Artists & Communities Host Site: University Place Art Center
2601 North 48th Street
Lincoln, NE 68504

Millennium Artist:
Glenn Trudel
Photographer
Wisconsin

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Artists & Communities Millennium Artist Glenn Trudel partnered with University Place Art Center to introduce the art of photography to students from elementary-aged youth to senior citizens in Lincoln, Nebraska. Community members, aged 5 to 65, gained photographic skills as well as created a body of new works documenting the community from their unique perspective.

In partnership with Lincoln's Arts & Humanities High School and the Bryan Learning Center, Trudel conducted a program of six workshops during his three-month residency. The workshops offered tuition in photographic skills and targeted different groups of participants. Each workshop centered on the directive of encouraging students to think, act and address the community in a new and different way.

Workshop sessions at the Bryan Learning Center involved teenagers from an alternative school for behaviorally challenged youth in capturing their sense of community through photographs. The Trudel Workshop involved adults and young people in photographing and developing nighttime color and black & white images. Arts & Humanities High School workshops focused on capturing the diversity of the community through photography. Darkroom Magic engaged elementary school students in learning basic camera and darkroom skills. Sports Photography Camp offered middle school students opportunity to shoot and develop action photos. Stories Through the Lens paired adults and young people in capturing Lincoln's various neighborhood landscapes.

To support Trudel's residency and the efforts of workshop participants, the University Place Arts Center developed a community-access darkroom facility in the Center's new education wing.

Armed with 35 millimeter cameras and basic photographic concepts, more than 50 Lincoln citizens fanned across Lincoln's autumn landscape to explore the city's nooks and crannies and its vast, textured countryside during workshop sessions. Participants produced many distinctive creations, from one child's quiet portrait of a new friend to the mysterious echoes of an electric, Lincoln night.

The resultant work was exhibited at the University Place Arts Center in two shows, "Always There, Never Seen: Parts I & II," from November 2000 to January 2001. According to the artist, the exhibits were meant to show that ordinary life can be very interesting and beautiful, and that one needs only to view it from a different perspective.

MILLENNIUM ARTIST BIO

Glenn Trudel is a photographer whose work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Utne Reader, Air and Space Magazine, High Times, and been commissioned by the Children's Defense Fund Conference, University of Wisconsin, and Tap It Theater Company.