About Oil Drum Art
Oil Drum
Art is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit grass roots art movement that seeks to change
human patterns through meaningful artworks. By using the 55-gallon oil drum
as a metaphor for oil artists transform the drums into provocative artworks
that address global issues about oil such as the environment, global warming,
sustainability, the economy, the energy crisis, our carbon footprint, and
the Middle East conflict.
It also reflects positive aspects of fossil
fuel that has provided economical solutions in the past century for our
needs and comforts.
To accomplish its international goal Oil Drum
Art uses art exhibitions as a means of presenting artist’s commentaries
to the public. The exhibitions provide a forum for meaningful dialogues
between art and society and perhaps make a difference.
Jack Lardis
President & Founder
Oil Drum Mission
The 55-gallon steel drum is a metaphor
for oil that provides artists worldwide an opportunity to create environmental,
geopolitical, and aesthetic statements about the condition of our society.
This new art form provides provocative and educational
commentaries that will spread throughout the world via exhibitions and the
Internet.
Oil Drum Art will culminate in a major uncensored international
exhibition in America and become a visual forum for meaningful dialogues
between art and society and that will make a difference.
THE CORE PRINCIPLE OF OIL DRUM ART
Oil Drum Art is a call to the artists
in American communities and perhaps in the world to define modern human
civilization using a powerful symbol as a common medium.
Ancient civilizations are known more
for their art than for their politics. The Oil Drum Art project is an invitation
to bring art into direct contact with our civilization so as to inform it,
perhaps for posterity.
The possessing or controlling of oil
has been a defining policy objective of the 20th Century community of nations.
The oil drum contains the essential energy of our world, without which our
modern civilization could not exist. The drum container in its vast simplicity
as a symbol common to all men, evokes every one of the forces, greed, hope,
peace and havoc that have influenced mankind for a century or more.
The oil drum when used as a means
of expression will remind the world that art has a place, not just in museums,
but wherever it may be seen and pondered, and not just as art, but as philosophy
whose power will rise from the making of art from a common symbol that is
large enough to embrace it.
THE FIVE STAGES
OF OIL DRUM ART
1. GRASS ROOTS
Oil Drum Art (ODA) was launched in
New Haven, Connecticut in 2003 and its grass roots spread throughout the
state and into New York City. In six years there have been 23 ODA exhibitions
and over 48,000 viewers of all ages and socio-economic backgrounds.
2. NATIONAL EXHIBITIONS
Oil Drum Art will spread its grass
roots nationally by presenting invitational exhibitions in collaboration
with major art galleries and art associations that are interested in making
a change through art about issues confronting society.
3. INTERNATIONAL INSTALLATIONS
The Internet will provide opportunities
to expand ODA internationally with juried on-line exhibitions and an installation
competition that will produce winners who will be subsidized to construct
their artwork in either their country or the United States.
4. INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION
Art Associations
and Cultural Ministries worldwide will be invited to curate a juried exhibition
in their country and then send two selected artworks -- one environmental
and the other geopolitical -- to America for the first uncensored International
Oil Drum Art Exhibition.
5. INTERNATIONAL TOUR
Museums
and galleries worldwide will be offered a touring exhibition of selected
artworks from the first international ODA exhibition. This will complete
the first ODA cycle that will be repeated every three years.
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