2780 Reservoir Avenue


John Fekner
Traces, 1999
11 portraits on lacquered magnesium plates 16" x 23' x 1/4"
11 aluminum signatures on painted aluminum plates
Board of Education
Percent for Art Program

Melody in 1's and 0's, 1998 laminated glass with digital print Lobby outside of the Performing Arts Auditorium
Board of Education Percent for Art Program
Fekner contemplates first love in the work Melody in 1's and 0's by conceptualizing the stream of consciousness within a child's mind as he composes a love sonnet. Various images such as a girls' fleeting glance, musical notes and digital code appear to move and converge, then fly apart.
John Fekner's work Traces is a series of digital portraits converted onto lacquered metal plates. Each portrait is accompanied by a smaller plate featuring the person's signature. The portrayed individuals have all been selected by students of Walton High School for their contribution to history and represent a variety of people from diverse ethnic cultures and backgrounds. Individuals selected for portraits, have all followed a particular goal or dream to develop new theories and ideas.

Among the cultural heroes and heroines are:
Rosalyn S. Yalow: American medical physicist and joint Nobel Prize Taker in Physiology and Medicine in 1977 for her development of the radio-immunoassay technique (RIA). Yalow shared the prize with two other physicists: Andrew V. Schally and Roger Guillemin.
Rosa Parks: Black American woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who refused to give her seat on a public bus to a white man. The incident led to a general boycott of city buses that became the spark that ignited the US Civil Rights Movement with Martin Luther King as its leader.
Walt Disney: Creator of cartoon figures Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse and the Disney empire.
Emily Dickinson: American poet who wrote continuously throughout her life, collecting poems into little, hand-sewn volumes. Almost none of her poems were published before her death. Dickinson's poems and letters to her friends reveal a vivacious, humorous, and shy woman.
José Martí: Cuban poet and essayist. Martí, a patriot who was exiled because of his opposition to colonial rule, returned in 1895 to fight for Cuban independence.
Diego Rivera: Mexican painter. Studied in Mexico, Spain and Paris. Rivera's best known works are huge murals on historic and revolutionary themes.
Jim Thorpe: Athlete and football player of Native American descent who in 1950 was selected by American sports writers as the greatest American athlete and the greatest football player of the first half of the 20th Century.
Seiji Ozawa: Japanese American conductor. He was a student of Herbert van Karajan, assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic led by Leonard Bernstein, and has since 1973 been the conductor of the prominent Boston Symphony Orchestra.


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