Extreme Craft

15 minutes of Folk

So maybe this is too much information, but I was just watching the academy awards, and Counting Crows were singing some song from Shrek 2. It struck me that the singer is slowly morphing into Kid, from the rap group Kid-N-Play. Anyway, I found this lovely painting of Kid-N-Play by the late folk artist Chuckie "Artist Chuckie" Williams. This painting totally made me forget about my search for other pictures of Kid and the Counting Crow dude. Instead, I have been drooling over paintings of Bell Biv DeVoe, Debbie Allen from "Fame", and Keith Sweat. There's so much love stuffed into these paintings that even the backs are painted. Who is painted on the reverse side of Keith Sweat? Why Cher, of course! Who is on the back of his painting of Susanne Sommers? A landscape with horses...like, Duh! These paintings are what Wesley Willis should have painted if he wasn't a great visual artist already. Rock over London!
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What the Flock!

Putting Extreme Craft together has its perks. Without it, friends probably wouldn't send me links to sites as great as The Church of Craft. I have known many many groups of rogue crafters who get together for drinkies and gossip, but here is an opportunity to have some drinkies, some host, and get some knitting done at the same time. You can get married by the Church of Craft. You can become ordained in the Church of Craft and tend to your own flock.

The Church of Craft aims to create an environment where any and all acts of making have value to our humanness. When we find moments of creation in our everyday activities, we also find simple satisfaction. The power of creating gives us the confidence to live our lives with all the love we can. By promoting creativity, we offer access to a non-denominational spiritual practice that is self-determined and proactive.

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"Cereal" Molester?

While perusing Boingboing this morning, I ran into a link to Seattle magazine "The Stranger". Their current cover features a beautiful portrait of Michael Jackson, stunningly executed in breakfast cereal.

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Knitpicking

Mardi Gras is over, Elvis' birthday has passed...but you still need an excuse to get dolled up? Fret no more, because The Shed has created this lovely knitted Elvis wig pattern for you. Fire up those knitting needles, and show your Elvis spirit.

Link Thanks, Melissa!

What Did the Acorn Say When He Grew Up?

I work as a graphic designer in an architecture firm. Despite my best efforts to the contrary, I have to use math almost every day. I even had to (horror of horrors!) use pi last week. I always kick myself that the guidance counselor might have been right all along. That said, my brain always tends to melt down when I see examples of people using math and science as a way of creating art. My friend Merrilee just sent me an amazing example, the crocheted works of Daina Taimina and David Henderson, who wrote the textbook "Experiencing Geometry". They crochet woolen models of "hyperbolic space".....checkit:

Fluted and crenelated, the leaf of a lettuce curves away from itself. From the modest beginning of the stubby stalk where it abuts the stem, to the flared and scalloped edge, the space literally expands, each point seeking to maximize its domain. Lettuces, cabbages and certain types of kelp all embody hyperbolic geometry - the geometric opposite of the sphere.

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Because I Like Shiny Things...

Ordinarily, Ceramics Monthly magazine can suck my nuts. For some reason, I picked up a copy of the new issue earlier this week, and there was actually a great article...aprofile of Philadelphia artist Rain Harris. Rain has a studio at the Clay Studio, which actually seems to have a few very interesting ceramacists at the moment...Kari Radasch and Harin Lee among them. Anyway, Rain takes bits of slip-cast ephemera and combines them into porcelain vessels and wall sculptures that use Capo Di Monte and other European porcelain as a starting point, then lets her imagination run rampant. It's rare that contemporary ceramic artists actually take the "more is more" aesthetic to its logical extreme. Rain uses just the right amount of gold luster, rhinestones,and tassels to achieve her evil goals. I'd include a link to the Ceramics Monthly article, but being complete dicks, they charge for access. Here's a link to a show from last year called "Gilding the Lily".

Kim Jong Illin'

In honor of North Korea's announcement that they possess a nuclear arsenal, here is a gallery of North Korean propaganda images. They were apparently taken from two books that were purchased near the North Korea-China border. Quick! Somebody break the oil paint embargo so we can have some more patriotic North Korean paintings.

Besides the obvious restrictions on style and content, North Korean artists face another barrier to creativity; a critical shortage of materials and funding.  While the nation has never been wealthy, since the end of the Cold War North Korea has lost much needed financial and material support form the former Soviet Union and from China, making art a relatively low priority.  Many artists that had focused on oil painting in the past have had to refocus their energies on more traditional “Chosun” painting with inks, rather than expensive and hard to come by oil paints.

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Nothin but a Gee Thang

What's in the water in Alabama? Maybe I don't want to know. PBS has been broadcasting a documentary on the Quilts of Gee's Bend, Alabama. I haven't seen the documentary yet, but I checked out websites for the 2003 exhibition at the Whitney Museum. There was also an NPR piece on the quilters several years ago. Many of the newer quilts from the area are a bit self-conscious, but older quilts come off as entirely fresh.

One website claims that the collage aesthetic of Gee's bend was influenced by the newspaper collages that residents covered their walls with for insulation. I'm always a bit skeptical of folk art that is held up as a hermetic vision, untainted by the outside world... It would be interesting to see if there is a folk art equivalent of the book "Romancing the Folk", which shows the degree to which American folk music from the 20's and 30's was shaped by the people doing the recording. Even Alan Lomax, who is looked upon as a musicologist, did plenty of tinkering with the music he set out to "objectively" record.
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Clock Rock

Roger Wood is the Joseph Cornell....or maybe the Jean Tinguely of the clock world--a mad genius with an amazing collection of objects that he assembles his clocks from. The clocks range from playful to menacing, with unexpected kinetic and decorative elements. He doesn't just make clocks...he curates them.
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Snuggling with the Robots

The age of Muhfuckin Robot Quilting is upon us. Chicago area artist Kathy Weaver creates amazing political quilts and robot quilts. She blends traditional quilting with bric-a-brac, collage, and painting to show us a dystopia matched only by...the post-apocalyptic world of traditional quilting.

As an artist who is concerned about the condition of society, I use the quilt medium and the robot persona to engage the viewer in dialogue. As a child of the fifties the robot was, for me, a friendly future. Today, the robot is a part of our bodies in the form of pacemakers and piecemakers.

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