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Indepth Arts News:
"Dolph Gotelli's 34 Years of Fantasy and Play"
2003-05-04 until 2003-06-30
Design Museum, at University of California, Davis
Davis, CA,
USA United States of America
Dolph Gotelli, professor of design and founder of the Design Museum at the University of California, Davis, will present this spring a whimsical exhibition of personal papers and introspective installations, chronicling his experiences as instructor, collector, designer and artist.
The exhibition will run May 4 through June 30 in the Design Museum on the UC Davis campus.
The exhibition highlights his collections and 34 years of classroom teaching and themed exhibitions in the Design Museum. Artifacts from Gotelli’s diverse collections will be displayed in several multimedia settings: international folk toys, ethnographic art, devotional art, antique toys, masks, holiday fantasy figures and fake foods.
Student projects and Gotelli's creative work of his trademark projects from his visual communication classes will be featured. For instance, Gotelli's "Creativity, Fantasy, and Play" class that he originated in 1976 represents his philosophy of fantasy as childhood play and the importance of imagination in daily lives.
"To know is nothing; to imagine is everything," Gotelli says.
Videos will depict students' creative projects including fantasy tablescapes, altars, edible architecture, costumes and parades. Fantasy tablescapes have been a traditional Gotelli assignment that directs students to create an eating and drinking environment without using conventional utensils or materials.
One part of the exhibition will feature Gotelli's artistic transformation of hundreds of letters and other documents that he has received from students, colleagues, administrators and clients over the years.
"Since I never throw much away, my archives of voluminous files of bureaucratic papers will be manipulated into a new sculptural environment communicating whimsy and play," he says. "The challenge and exhibition goal is to design all my varied topics into an imaginative three-dimensional presentation that will be an entertaining experience for all museum visitors."
Gotelli's expertise with the object as a museum artifact has given his students the professional experiences of exhibition design, visual marketing and art installation.
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