These VCU students agreed to exchanges with VCU School of Business Artist-in-Residence Alyssa Salomon. (Photos by Alyssa Salomon)
Alyssa Salomon is the perfect mashup for her position as artist-in-residence at VCU’s School of Business: former accountant and investment banker, art educator, and artist with experience with photography, fiber art and printmaking. Since last August, she’s invited students, staff and faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University to “come sit with me and make.”
“I have used the basic idea of saying we’re making all the time: We make lunch, we make friends, we make plans, we make trouble, we make up, we make a future,” Salomon says. Estimating that she has interacted with approximately 600 people — including a book-making workshop with 160 students. She has invited individuals to make buttons and origami with reproductions of $100 bills and brainstorm economic exchange rates.
For four days, she sat in the atrium of the Business School and asked people to sell her anything — an object, an idea — for her money; participants determined the exchange rate.
“One student sold me an idea for a business,” she explains, “and then we talked about intellectual property rights … and drew up a contract.” Other participants sold her coins, a banana and highlighters.
With the artist-in-residence, “you never really know what’s going to happen in the atrium,” says Senior Associate Dean of the School of Business at VCU Ken Kahn, laughing. “That surprise leads to learning and also a little bit of fun. … It’s getting our students to think differently and try to get out of the routine.”
Salomon ends her residency with a talk on Friday, June 15, at Creative Mornings, a national organization with a local chapter in Richmond that presents a monthly lecture. Salomon will speak on how ideas and lifelong learning can be generated through an exploration of materials, which she believes creates a more conscious, improved society.
“It is the doing that is the source of all discovery,” she says.
Alyssa Salomon will speak at Creative Mornings Richmond on Friday, June 15, from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. at Studio Two Three, 3300 W. Clay St. The event is currently full, but there is a waitlist.
