Sophie E. reports on initial reactions to The Walden Project, which this semester moved into the realm of art in the public sphere:

To me, art has always been the idea of slathering paint on a canvas, or taking a very fancy photograph. It never occurred to me that there are so many different mediums, including people. This week, we learned about social practice art, which is the idea of using people as the medium for an art piece. This was an idea that I had never engaged with before, which is why I was thrilled when we were given a project using this concept. Using similar ideas from the book Walden by Thoureau and the many presentations we were given by our teachers, we were assigned to create our very own experiment. Thanks to the idea of one of my friends, two other girls and I are going to try and base our project on the question of, “How vulnerable will people be with their art?” We are going to set up canvases in downtown Napa, with a lot of different art supplies, as well as a couple different prompts, in hopes that people will do something to the canvases. And, since this is a project in which the medium focuses directly on people, we want to face cameras pointed directly at the person, rather than the canvas. That way, we are able to see the person's reactions and emotions. We have not done the actual project yet, but we are excited to do it and can not wait for the excitement next week holds!

photos are from OS42's final presentations of their Walden Projects.