TOOLS October 10, 2009 — January 10, 2010 Visitors to the TOOLS exhibition at Art Center College of Design's Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery may have had a different experience than the show's simple title led them to expect. Objects on display were not sleek contemporary designs but rather belonged to the worlds of contemporary art, science, and natural history, and could be simultaneously appreciated for their aesthetics and impact on human development, as well as for their utility. The resulting blurred boundaries were the intention of the exhibition's organizers. Co-curated by Williamson Gallery director Stephen Nowlin and Los Angeles artist/writer John O'Brien, TOOLS was one of a series of Williamson Gallery exhibitions initiated by Nowlin to challenge traditional categories of presentation and bring together people, artifacts, and object-makers from diverse intellectual disciplines "There are inevitable comparisons created by sheer proximity that cause the viewer to wax poetic about tools and the forms that converge within them," wrote O'Brien in his brochure essay on how the exhibition combines the art and science of tools. "Art has been poeticizing Nature for millennia," said Nowlin, "and in the modern era the rhapsodizing of Nature has been replaced by the study of Nature — i.e., science." TOOLS was Art Center's contribution to a consortium of Pasadena institutions presenting exhibitions, performances, and programs as part of ORIGINS: Art & Ideas 2009, a festival organized by the Pasadena Arts Council (artideasfestival.org). Artists contributing to the exhibition included Janine Antoni, Stephen Berkman, Robert Hudson, Ben Jackel, Nancy Kyes, Tom LaDuke, Michael McMillen, John Millei, Mark Niblock-Smith, Russell W. Porter, Paul Tzanetopoulos, and Gail Wight. NASA/JPL engineer Tom Rivellini was represented by sketches that led to the successful Mars Pathfinder landing in 1997 Ü a remote-sensing tool. In addition to the Autry Center and Carnegie Institution, organizations lending artifacts to TOOLS included Bolt's Antique Tool Museum in Oroville, CA, California Institute of Technology, The Huntington Library, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as well as private lenders. An Art Center studio class, "Tools and Creativity," was held in a portion of the gallery, taught by artist Seth Kaufman and designer Randall Wilson, with student projects and processes on display as they unfolded over the term of the exhibit. A printed brochure for the exhibition featured an essay by O'Brien and an introduction by Nowlin, as well as select images for included objects. image: Tom LaDuke, Untitled Self Portrait, 2007 clay and epoxy collection of David Burtka and Neil Patrick Harris