Over the weekend I heard a story that really surprised me. Last year at Miami University in Ohio there was an art student who did a project outdoors. He wanted to represent life and death using objects hanging from a tree. This student decided to use a swing to represent life (youth) and a nose to represent death. What followed from this display was an offended reaction from the community, but the students didn't get why a nose hanging from a tree was so offensive. They were sure why it was there, but they didn't get why it was so bad. What's even worse is that the art student who put the nose in the tree didn't get it either. This student never made the connection between the nose and all the images of lynching I'm sure he was feed in his previous school years. When I heard about the project I thought how powerful it could be. No matter what it would make people feel uncomfortable, especially the black community, but as a work on art I feel that would be okay. It would get people thinking and talking to one another about a topic that most like to avoid. Basically, there is an endless number of reactions you can get by hanging a nose from a tree; it is a very powerful project that could be taken in many different directions. However, the artist didn't know what he was really doing which meant that he got a reaction that he wasn't expecting.

I'm not completely sure what to make of this story. I think I'm a little shocked because I'm now primed to think of lynching from the class. It surprised me that there were so many college students who didn't understand what that nose meant and why it was offensive. I'm not sure what population these college students represent more, that particularly community of students or the more general population of students around the country. I always thought that the history of lynching and the images were common knowledge by now, but I don't know anymore because if it were I would expect the students to be able to make a connection between the history and the project of this one art student. I would also expect that art student to make the connection himself. Because of this ignorance level there is a lot more work and much more thought that needs to go into communicating that needs to happen to the public, much more that I thought.