"I am an art education professor at State University Northridge, and was very inspired by your burning banks paintings. I read about the incident in Van Nuys in the LA Times, and decided that it would be a good idea for my classes-all non-art majors-to do a group project called Burning Wall Street. Students researched the Wall Street bailouts and were required to listen to or watch "Democracy Now" on their computers. It didn't take long, even for the freshmen, to make the connection between their personal financial disasters and Wall Street. As one student put it, "this project is like Burning Man, only relevant."
Anyway, I want to thank you for triggering the idea. The banks are made of wooden matches and wood glue, with some paper panels cut from the Wall Street Journal. 150 students participated in the project. The first photo is one we took in the classroom, with banks on both sides of Wall Street, which is constructed from play money. (Instead of the Wall Street bull we created a Wall Street pig also covered by play money.)
The exhibition, which in this venue is 40 ft long, is installed in Manzanita Hall on the CSUN campus, where it will be safely behind a plexiglass wall for the summer. In August it will move to the West Gallery in the CSUN art department. After that, we plan on rescuing the tiny "occupy" people, and take the banks to a special area to be burned.
If you would be interested in visiting the installation, I would be delighted to show it to you.
Thanks again for inspiring what turned out to be an educational experience that has really resonated with students."
I'm taking her up on her offer and will be visiting next week!
UPDATE! NEW 3 day auction listing: Wall St Riot! CLICK HERE FOR THE AUCTION!
