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Of mice and mentalities

4/21/2011

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I fail to see much of a distinction between art and design. There is a lot of design in a painting, while a design item like a chair or a hooked rug can be a nonfunctional piece of art. 

The distinction has been about ‘use.' That pretty much precludes any traditional domestic arts from being Art because the work might have — god forbid — use value. But the rarified air of the art world is being infiltrated by industrial designers.

I challenge the distinction by creating visual work in which the traditional function is removed from different methods and materials: quilts and doilies made of construction materials; paintings created by crochet and rug-hooking methods.

Another way to challenge the art-design boundary is to play with the whole premise of 'use.'

Which brings me to Roel de Boer, a Dutch artist/designer. His Speelkist — "play traveling box" according to the instant translation website Babelfish.com — turns the problem of household vermin into a performance art, as featured in the design Salone di Milano last weekend.

Is it useful? How do we view the rodents when they're in performance? More importantly, could you use a Speelkist around your place?

(See pests in performance below.)
 

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Roel de Boer's pretty flat-packed Speelkist (roughly translated as play travel box). Lifted from www.roeldeboer.com
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Soundsuits required in my Heaven

4/12/2011

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American fabric sculptor/performance artist Nick Cave parties with decor and the domestic to create his Soundsuits.
I'm fairly new at this. Not the writing part; I've been doing that for quite a while. It's this big scary exploration also known as Developing an Art Practice. Your hands might be busy but you spend a good deal of your mental energy wondering if you're not wasting your time (and money), if you've got any ability at all to innovate, to create, or even to endure all the self-doubts and circular thinking. Some days it hits like paralysis. A friend calls it being "on strike."

I've checked with some established artists and they say that it doesn't get easier. In fact, it often gets harder. How do you filter out the clutter of opinions and stay focused? How do you re-energize and rejuvenate?  Do you stay on this path, or take it in a new direction? How do you — and why should you — stay true to your art form?

Sorry I asked.

Then something miraculous happens. Last week it was in the form of the Nick Cave exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum.

Here visitors are confronted with multiple galleries devoted to the hyper-coloured wearable assemblages of glittery appliques, grannie squares, day-glo faux fur, crocheted potholders, fake flowers, porcelain birds, beat-up toy tops and other improbable materials that form Cave's fantastic gaudy Soundsuits. They're like mardi gras costumes created by tea grannies on acid. The mash-up of culture-laden doilies and buttons, rhinestones, shaggy polkadots, braided rugs, beads, twigs and baskets were made even more joyful in the accompanying nightclub-ready videos on four massive screens devoted to the Soundsuits in hyper- and slow-mo action.


Cave is clearly committed to his process. Surely someone along the way must have said these Soundscapes would never sell, that spending his days combing thrift stores for crocheted afghans was a waste of time and stockpiling floral hooked rugs and embroidered cushion covers was just hoarding.


What did I learn? It's time to stop apologizing and get back to work.


Check it...
 
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It's about art, but it's a stretch

4/11/2011

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Caesar Milan saved me from throttling my cairn terrier. Fred Tomaselli saved me from feeling like the art world had no interest in psychedelic patterns.
Now Robin McKenzie has saved my back.

I have no history of back trouble, even after 20 years hunched over a computer, mostly scrutinizing punctuation. But last week I wound up unable to stand without searing pain running up and down my left leg. Then I beat myself up further for being yoga-delinquent, for getting older, for being too damn lazy to work through the pain and too obsessed to stop working.

After I got tired of lying around, mourning my short-lived life as a visual artist and my lack of will — and an actual will — I googled my symptoms and came up with 'sciatica.' Then I did what I always do: I stretched deeply, forehead to knees. Things got worse. I hopped up on Motrin then quasimodo'd it two blocks to the medical clinic.

This is where the Robin McKenzie Method comes in. The good doctor at the clinic commanded me to do a couple of 'sloppy push-ups' for him. All pain immediately subsided. Hunh. Turns out the half backbends help push the inflamed disk back into the vertebrae. I walked home like a normal person, then re-familiarized myself with my studio the next day. Here's the link (provided with the usual precautions to consult your physician yada yada).
I share this un-arty entry because a bad back can bring a good artist down — in all senses of the word.

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Desperately seeking the crack in the beauty

4/6/2011

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Almost a year after my final sculpture class with the venerable Liz Magor I'm still wrestling with her challenge to me to find the crack in the beauty.

At least once a day I'm confronted with this concept but I only see it in the periphery. I know I'm seeing it when I get that zing, like an endorphine rush. Or sciatica.

I see it here in the barnacles-on-oyster-shells my nephew, quasi-niece and I painted with cheap neon paints they brought up to the cabin. It's somewhere in the understanding that barnacles and oyster shells are not to be doused in day-glo, that neon'd natural forms do not belong in a rural setting.

It's a subtle sabotage that raises questions, starts conversations. It activates the idea of crack in beauty.

I would like to believe I'm able to let go of the 'pretty' and embrace the power of the 'pretty/ugly' but I'm not quite there; the rest of the painted logs and rocks and shells were left outside to dry overnight and the next morning the water-based colours had run, leaving only traces of the neon paint job. Liz Magor would have probably liked that. She might even have made that little 'whoo' sound like she does when she likes what she sees.

I chucked them back onto the beach.




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