With Love, Elevator Projects

Hardly a carefree time for college graduates, is it? Diplomas just don’t mean what they used to, back when people used to hike a mile through the snow to their one-room schoolhouses. Nowadays, to secure a post-grad job you must land (usually unpaid) internships and studies abroad, pay small fortunes to career counselors, and boast a squeaky clean online presence. You might even have to open a LinkedIn profile.

Or you could just throw yourself out there. That’s what sculpture student Raina Wirta did with Elevator Projects, a Baton Rouge arts collective currently exhibiting works at the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge’s Firehouse Gallery.

“I wanted my degree to mean something,” said Wirta of the initiative. It’s a common concern, but one usually met with anguished Facebook statuses and hand-wringing. Instead, Wirta stashed her woes and launched a movement, affording her works a showcase outside of the classroom.

She co-founded Elevator Projects in January 2012, while still earning her MFA at the LSU School of Art. As a Minneapolis transplant, Wirta didn’t have the homespun connections afforded to many local artists. But she did have a contagious attitude toward creativity, and she made short work of convincing fellow graduate students to hop on board. Soon the group was transforming warehouses and empty drugstores into one-night art installations, their stunts attracting attention from not just the artistically-inclined but the wider world—just as they intended.

Elevator Projects’ mission statement reads: “Like operators in a crowded elevator, we drive creative traction between diverse passengers, but without the awkward conversations.”

How do those words translate from the page to the walls (or pedestals) of a gallery? The first steps into the new Elevator Projects exhibit are jarring: the works on display do not cohere. Colors, media, theme, and perspective vary from piece to piece, and you may feel like you’re channel-surfing as you wind your way through the room.

You could say, “Oh, but there is a theme! The theme is diversity!” But “diversity” has become such a buzzword that it’s difficult to put any stock in the abstract noun by itself. Especially when it seems like a lazy circumvention of critical thought.

Instead the new exhibit, entitled With Love, Elevator Projects, acts as a warm show of gratitude to the friends and collaborators who have helped usher Elevator Projects into the local consciousness with a showcase of the various works crafted by the collective’s members.

And it’s a love letter to the powers of the frequently collaborating local arts community. They create. They welcome. And they elevate.

With Love, Elevator Projects runs until March 30 at the Firehouse Gallery for the Arts. 427 Laurel Street, Second Floor. The members of Elevator Projects can be found creating across the street at the new BR Walls Project Art and Design Center in the Chase Tower, 451 Florida Street. facebook.com/elevatorprojects.