Copper Bells

This is a new project I am working on.  These are raised copper breast bells.  The piece talks about beauty and objectification.  They are not presented formally yet, this is just a demonstration of how they sound.  When completed, there will be probably 4 more bells, each with its own stand and proper mallet.

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.

Eggplant part 2

The thing that's tricky with eggplant is the leaf thingy/stem has nowhere near the amount of contrast or richness that the body does. In other words it looks flat. So with the painting I took a bit of artistic licence and added some bolder colors so in the painting the leaves could hold there own.

A real life photograph can pull of things that a painting can't. If I left them alone and kept painting a pretty benign green-brown, it would look like there was something wrong with the painting, as opposed to the plant.

So what I did to help that out was I painted those leaves closer to sunset. There is a harsher shadow available, which gave me something to work with. I used dark browns but also a little bit of the watered-down purple that I did in the plant. Which really helps it hold it's own, and helps the leaves look like they belong on top of the eggplant. The photograph shown here was taken the morning after the painting, and in my kitchen under yellow-ish flourescent lights. Seee what I mean... your lighting changes everything.

Eggplant painting

So here are some pictures of eggplants. I haven't finished them, cause the sun was setting and I was losing light. So I did what is usually a bad way to work on a painting: I completely finished both eggplants, instead of brinnging everything (both the background and subject) to level of completion. I marked the background in, and tomorrow will add lib it.