The Notion of Craft -New projects

I have been trying to find ways of balancing my practice in all sense of the word.  Balance between the materials I use, the labor investment (length of time to make, and the physical demands of making), and in how I create work (balance of process).  This is important for me to sustain a studio practice.  But it goes beyond the functions of creating and producing work.  It also offers a balance and adds to the ideas that the work explores.  For example, my attraction to craft and metalwork has a lot to do with the knowledge of how its made, and the skill required to execute certain techniques, and knowing that somebody was willing to invest the time to gain the skill and then apply that skill to create that object.  That object becomes imbued with the maker, which makes the object especially meaningful (or dare I say: Precious).  So what happens when you take that time and effort and apply it to an object of no value?  And to further push the question: what happens when you take that labor, even without the skill, and apply that to an object?  Does labor have meaning without skill?  Does an object have value without such handling?

There is a definite romance of the skilled artisan that people (including myself) linger on when appreciating a fine antique in a museum.  I take it further than most people, imaging the passing of knowledge and skill to that artisan by generations of skilled hands, going all the way back to the beginning, to the discovery of the material and learning of how to manipulate it.  Skilled labor is what developed us as a creature separate from animal ( in the pursuit of beauty).

This is not the forefront of my explorations when creating, but it is absolutely present in my thinking and decisions on choosing materials and how to go about constructing.  I have been setting myself up for long bouts of repetition in making with some recent projects.  They are intense in labor because of how many I will have to make to get the piece substantial enough to make an impact.  They labor is also being applied to objects that would otherwise be discarded: toilet paper rolls.  I plan to fill a wall with them, if not more.  There is a personal quirkiness that I ma trying to exploit, and at the same time, bring it to a level, and place it in the current conversation of assemblage versus construction in sculpture, and craft versus art.  I would also mention that craftiness is linked to domesticity, and the feminine (see my post on the crochet piece) and sculpture is considered big and masculine.  One of the questions I ask with all these issues is can I skirt the line?  Can I pull of a piece that is either gender neutral or gender inclusive, representing both sides of all these coins?  My reason for looking at both sides of things is not because I am indecisive, but because I empathize with both, agree with certain aspects of both.

This all leads into my newest endeavor.  I am working with paper rolls, from toilet paper, and paper towels.  These are items thrown away all the time.  I am cutting into them, reshaping them and then clustering them together.  It is small now, but I plan on taking this to a fairly large scale.

 

Loose thoughts on Feminist Theory

Before I begin, let me just say that I have been thinking about feminism a lot as it pertains to art, my life, my art, and questioning it as a position, while trying to pin down the current wave of feminism in art and what this era of feminism is championing.  These questions and subsequent examination has been more heavily motivated by the recent bouts of sexism that has been experienced by American women from male political figures campaigning for presidency and in congress, along with conservative media and personalities, and the scores of crap on TV that present women as tits and ass, bitchy, and materialistic.  The conversation surrounding women's reproductive rights (specifically the right to affordable, effective birth control) has served as an impetus for a lot of women wonder where our equality has gone.  

I have an idea for an installation that involves bringing a curvy floral line along a flat wall.  Ideally this would be done in a hallway or alley, or even a room.  Beyond the normal concepts I have been exploring in my work, the thought occurred to me that this could apply as feminist. 

A room or alley or hallway, consists of flat, straight walls, a floor (also typically flat) and perhaps a ceiling.  It is the epitome of minimalist shapes (the square, or rather cube in three dimensions) and completely geometric at that.  Art History and current artist’s theory refer to minimalism as a male dominated movement, during a male dominated market.  Beyond that it was a man’s artist that created the work; minimalists were not touchy-feely artist types, too sensitive to do anything but paint.  Minimalists smoke and drank as they defended their canvases, the Ernest Hemingways of the art world. 

In both painting and sculpture the forms that dominated were heavy, base, and weighted, if not geometric.  I would argue that there is a masculine aesthetic in these chosen forms, the artists perhaps unaware or concerned with gender in their work.  In fact I would say that it wasn’t pointed out as masculine until some women came along declared it so.  (Maybe not declared, but these women offered something to compare it to that then created the notion of gender aesthetics and started to be applied to more historical artworks retroactively.)

The room, building, and other basic architectural forms are rather masculine in aesthetic by this argument.  They are simple, geometric, with no applied detail.  This is not an old way of building, either.  There are warehouses, commercial properties, and business parks rising up all over the place in my neighborhood and this is what they are: simple, giant cubes.  Colors are white, tan, beige, black.

To take this masculine form and to alter it, add to it, fill it would be changing it to feminine.  In my idea the walls would still be seen through the piece, so does that make it neutral in gender, or consist of both?  Is it now more overtly feminine because the female aesthetic is on top of the male?  The act of taking over –domination- is considered a masculine act… so can you really call the piece feminine? 

There are no real answers to these questions, unless you consider the work to which its applied (and only that work).  In that way, I would be curious to see how people would consider my work.  I don’t create with the idea of it being feminine or feminist.  I merely follow through with the images that appear in my head… cultivate them to a point of reality and send them through a course of fine tuning based on visual aesthetics of yours truly.  Though after writing this I am no longer able to say that I haven’t thought about it.  In which case I would defend my work as being gender androgynous.  I also do try to be mindful of the materials and construction of my work so that there is a balance presented.

Blades and Swarms Installation

This was a piece several months in the making and transforming in my head several times over during the course of construction.  There are several components to this work, and several different concepts being applied and considered.

It started as a way to approach the organization of grass blades and the tufts of grass that have been left to grow a little longer before being cut.  When you get down on the ground and look at them straight on you notice curves and angles other than vertical, which add to the grass' appearance of being a blanket of green from a distance and being dense and fluffy from standing height.  I created these wooden clusters based on that exploration.  

After a while I had several of them and wanted to play with their display, and thought about how people interact with sculpture and other objects as they are on the ground.  So I decided to hang them from the ceiling, asking, "Does the extra concentration and grace it takes to navigate through and around the sculpture change the perception of the viewer?"  

The work is also put together in a very loose way, with no concern about craftsmanship or seamlessness in the end result.  There are several reasons for this.  I wanted to make something adopting a different method and approach than my usual to see how it would effect the creative process, and to balance out my work on other projects (which at the time were carefully made, repetitive, and thought out before making).  The clusters of wood were assembled rather quickly, though mentally laborious, so I could only do about an hour at a time.  The mental labor was the act of making a decision with every piece of wood attached.  And they couldn't all be planned out, because next decision would be based on the one before it.  That was rather tough for me.  The quickness of making was freeing, allowing me to spend more time thinking about display, making decisions, and not feeling rushed to finish.

Once I started installing into the Niche space I had access to, I maintained the shody-ness of the work with the frame I built and choosing to staple gun the fabric onto it.  One of the purposes that I wanted to maintain throughout the making of this piece was the looseness of it.  Being too careful with any aspect of it would have changed things, and I wanted to see what my personal hangups with working loosely were.

The swarms placed on the fabric is a reflection of what I observed while building this piece.  Bugs kept landing on the fabric, hanging out there, along with seeds, dirt, leaves, etc.  I thought it was interesting (especially with the bugs) to watch this happen.  It was like they were looking for new territory to claim, and here it was, a brand new, unmarred surface of dazzling white cotton!

Crochet piece installed

There are a lot of "crochet rooms" in existence.  Keeping this simple in material and color choice makes ours (mine and Stephanie Meredith, as this was a collaborative effort) stand out.  We were trying to convey a sense of taking over and biology and, dare we say, nature, as a powerful force.  Though it may seem that we are destroying it and nature is this fragile entity that needs protection, in reality we exist in a fraction of a second in nature's timeframe.  Yes we have the power to alter it but in doing so we will ultimately destroy ourselves and nature will still prevail.  This is in no way a statement about being eco-friendly or anti-climate-change or anything of the sort, but merely a reflection on the predicament we are in and a criticism of the viewpoint that we are in control of something bigger than us.  (We look at the preservation of the planet and being green as a means to preserve nature in its current state which is a state that we can live in, therefore, we are protecting ourselves.)

 

Other crochet rooms of the past and present speak to feminine space (ie. domestic space) filled with home crafts.  Craft versus art is another conversation, specifically crafting as art when you remove the function or object out of the way and focus in on process.  (This was also a feminist argument because craft historically was the means of which women were artists, in the home, and less frequently through making sellable goods.  This was really the only opportunity to sign their work as well -especially in needle craft.  The objects made needed to serve a purpose, have a function; otherwise the woman would be considered unproductive.)  The web, which is also dubbed feminine since it was used along with the spider by women artists early on, as well as the idea of collecting, cherishing, holding on to things is a more sentimental and therefore feminine motif.

We like these conversations but wanted to move past that to something more specific and science based.  The yarn is a garish form of flesh, and the stitch is a simple chain stitch looping together to create "cells."  The idea started as a model of skin cells and examining and demonstrating that elasticity.  Crochet became the choice of process because it best demonstrated the elasticity, yarn appropriate because it starts from a natural fiber that we have industrialized, processed, and manufactured into something more suitable for our use.  As we started filling the room with the crochet, we went back in and connected pieces together through more crocheting, a labor of several days in itself.