Extreme Craft

Crash Bonsai

I have a black thumb. Any little plants that I try to raise throw up their tendrils, curl up, and promptly die on me. I do have a few spider plants that are belligerent enough to ignore my abuse, and I salute that. Those of you with more facility with our little green friends might consider the adornments of CrashBonsai, the creation of artist John Rooney. Many artists are torn between the desire to create and the desire to destroy. With Crash Bonsai, you can have your cake, eat it, and slam it into a tree at 55 miles per hour. There are dozens of Crash Bonsai vehicles waiting for a new mini-tree to wrap themselves around. Can you find it in your heart to adopt one?

LINK thanks, Sally R. from Tasmania!

Sniff.

Don't you hate bloggers who whine all winter about being sick? I'm lucky in that I don't get sick very often, but this weekend, I've been enjoying the trifecta of laryngitis, occasional fevers, and wicked congestion. I had a phone interview with a University for a teaching job that I applied for, and had to whisper the whole time. I'm sure they think that I'm a creepy stalker now. Just thought you should know. Between hits of Zicam and Ibuprofin, I'll remind all of you good readers out there to visit the mighty (and mighty snarky) "What not to crochet". Koff.

Green Blanky

Phoneblogging is awesome. I took this picture at Atlanta's Eyedrum Gallery on Saturday night. Eyedrum was lucky enough to host a great installation by the Athens wrecking crew of Erin Burke, Danielle Benson, and Audrey Molinare. The installation consisted of a good-sized room completely covered in gigantic cat tongues (or maybe pringles) made out of fabric, along with lengths of other braided fabrics and lace. There were lovely little upholstered chillout lumps that could be pushed around on their little wheels. There were cookies, sandwiches, and drinkies to boot. What's not to love? For more information on the ladies, visit their website, www.greenblanky.com. They put the "elation" in installation.

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No Sleep 'Til Ohio

The other Craft Monster at Mixed Greens is Susan Graham, a fascinating multidisciplinary artist with a background in....Chemistry! It all makes sense when you look at her work...obsessively pierced porcelain, sugar and egg "subtleties", and cyanotypes of dream imagery. Her work revolves around memory and insomnia, thoughts swirling like a tornado when bedtime arrives. Her new show, "Beautiful Ohio" revolves more around memories of childhood and notions of retrofuturism. Again, the show closes Saturday, February 4th, so rush to see it if you live in NewYorkLand. If this work has its roots in insomnia, I sure hope somebody slips her a No Doz.

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HooKing

Mixed Greens Gallery in New York City is in the last days of an exhibition featuring a couple of MONSTERS OF CRAFT! First up is Rob Conger, a graduate of the prestigious Yale school of Art who has given over his life to latchhook rugs. The current exhibition, Tragic Kingdom, focuses on the seedy underbelly of the Greatest Place on Earth™. The artist combed public records and found out about eleven deaths that occured on the park grounds, then documented them photographically and reproduced the photos on handmade latch hook rugs. Conger's art focuses on the intersection of America's obsessions with beauty, commerce, and popular culture. America's CEO's, television shows, games of chance, and notions of evil have all wound up behind the crosshairs of his latch hooking tool (is there a cool name for that thingy?)

My process of sublimation absorbs these things, and tries to give back. Not as charity, not as genius, but as doorman, letting everyone in behind the velvet ropes.

But the party competes against an endless stream of morphing faces, fixed portraits, much like the line to the check-cashing window, or a row of occupied seats at the blue-collar bar. These last years I've tried to personalize the menacing barriers between finance and crafts, business and homemaking, fighting the urge to reveal to myself and the world that I'm really talking about my parents.

Get thee to Mixed Greens! The exhibition ends Saturday.

LINK thanks, Clifton!

Art School Confidential Website

Sweet Baby Jesus! Just about every week, I drop by Sony Pictures Classics to see if the freakin' trailer for Art School Confidential, the new movie from Terry Zwigoff (of Crumb/Ghost World fame) and Dan Clowes (original cartoonist/author of Ghost World). The website is finally up, with some information about the movie, but no trailer yet. Evidently, it played at Sundance (unfortunately, I can't find many positive reviews...). For anybody who has been through art school, the original cartoon is a work of unparalleled genius. I can only hope that with stellar supporting actors like John Malkovich and Jim Broadbent, the art school archetypes will be well-skewered. Here's the Village Voice's capsule review:

Terry Zwigoff's Art School Confidential, from a Daniel Clowes screenplay, is a satisfyingly bilious satire with two not entirely unserious points to make: (a) most art sucks and (b) this is the case because the controlling institutions are eminently corruptible. The film was disliked across the board. A pity, since the career advice Jim Broadbent's washed-up painter gives to Max Minghella's ambitious student—"Are you a 'great artist' when it comes to fellatio?"—would have easily topped last year's accidental catchphrase: "It's hard out here for a pimp," from Hustle & Flow, which Art School improves on as a meditation on art and fame.

Here's a link to a great profile of Clowes by The Guardian. The last release schedule that I saw listed the film for April or May. I can't wait to judge for myself.

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Ain't No Picasso

Does anyone remember that Saturday Night Live sketch where Jon Lovitz played Picasso? He was at a restaurant, and paid his bill by sneezing into a napkin and declaring it a "PICASSO"! Last year, I had a chance to wander through the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, where Picasso has a huge presence. I've gotta give it to Ludwig--they have pieces from all eras of Picasso's output...early paintings from the Picasso-Braque arms race, prints, and some fantastic small scale sculpture. It's my personal opinion that Picasso, in all of his genius, was a liiiiiiittle too prolific. Much like the Jon Lovitz sketch, he pooped out marginal lithographs and prints at a frightening pace.

Picasso's ceramics are little known in comparison to his other work. He caught the clay bug when he was visiting Southern Franceimmediately after World War II. Over the course of the next 25 years, he collaborated with George and Suzanne Ramie in France and the Artigas family in Spain. Picasso approached ceramic forms with gusto, gleefully tweaking and reassembling forms. In 1999, the Metropolitan Museum mounted Picasso: Painter and Sculptor in Clay, a monumental exhibition covering all aspects of Picasso's ceramic output. The exhibition catalog is a stunning tribute to his clay work, which dwarfs that of most lifelong ceramic nerds.

A more modest exhibition of Picasso's "editioned" ceramic output is nearing the end of a 7 year museum tour. Picasso: 25 Years of Edition Ceramics from the Edward Weston Collection enters my neck of the woods this week. The exhibition will be at the Hudgens Center for the Arts in Duluth, GA through March 31st. Edward Weston, the collector behind the exhibition, began collecting the Picasso editions in the early 1950's, paying as little as $25 per piece. Those same pieces fetch as much as $25,000 today--even though you can occasionally find relative bargains. If you find yourself tooling around Duluth, do yourself a favor, and soak up the Picasso love... and for god's sake, save that sneezed on napkin. It could be worth $25,000 some day!

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Dental Insanity Hits New York

Last year, I brought you word of Steven Backman, the master of toothpick sculpture who has made recreations of the golden gate bridge and other monuments, as well as his own brand of abstract sculpture. He's hitting the big time! Those of you who will be in New york through late May can see his dental masterpieces on display in the Fifth Avenue lobby of the Empire State Building! While you're there, check out the Empire State Building's touching tribute to Fay Wray.

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