This year's Reed Arts Week, Rupture through March 4th, has a lot of interesting visual arts related programming. Here are my 3 top picks:

Rainy Lehrman,Labor Byproduct, west end of Eliot Hall

"Brooklyn based Rainy Lehrman creates grass sculptures that protrude from the ground, showing layers of dirt, sawdust, and earth material, creating a veritable rupturing of the earth. The effect is a defamiliarization of space, inciting a new understanding of quotidian geography and providing a new understanding of the physical references from which we base our experience of time. The layering of the organic earth material suggests the layers of our civilization shedding their existence to the ground, creating residue that is accumulative and permanent. During Reed Arts Week, Lerhman will display her work Labor Byproduct, which highlights both the accumulation and excavation of this human permanence."

Pinar Yoldas | Speculative Biologies | February 29th-March 4th, 11am-6pm, Gray Campus Center room A | Artist Talk: March 2nd, 3:30 pm

One of my favorite genre's is the fascinating cross polination of art and science. Here's the PR: "Pinar Yoldas is a cross-disciplinary artist, all-in-one designer and a neuro-enthusiast. Through her work she investigates social and cultural systems in regards to biological and ecological systems. Lately she has been designing mutations, tumors and neoplasmic organs to rethink the body and its sexuality transformed by the mostly urban habitats of techno-capitalist consumerism. Her current project Speculative Biologies simulates the experience of a "natural history museum of the future" showcasing Species of Excess elegantly caged in incubators, jars, aquariums. Pinar's work has been exhibited internationally, including Bologna(Italy), Torun(Poland), Istanbul, Frankfurt, Providenc, Berkeley, New Mexico and Los Angeles."

[ O U T E R ] Space Gallery | February 29th-March 4th, Front Lawn

"[ O U T E R ] Space Gallery seeks to deconstruct the traditional manner in which the public interacts with and exhibits art by breaking out of the confines of a typical gallery space. By varying the environments in which art can exist, the dialogue/relationship between the viewer and the art is transformed. For Reed Arts Week, the walls act as both gallery and art object: the space in which art is exhibited becomes the art itself. Questioning the role of the institution as the steward of art curatorship, the installation challenges the traditional "places" in which art is experienced. Over the course of RAW, [O U T E R] SPACE will perform a parody of how art institutions present themselves, to demonstrate how these practices suggest greater credibility. Using the remnants of the deconstructed 'whitecube' the sculpture will be presented in a natural environment, defamiliarizing an ordinary space through a simple alteration in the attempt to facilitate a deeper understanding of the capacity to fracture and tear down traditional forms, allowing for greater examination of the possibility of a fundamental reconstruction of art institutions."