Extreme Craft

Quilting Under Pressure

Shawn Quinlan knows the value of a good story.  By day, he is a video editor at a television station, with all of the attendant stress that comes with the job.  Workdays filled with creating compelling narratives out of gunshot victims, car accidents, and human tragedy takes its toll.  Fortunately, craft stepped into the breach.  The gift of a sewing machine in the early 90's turned into a "eureka" moment that helped Quinlan tie all of the loose threads of his interests and talents into one handy package.  In addition to serving as a stress reliever, Shawn's story (not to mention his crazy-great quilts) has garnered attention from exhibitions, newspapers, and television shows across the country.

Quinlan's work is methodically crafted, with attention to detail that allows him to confidently show in quilt shows (My mother is a quilter--I've seen how merciless they can be).  His raw material is taken from wall hangings and oddball commercial fabrics--not just from the piles of fat quarters and skeins of cow fabric that everybody uses.  There is an archaeological quality to his work that is immensely appealing.  Recently, the fine art world has started to pay attention, bringing him solo shows as well as a couple of group shows at the Andy Warhol Museum in his hometown of Pittsburgh.

There is also an improvisational quality at work in his quilts--something only rarely seen in a scene that is obsessed with order and pattern.  This is underscored by a video that Quinlan keeps on his MySpace site of him piecing a quilt in stop motion.  Boys will be boys, and Shawn Quinlan fills his work with his unique sensibility, then sends it out into the world to influence others.

LINK   

Needling Hollywood

Will you be in Los Angeles on Thursday?  Maybe if you find yourself at 8300 Sunset Boulevard that evening, and you stand really really still, some rogue knitters will knit a cocoon around you.

LINK

Icelandic Wool

Hosanna!  There is much rejoicing in the Extreme Craft camp whenever Björk releases a new album.  Of course we love the squelchy beats, the ethereal strings, whatever human yelping she chooses to turn into percussion, but I can't deny taking a huge amount of pleasure in whatever she introduces into her WARDROBE!  The world is always clamoring for something to live up to the swan dress....

I was a little worried when she showed up on Saturday Night Live recently with a little silver dress that wouldn't have been at all out of place during the Sugarcubes years.  She even made her backing horn players wear candy colored garbage bags so that they didn't outshine her.  I knew my fears were misplaced, though, when I opened yesterday's New York Times and saw the image at left.  Björk is taking the challenge of What Not to Crochet to heart, and making it WORK FOR HER. 

This morning, Pitchfork published some pictures from Coachella over the weekend, and it would seem that Björk's new wardrobe is no one trick pony.  Bring on the rainbow-colored  yak's wool tassels and applique skeletons ...bring on the Purple Pieman of Porcupine Peak-inspired ensemble below!  Do you suppose she keeps Matthew Barney dressed up like the River Phoenix' "Little Dutch Boy" outfit in My Own Private Idaho?

You Got Served!!!!

Woo Hoo!  Judy Chicago's Dinner Party is officially open at the Brooklyn Museum.  I don't know when I'm going to be able to see it in person, but the museum is planning on keeping the installation open long term.  For my generation of artists who are soaked in craft, the Dinner Party is spoken of in hushed, reverential tones.  It towers as an achievement of art, craft, and feminism.

The question that looms large in 2007, however, is how the work has stood the test of time.  In the 30 years since its completion, the "capital-A" Art world has become much more snarky and self-referential.  In today's edition of Slate, Mia Fineman revisits the work that she first beheld as a burgeoning 14-year old feminist.  I can understand why somebody revisits the fond art of their adolescence with trepidation--I recently experienced something similar with last year's PBS documentary on Andy Warhol.  Happily, Fineman concludes that the Dinner Party continues to resonate in today's art world--something that the current craft-savvy generation would never have doubted:

So, is The Dinner Party great art? Well, not by the standards of today's art world. It's too middlebrow, too literal, and its earnestness is out of step with today's endlessly self-ironizing sensibility. And its pudendal imagery, once radical, looks silly and heavy-handed today. But as an emphatically populist work with a clear set of political and educational imperatives, The Dinner Party has held its ground. It's nervy, ambitious, uncompromising, and—unlike most recent art, feminist or otherwise—truly original.

LINK

Bag to Differ

In the past, your pals at Extreme Craft have enriched your life by bringing you Texas Chainsaw Massacre aprons, meat pillows, and taxidermied pet pillows, but none of that compares to the sheer bombast of SKINBAGS.  Based in France, Skinbags is a line of clothing and accessories that are a mashup of art, design, fashion... and mondo CREEPINESS.  To make matters more complicated, the whole site is filled with touch-feely descriptions.  Check out this one:

"I tested the apron first over my sweater but then opted to apply it directly to my opulent breasts; I am happy I did so as the feeling was tremendous?
            
I felt the caress of this double skin it was a little cold at first, but it quickly sent soft shivers and the heat overwelmed my skin.  I feared the verdict of the mirror, I did not know wether to hide or expose myself,

I ended up looking at my reflection in the mirror, and it was a revelation. I was sensual, attractive and i was changed, I was now beautiful. My breasts felt like they were being held by the soft texture of the SkinBag, Me who usually wears baggy t shirts and sweaters. No more. I was finally revealed to myself."

The beauty of Skinbags, reportedly, are in the details.  The closure is an  umbilical cord that attaches to a metal ring.  You can also pierce, tattoo, and otherwise mutilate your Skinbag to suit your "modern primitive" lifestyle.  Why do they all have to look like Keith Richards' skin, though?

LINK

 

Urn my Contempt

When I lecture about Extreme Craft, I always save a ZINGER for last.  Until now, that has meant Jeanette's Taxidermy, who give you instructions about how to freeze your dearly departed dog or cat and ship it to their shop on dry ice.  Jeanette will then fashion your pet into a keepsake pillow that you can have and hold.  I might be replacing Jeanette soon.  This morning, while I was riding the subway to work and reading the new issue of Harper's, I ran across this little gem:

Boy! I have never talked to my Dad so much in my whole life as I have since he passed. Not only has he guided me every step of the way in the creation of Huggable Urns but he also has guided me in my personal life.

He wanted something soft and cuddly that people could hold and to have around them at all times. My family found this to be very comforting to our aching hearts. Plus my Dad wanted you to be  able to accessorize your Huggable to fit the personality of your loved one. Out-of-site, out-of-mind is not my Dads way.

It gives me such comfort to be able to pick up my Teddy Bear and give my Dad a hug anytime I want to especially during my personal hard times. By having my Dad in my Huggable Teddy Bear I can bring him with me to all of our family gatherings.

Yes....pay a visit to Huggableurns.com, and you can pick up a stuffed animal with a cavity that will hold the cremains of your loved one.  Not only that, but you can personalize the thing with embroidered footballs, softballs..or (sic) MILITARY LOGO'S.  Can somebody figure out a way to put my cremains inside of Mr. Poop and Mr. Toilet Paper?

LINK via Harper's

"Much too Much"

All of this excitement about Claire's work!  Here are two more paintings from the show.  Click on the images for a slightly larger view.

"Much too Much:  Options and Obligations", Claire Joyce, 2007
Glitter and Glue on wood panel
66"x48"

"Learning this Happiness"

"Learning this Happiness", Claire Joyce, 2007
Glitter and Glue on wood panel
48"x66"

Sparkling Wit

There are other glitter painters in the world...all of them operating on the same principles that we explored in elementary school--sprinkling glitter into pools of glue.  Then Claire Joyce-Johnson came onto the scene.  The glitter painting world will divide itself into two eras: BC (Before Claire) and AC.  Her solo debut will be unveiled tomorrow at Atlanta's Fay Gold Gallery.  Did I mention that I married her last year?

To commemorate the occasion, Felicia Feaster wrote a fantastic article in today's edition of Creative Loafing. 

Glitter is also Joyce's preferred medium, one she has wrestled away from its lowbrow, crafty riggings and invested it with wit, meaning and a virtuosity that allows her to render a cherry-blossom branch or a leopard-striped pillow with a remarkable photo-realist veracity.

I've written about her work in Extreme Craft before.  Her graduate thesis show (which was only last year) was a paragon of ambition.  The triptych of 8-foot by 4-foot panels that made up that show took a solid 9 months of work.  The new show, which has to be seen to be believed, consists of 7 works as large as 4 feet by 6 feet that took nearly a year of backbreaking labor.  The Creative Loafing article references the sand mandalas that Tibetan monks make, and I can't think of a better comparison for the detail, labor, and process involved in Claire's work.  The show opens at Atlanta's Fay Gold Gallery on Friday, April 20th (4:20, y'all!).  The reception will be held on Friday from 6-8 p.m.

LINK to Creative Loafing article

Lego My Ego

Nathan Sawaya has been many things in his life...corporate lawyer, Lego Master builder at the Legoland theme park, and a pervasive media soundbite.  Sawaya, who is perhaps the preeminent Lego sculptor working today, can add another title:  Solo museum exhibitor.  If you find yourself in Pennsylvania during the next month, put down your Tastykakes and Utz pretzels, and head over to the Lancaster Museum for The Art of the brick, a solo exhibition from Sawaya. 

For Sawaya, who left a high-paying job as a lawyer for a $13 an hour job as a master model builder at legoland, this exhibition is a way to spread his wings and get the art world attention that is sorely overdue.  His sculptures are as witty as they are intricate--from a life-sized Han Solo frozen in carbonite to the sculpture that you see above, a self-portrait revealing the passion for plastic bricks which he is unable to contain.

LINK thanks, Stephen!