Visiting art exhibit at Ball State invites people to interact and touch art

A new art exhibit at Ball State University is inviting visitors to touch and interact with art.  IPR’s Abigail Urban spoke with the artist to learn how he builds in fun and play.

Since he was a young kid, John Gonzalez has always been interested in art.

“I was always drawing all the time. I wasn’t really into sports or anything really. I just kind of found my refuge in being creative.”

After seeing his talent and overall drive Gonzalez’ parents encouraged him to continue in art, enrolling him in classes and letting him get his hands dirty.

“It sort of became a thing where I felt like where maybe this could be a career, maybe this could be something I could go to college for so, I studied at RISD in Providence where I live and I just started finding other people who also were interested in the things I was interested in and it became a kind of way of life for me.”

Gonzalez creates a wide variety of art from physical paintings to interactive installations.  He’s brought a show on “experimental play” to Ball State’s Ned and Gloria Griner Art Gallery.

“I think we are all sort of trained to not touch the art work, however there are these little placards on the ground that sort of invite visitors to interact with the artworks.”

The goal is to bring people into communities or spaces they often don’t notice, find, or see, pushing them to interact with it and each other.

“I do like to pull from that idea of being in a space, acknowledging the space that you are in. And sometimes that involves like physical matter from outside like rocks or dirt or things like that but I think also there a type of social site specificity of the students, the people who are in the space.”

Gonzalez’s work is available to see at Ball State through January 29.

Abigail Urban is a news fellow with Ball State Public Media’s Public Media Accelerator student fellowships.