Rodman Hall Art Centre

What I Did:

For this OOCLO my roommates and I decided to go to the Rodman Hall Art Centre, as one of my roommates is in the art program and needed to go for an assignment. The three of us jumped in the car and headed over but of course, we got lost on the way and ended up having to turn around and try again. I am from a big city and I am used to a big flashy building that you can determine as an art gallery. However, Rodman hall turned out to be an old house, a huge house, but a house none the less. We walked in and a brock security guard greeted us and asked us to sign in, then he told us where the art was and we were free to walk around.  The first room we walked into was creative; the art was painted right onto the wall. The paintings were of hair; they were done in black paint, on every wall and were very detailed. You could see every strand of hair and how it intertwined with the next piece, there were no faces or heads only hair. The room with the hair paintings was long, as one end turned into a different room that was playing a movie. The sound was off so you could not hear the commentary from the movie but it was showing pictures of trees. The video of trees was really pretty, I did not get to see where the trees were but they were tall and green and it seemed to be in a forest. The three of s stood there for a bit just looking at the different trees they showed, they seemed so tall and healthy looking. The video made me want to go on a nature walk because it was so inviting. After seeing that art, we had to walk over to a different part of the hall to see more exhibits. In the next exhibit the room was split into three parts, one was of paintings, the next was photographs and the last was playing two movies. I looked at the photographs first, they were impressive, one of them was of the sky and there was a hot air balloon. The hot air balloon was in the background and the design on it made it look like a face. Then I moved on to the paintings, which were all a plain back with different shapes in different colours. I tried to understand what the abstract painting was of but I could not wrap my head around it. Lastly, I went into the last room that was playing movies and one had no sound but the other one took up the whole wall and was a skit of an older woman with two other men. The skit took place in a bar and they were talking but I came in party way through so I was not able to understand what the movie was about. As we were leaving the security guard told us we could go walk around outside and look at the sculptures. Therefore, we walked around the outside of the house to get to where they were. One of the sculptures stood out to me, it was of a bunch of numbers coming from a main point. For some reason I thought that was very interesting as they were not in any order just randomly coming out at you. Therefore, walking around Rodman Hall was interesting as I was able to see the different types of art, as well as, what an art centre is like in a different city.

What I have been asking myself:

Through this experience, I have learned how different art exhibits can be. In Toronto, art museums are a big flashy thing that stands out so that people will want to go in. However, I found that this art centre was a lot smaller and was more about the culture instead of trying to get tourists to go in and make the city money. I also found out that Brock students are allowed to submit their artwork and it may be put on display for everyone to see.  Therefore, this was a great experience because I got to learn more out the city I am living in and got to understand what art is to the people living here.     

  

What I learned:

I have learned that different cities have different art galleries and different ways to show art work to the public. Toronto is more interested in making as much money as they can; St. Catharies wants to portray their culture through their art.

I learned this when I compared the Rodman Art Centre to an art gallery in Toronto.

This learning matters because I got to see the culture in St. Catharines and see the differences from here to where I am from.

In light of this learning, I now know more about the culture in St. Catharines and hopefully will one day see my roommates art in the Rodman Art Centre.