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Professor Henry Hopkins talks with school children in front of UCLA’s installation of a supersized Plexiglas bin, in which people are invited to throw their own works of art, at an exhibit on creating art.

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UCLA professor Paul McCarthy speaks with UCLA student artists at the LACMALab exhibit “Making.”

A new exhibit featuring a group of UCLA art students at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art not only examines the process of making art, it also gives viewers a chance to throw some art away.

“Making,” the latest exhibition from LACMALab, the museum’s research and development unit, presents the work of student teams from four major L.A. art schools. “Making” asks the question, “What does it mean to make art?” The UCLA group has responded in turn with, “What would it mean to ask someone to give that art up?”

Running through Sept. 1, 2003 at LACMA’s Boone Children’s Gallery, the exhibit showcases an installation created by 10 graduates and undergraduates from UCLA’s School of the Arts and Architecture and provides the emerging artists with their first taste of large-scale public exposure.

In addition to UCLA, Art Center College of Design, California Institute of the Arts, and Otis College of Art and Design were invited to create participatory projects that would appeal to audiences of all ages.

Given $10,000 and 1,500 square feet of gallery space, each school was asked to think about making art in both philosophical and practical terms. The UCLArts team chose to explore the relationships that people have with their own creations, and what throwing those works away might mean to them.

“We’re not talking about discarding trash, we’re talking about discarding art,” said interdisciplinary studio graduate student Sharon Hayes. “What happens, if instead of putting it on a shelf, they relinquish it to this pile? What happens if they let it go?”

The public is encouraged to ask themselves these questions while tossing self-created artwork into a 9-foot-tall steel and Plexiglas octagon. A 48-foot ramp makes its way up and around the container and provides access to its lidless rim. A few hours after its unveiling, a colorful layer of construction paper and clay accumulated on the bottom.

For the project, which LACMALab director and curator Robert Sain calls “an exhibition by dare,” each school had less than a year to conceive and produce its installations. The museum allowed most schools the two- to three-year planning process. Being that LACMALab had previously only commissioned working artists – some internationally recognized – the concept of working with students via their art schools was unprecedented.

“We asked ourselves, what’s in the heads of the next generation?” Sain said.

In addition, the groups were required to think of themselves as part of a larger endeavor, presenting their work in tandem with other schools.

“We didn’t want for this to be like a science fair, with everybody’s individual little project,” Sain said. “And that’s what led to the notion of a collective, collaborative approach.”

The UCLArts team hopes that some of the artwork generated by the other installations, which include a hands-on potting shed and a mountain of sculpting clay, will end up in their container. But “throwing away” art into the giant receptacle might not seem like the obvious thing to do, especially for children. Project mentor and UCLA professor Paul McCarthy noted that kids seem to enjoy running up and down the ramp, making energetic circles around the container.

“It’s turning into a jungle gym,” he said.

Ideally, the octagon will accumulate a wide variety of objects over a period of nine months. It would evolve into a larger, collaborative work reflecting the art and art-making of its own audience.

“I know someone who’s having something framed, just to throw it away,” said new genres graduate student Jill S. Miller.

Although the team half-jokingly speaks of the container making its permanent home among the bronze forms of UCLA’s Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden, their goal at the moment seems focused on the effect their art has on Boone Gallery viewers.

“Who knows? This thing could flop,” said Hayes. “It could be that those kids never understand how to use it. But I still think that it asks an interesting question that we have all felt is really important.”

“Making” is now showing in the Boone Children’s Gallery through Sept. 1, 2003 at LACMA West, located at Wilshire and Fairfax Aves. Admission is free.