of Hebert's work across campus.

In print | September 23, 2010

“Layered, interconnected and inquisitive” are three words artist, educator, and cultural worker Pato Hebert uses to describe his work. The artist utilizes an extensive range of media, from photography to text-based installation, but always strives toward a synthesis of aesthetics and ethics. This unique approach to art is what brings the artist to Swarthmore.

Based in Los Angeles, Hebert teaches at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and works at the AIDS service organization “Aids Project Los Angeles.” For the next 10 days, Hebert’s art installation, “Signing On: Creative Interventions and the Mobilization of the Imagination,” will be on campus as part of the Cooper Series. Hebert’s work will be exhibited in McCabe Library, the Scott Arboretum and other sites on campus.

Sarah Willie-LeBreton, associate professor of sociology, met Hebert two years ago at Haverford College and was drawn to his “authentic compassion for other people.” It was this quality and his desire to “help people figure out who they best are” that motivated Willie-LeBreton to nominate Hebert to take part in the Cooper Series.

Vice-President Maurice Eldridge, who oversees the Cooper Series, explains that the William J. Cooper Foundation is used to bring annual series of preeminent lecturers, artists and performers to the college to “enrich the academic and cultural life on campus.” Access to the wide-ranging series is not limited to students, but is open to the wider community.

The exhibition in McCabe mainly focuses on a photographic project “Trying to Catch Your Breath,” a series of images of air. Photographs from these series have been placed throughout the main floor of the library and a text-based installation has been placed on the doors of McCabe. The arboretum installation “Intentional Grounding” will be an ongoing project compiled by members of the college and will be installed on Thursday evening after 5 p.m. Hebert will also speak to his previous works, his work in HIV prevention and his installations at Swarthmore at a campus-wide lecture today, Thursday Sept. 23 at 4 p.m. in the Scheuer Room.

Hebert said that as an undergraduate, his interests in art, politics and progressive social change led him to realize “art could be part of social change.” Hebert primarily concerns himself with the synthesis of these interests into a socially-engaged art practice. Specifically, Hebert defines his work as the “intersection of ethics, aesthetics and the poetics of things.”

It is fitting that Hebert’s unconventional work has been brought to Swarthmore in an interdisciplinary fashion. The installation is a collaborative effort between Andrea Packard of the List Gallery, Willie-LeBreton and McCabe librarian Pamela Harris.

However, the unconventional exhibition sites were not part of Hebert’s initial intention; the List Gallery was not available due to scheduling reasons. Yet Hebert describes “site and space” as important components of his work, and there was always an intention for his exhibition to have both indoor and outdoor aspects.

Hebert hopes the exhibition will deliver to the student body a “space where they can push themselves and one another to deepen their own practice” but is ready to accept the possibility that “the work fails to do anything for Swarthmore.” On the other hand, Willie-LeBreton has no doubt the exhibition will have “great synergy with Swarthmore students and the college’s values.”

Willie-LeBreton says that Hebert has “taken education, art, concern for larger society, public health and made a wonderful thing.” There may yet be hope for Swatties to contrive a valid career from their varied interests.

The exhibition in McCabe will run through Oct. 22 and the Arboretum installation will be up until Oct. 3.