My friend Merrilee Challiss lives in Birmingham, Alabama, and leads one of the most action packed lives that I know of. Merrilee used to work at Studio By the Tracks, a studio for autistic adult artists (home to Ross Bullwinkel). She also has a very active art career, with loads of solo and group shows to her credit. She's an Extreme Crafter of the highest order, and a founding member of Birmingham's Collarmoth Collective. Somehow, all of this wasn't enough for her. Now she's started Bottletree, a cafe and lounge in Birmingham's emerging Avondale neighborhood. I haven't gotten a chance to visit yet, but from the looks of it, the interior design suits Merrilee's vision well. Here is Exhibit A, a taxidermied deer head that Merrilee has covered in glitter. The Cafe isn't quite open yet, but the lounge has already had some concerts, and upcoming shows include comedian Todd Barry and The Gossip. Merrilee's current solo show, "Blank Magic" is on view at the Moxie Gallery in Birmingham through June 7th. Just writing about her wears me out. I'm off to take a nap. Happy, Merrilee?
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May 2006
May 31, 2006
May 23, 2006
The Fountain Pen of Youth
My pal Hooper recently found a treasure trove of old drawings from his childhood. The classics are all there...lots of cars, some war drawings, Transformers, Superheroes, and touchingly, Teen Wolf in the throes of "wolfing out". Despite the snarky comments that I left on the FLICKR page that he made for them, it's great to see the grade school mind of an artist with future greatness ahead of him. When I was in second grade, we had a wide-eyed hippie teacher that was fresh from college and intent on not stifling our emerging creativity. My friends and I convinced her that our drawings of naked people were "National Geographic people", and that it was entirely proper. Jesus God, I wish I had some of those drawings. Hooper is a much better person than I for saving his.
I particularly love the photo that I pictured above. Hooper apparently always had avant-garde tendencies, as Superman seems to be breaking out of a picture plane within the picture plane. Note the border actually falling to the ground (not to mention the cathedral that seems to be growing from his head).
Monumental Disorder
My favorite magazine? For those of you picturing me lovingly thumbing through Vogue Knitting or American Craft...sorry. Far and away, I spend more time with the New York Times Magazine. It's the perfect magazine to occupy me on my rides on the bus and subway. The articles are deep, diverse, and thought-provoking, but I've become addicted to the trimmings...Randy Cohen's Ethicist, the Freakonomics column, but mainly Consumed by Rob Walker. Nearly every week, Walker takes an in-depth look at a consumer phenomenon, and manages to critically analyze it without fawning or chiding.
This week's column examines Boym Partners "Buildings of Disaster" commemoratives. The series, which began in 1998 as an "alternative history of architecture", consists of tiny, lovingly rendered miniature buildings, made of bonded nickel in editions of 500. Subjects so far have included The New Orleans Superdome, the Unabomber's Cabin, Chernobyl, and oddly enough, OJ Simpson's Car Chase (pictured above). Crass exploitation, you cry? Maybe...but think about commemorative objects in general. Commemorative objects, be they plates, thimbles, or lenticular World-Trade Center portraits, fill a psychological human need to make memories tangible. Such high-minded objects as the Buildings of Disaster series aren't meant to be artworks (like Charles Krafft's "Disasterware" series) but as design objects.
The design object occupies a peculiar place in our cultural landscape. I would argue that the glut of miniature chairs and functional Alessi objects are analogous to the plates or thimbles that your Grandmother has hanging in her trailer. People derive pleasure from the objects that they surround themselves with, and "Buildings of Disaster" manage to commemorate something as ephemeral as the participatory role that buildings play in tragic events, while being "monuments" to the humor and taste of their owners. The New York Times article points out that there is an entire class of miniature building collectors, who provide one of the constituencies of "Buildings of Disaster", but they are certainly not alone. Like all good commemorators, Boym know where there bread is buttered, and have also created a series of "missing monuments" (which actually predate the Buildings of Disaster" and "fathers of modern art". Plunk down your $90, and a little piece of limited edition tragedy can be yours.
May 18, 2006
Airigami?
Craft doesn't generally exist in a vacuum. By definition, craft is a handing down of ideas and inspiration. I've written before about my family's penchant for craft fads when I was growing up... stained glass, wire art, and macrame. I've written about my mother's quilting "habit", but I don't think I've ever mentioned that my father is a clown. My father is an honest-to-goodness Shrine clown. He doesn't drive around in a little car, but he spends a great deal of appearing at schools and public events, planning the clown skits when the circus comes to town, and of course, blowing balloons. My old man can blow up hundreds of balloons in the course of an afternoon (that's blowing them up with lungpower... and it only takes him one puff per balloon). He's mastered a lot of complex balloon forms, and likes to invent new creations in his spare time.
I wasn't aware of the term "airigami", though, particularly not the brand of airigami practiced by Larry Moss. Moss is a Rochester, NY-based entertainer with a penchant for the dramatic (witness his goth wedding photo, complete with fangs). He holds a record for the world's largest non-round balloon sculpture (pictured above) which contained more than 40,000 balloons. For the past several years, Moss has transformed "airigami" into "SCARIGAMI" with his Balloon Manor haunted house. Moss' wife, Judy found out that she had cancer in 2003. The treatments left her paralyzed, so he gives back to the cancer treatment community with a yearly haunted house, made entirely of balloons. The haunted house comes complete with "balloonamatronic" sculptures that move around. Balloon afficianados from across the country gather in Rochester to help create Balloon Manner, which will reappear this year during the last two weekends in October. Beware of your brain melting as you peruse the bazillion photos that are posted on the site. Damn. The gauntlet has been thrown down, Dad! Get blowin'! LINK via MAKE
Pink Ghost
Clay School Confidential
You've probably noticed that I don't include much ceramic work in Extreme Craft. I've written about it before, and I think it's generally because ceramic artists get sucked into a mire of glaze geekiness or function anxiety. Most ceramic art fits neatly into stereotyped categories--it's very similar to the way artists are satirized in (the terrible but awesome) Art School Confidential. First, you have the brown potter & "whimsical" potter...then you have the maker of natural forms, inspired by gourds and anemones. Next up, the maker of enigmatic objects, churning out weird organ-like objects, followed closely by the boat-as-metaphor-maker (vessel! I get it). There's crusty drippy abstract sculptor, who feuds with figural sculptor, and her close relative... THE FREAKIN' DOLL ARTIST (and her corollary, CREEPY GOTH-ESQUE DOLL ARTIST). Now I have profiled some amazing doll artist in these very digital pages, but rare is the artist who can transcend the mire of cutesiness, soft-boiled feminism, and...um...general suckiness.
I love it when an artist comes along who proves me wrong, so imagine my delight when I found out about the work of Marina Bychkova, a Russian emigre who wound up in Vancouver. Bychkova is finishing up a stint at the Emily Carr Institute, where she has been pushing the boundaries of porcelain doll art, creating anatomically accurate, beautifully rendered jointed dolls with insaaaaanely intricate detailing and costumes. Bychkova revels in her craft, spending on average, 500 hours per doll, sculpting pieces out of polymer clay and creating molds for each piece and casting them in porcelain, which she hand-paints. She doesn't shy away from the traditional aspects of her craft, pushing them into a rarified, obsessive level. Pixelsurgeon.com recently interviewed her about her art, her craft (process) and worldview. The result is a complex and fulfilling portrait of an artist exploring her interests. The interview garners bonus points for references to Jan Svankmajer, genitalia, and necrophiliac princes. Bychkova's own website has some great galleries of her work, along with musings about the fantasy and craft aspects of her work.
LINK via BoingBoing
May 15, 2006
Don't Mach Him!
David Mach takes sculpting with humble materials to the next level. In 1983, he began a series of sculptures made from matches, including the skull pictured above. The sculptures, being made entirely from matches, are highly combustible, and the burning of the piece becomes a performative element of the artwork. After combustion, the blackened shell of the piece is left to display. For you fire lovers (and most Extreme Crafters are...), David has videos of his burning sculptures. No one trick pony, Mach is a collage artist, installationist, and public sculptor.
Most recently, he created an 8 foot nude sculpture made entirely of Scrabble tiles. The piece, entitled "Myslexia" contains 4,200 tiles (worth more than 76,000 points). Mach also has a newfound love for sculpting with ordinary wire hangers. His "Spaceman" is made from hundreds of hangers welded around a plastic positive. The "antennae" that stick out of the sculpture are meant to evoke the fuzzy motion trail around the figures of the spacemen in the moon landing footage.
May 11, 2006
Black Box Reorder
While I'm on the topic of wearable technology, I can't resist talking about Diana Eng, who first made her way into our heart during Season 2 of Project Runway. Diana's new label, Black Box Nation, had its debut show at Make Magazine's Maker Faire last month to universal acclaim. I mean, who wouldn't go gaga for an inflatable dress with a vacuum cleaner attached? Black box Nation's web store focuses on affordable pieces of wearable tech-jewelry that make the geek heart go pitter pat. Reed switches, fuses, and the speaker tie-tac above are all designed to enhance your alpha-geek status, which, face it, could use a little polishing and waxing.
Shawl We Play a Game?
Recent graduate of NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program Gracie Kim knows that your aunt has one of those LED Christmas Tree sweatshirts, and she doesn't disapprove. She knows that's not quite your style, though, and started exploring embroidery with conductive thread combined with LED lights. The result? This fabulous, felted capelet, which was recently shown at the Future Fashion Event in Pisa, Italy. As an added bonus, her website links to her thesis paper about the project, which serves as a great brief history of wearable technology. The paper contains bits of a great debate about utilitarianism in wearable technology. In my opinion, this shawl is perfectly utilitarian, given that the purpose of the LEDs is to glitter like daysequins. I am a bit puzzled by her choice toembroider the garment with varicose veins. Still, glitter is glitter!
May 10, 2006
Persistence of Memory
In his most recent travel column for Yahoo! News, the delightfully named Rolf Potts expounds on the human need for souvenirs. The human need for souvenirs is nothing new--Potts cites Anatolians who hawked supposed relics of the trojan war to greek tourists. He also mentions that on a visit to Stratford-On-Avon in 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams whipped out their pocketknives and whittled some slivers from a chair that supposedly belonged to the Bard. It's great to picture our founding fathers as Beavis and Butthead-esque.
Unsurprisingly, my own souvenir picks when I'm travelling tend to be craftcentric. Not that the crafts offered up in 99% of shops tend to reflect any sort of purity of the culture--they are entirely driven by what tourists want to buy. That won't stop me from buying a baket made out of telephone wire or a hardwood carved Coca-Cola bottle...they're ingenious adaptations by native cultures. I recently watched a documentary on African Art that talked about how a certain tribe would tend to use traditional tribal masks in rituals that they performed for tourists, and newer, different masks for their own dances and rituals. The newer masks reflect their current, ever-changing beliefs, and are more garishly painted and decorated. The newer masks just don't look... well... serious and traditional enough to the tourist eye. Which is purer? Undoubtedly the newer, more garish masks.
It's fun to examine our tendencies with regard to souvenirs--they are embodiments of our own experiences, and should be regarded as such, not as samples of "pure" cultures from which they came. My favorite souvenir? A totally debased, yet totally detailed laser-etched Rosetta Stone paperweight from the British Museum. I could have brought back all manner of postcards or weighty books, but my wonder at the paperweight surpasses them all.
"Orientation" - New Work From China
- This body of work was created during a Summer 2010 residency at the Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China. These porcelain vessels explore traditional Chinese iconography as refracted through a decidedly Western point of view.
