While I'm sharing pictures from Nebraska, I'd feel guilty about not including a few of my new niece, Violet. At the tender age of five months, she's already an experienced model. Check out her lovely handmade tattoo-print baby bonnet (available from my wife's Etsy store) on the left and, strikingly, the mustache we bought her from a Pizza Hut vending machine on the right. Violet already has the moxie to pull off any look she sets her mind to rocking. Go, girl!
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June 2008
June 30, 2008
A Room of One's Own
Sorry for the radio silence! I'm on a Midwest sojourn, and I was out WiFi range in BRANSON, MISSOURI. I'm back in the civilized (and internet connected) arms of my in-laws in Jefferson City, MO, and I've got a lot to share. I thought I'd kick things off with a peek at my mother's quilt room back in Nebraska. Over the years, she has amassed a collection that rivals that of most quilt shops I've been dragged to. This is but a corner of a room that is stacked floor to ceiling with fat quarters, thirds (her preferred unit of purchase) and assorted scraps.
My mother is an amazing quilter who is getting ever-bolder with her choices when it comes to color. She's more prolific than any artist I know. I love spending time in her quilt room, which is sorted by color and pattern...it's a little like a huge quilt in itself. I would be paralyzed with all of the choices, but for my mother, it's all grist for the mill. She's probably horrified that I'm putting this up on Extreme Craft, but let's just call it payback for all of the times she shamed me into cleaning my room.
June 18, 2008
June 17, 2008
The Tough Alliance
When I was in Kindergarten, I kid you not, the teacher would get us ready for the pledge of allegiance by teling us to stand up straight with our hands over our hands over our hearts so that...are you ready for this? All of the boys could grow up to be football players, and all of the girls could grow up to be cheerleaders. This was 1978, after all, and things are slowly changing. Today marks the first day that same-sex marriages are legal in California, and it makes me reflect on how much things have changed in my lifetime.
Two weeks ago, while Claire and I were in Milwaukee, we got to pay a visit to the Alliance School, a new school for at-risk gay, lesbian, bi and transgender teenagers. My friend Jill went from teaching art at a posh Catholic high school to teaching at Alliance, which is something of a change. Jill has been sending me pictures of the awesome artwork made by the students for the better part of a year, but I haven't gotten a chance to do them justice until now.
I showed up at Alliance with a PG version of the Extreme Craft lecture prepared. Upon meeting the kids, I quickly realized that I didn't need to edit myself. Alliance is a safe place where students can be themselves, free from bullying and outside pressure. That doesn't mean that the school is all unicorns and strawberry applesauce...the students are pretty tough customers who swear like sailors and don't let anything get past them. They immediately pegged Claire and I as retro-nerds on the basis of our geeky eyeglasses Jill is from Nebraska originally, so they figure that's what all Nebraskans look like.
I got to give the unfiltered version of the lecture to the students--they got to see that art and craft didn't always have to be polite. Some particular favorites were the lace underwear knitting grannies of Koniakow and a picture of Matt Nolen's bathroom at the Kohler museum in Sheboygan. We got to hang out with the students for several hours, answering pretty pointed questions about art (and life).
Jill teaches the students with a lot of craft materials. There is a fashion design class, where an awesome student named Kaumaine turns out some pretty amazing fashion statements. Other students wield sewing machines and knitting needles to make their statements. Krista was making awesome embroidered portrait figures (see above). I'm also a big fan of James, who churns out amazing puppets (see the first picture above) of Morrissey, Bob Dylan and Robert Smith for a cartooning class. Trever gave us a beautiful painting that incorporates 2D and 3D elements into an architectural landscape, and it has a place of honor in chez Extreme Craft.
My thanks go out to the students at Alliance for making us feel so welcome. Even as a straight white dorky kid in a rural school, I had a tough time. I can't imagine what it must be like for an inner-city student who doesn't feel like they fit in. Alliance even has students who commute from the suburbs. As an educator, one of the first things I learned was that education is not a one-size-fits-all proposition, and Alliance proves that there are alternatives. Keep the awesome art coming, Alliance students...use art to be as confrontational and raw as you want to. For everyone else, I would encourage you to support Alliance, or any similar school located in your town. As James' Bob Dylan puppet would say, the times, they are a changin'. Happy wedding day, California!
June 16, 2008
Road Stars
Happy day after Father's Day! I'm one of the lucky ones with an awesome Dad. He flew out from Nebraska to visit the LA Roadster show....something he's been dreaming about for a long time. My father is a longtime car fanatic--he's been restoring and customizing them since long before I was born. We always had a garage full of projects.
I was a pale, bookish kid who was more interested in Home Ec than shop class. I wasn't very much help in the shop, which I totally regret now. I've always had a more...abstract relationship with car culture than my father. I've always been able to appreciate the beauty and craftsmanship of a fine automobile, but I didn't inherit the gene that allows me to spot the differences between a '53 and '54 Chevy. Where my Father and I diverge is the appreciation of custom cars: for him, there's a very fine line between restoring a car and ruining it. For me, the more fiberglass, chopping, lowering and metal flake, the better.
It's undeniable that cars qualify as fine art. Anyone out there who looks down their nose at car fiends obviously hasn't been to the LA Roadster Show. My old man can hold forth on the lines on a 1950 Mercury hood with an eloquence that would bring a tear to the eye of even the most jaded art critic. To be sure, there were some exercises in questionable taste at the show, but overwhelmingly, the builders and customizers always show a remarkable level of color and design savvy. Car culture is an aesthetic culture, and its adherents are remarkably well-schooled. Check out the lace paintjob that graces the truck below.
The LA Roadster show is a perfect coming together of my taste and my father's. Rather than venerate perfectly restored powder-puff museum pieces that live their whole life on trailers and at the detail shop, the Roadster show is about drivable art. These are STREET RODS--meant to be loved and driven. I would aver that plenty of the owners drive their car to the local car show on most weekends--probably at a 50's style diner, spending hours shooting the shit with their fellow car enthusiasts.
The roadster show was an education for me. My father grew up with "rat rods", cheap jalopies stripped down, frankensteined together and souped up with V-8 engines. They weren't meant to look pretty...they were meant for speed. As a part of that quest for speed, most of the steel running boards, fenders and other superfluous parts were left behind in the quest for an edge over racing opponents. The roadster ideal is the '32 Ford--a magic moment when form and function came together in a perfect package.
'32 Fords represented an overwhelming majority of roadsters at the show. It was interesting to see how many variations on a theme were possible. Check out the photo of a complete '32 Ford above, then check out a classic hot rod version below. The '32 Ford can be molded to be a perfect expression of its maker--from flamboyant to stripped down and functional. I enjoy seeing artists and musicians work within a framework of limitations--take the White Stripes guitar-and-drums instrumentation for example. So it is with the '32 Ford.
There was something for everyone at the Roadster show--a swap meet for people looking for parts, an informal car show in the parking lot where just about anything was permissible--from lowriders to the wildest custom jobs. There was a vendor area with plenty of sponsors, and finally, an inner sanctum of LA Roadster show approved cars...no unpainted Bondo spots allowed. I got to run wild with my camera, taking photographs of the amazing accidental (and non-accidental) juxtapositions of paint jobs and chrome lines. I created a Flickr set of my favorite photos from the weekend--my Father got to help with the titles. I also made a bonus Flickr group of pinstripes, which deserve another Extreme Craft entry of their own.
In the end, I couldn't have asked for anything better. The final day of the show was on Father's Day, and I enjoyed soaking up the stories and sights. There were plenty of fathers and grandfathers passing on their love and enthusiasm for car culture. While I was walking through the car show, I overheard a middle-aged fellow telling somebody about the car he was showing, which he had inherited from his father. The man had spent his childhood helping to care for the car--every Saturday was spent waxing the thing to a high shine. Now, the car has passed on to him, and I can only hope that his grandchildren spend quality time with it.
June 14, 2008
June 05, 2008
Ancient Chinese Zeke-ret
When Claire and I were in Madison, our friend Zeke took the time to write our names in Chinese. Amazing. Zeke has mastered Chinese at the tender age of 5.5 years old. For those of you who don't know Chinese, that's my name above and Claire's below.
June 04, 2008
Death and Taxidermy
My life is completely complete. My Wisconsin visit exceeded all expectations (which were admittedly high). I'll be posting about all of the mind-blowingly awesome stuff that I got to see and do, but this one has been burning a hole in my internets.
On the recommendation of my friend Faythe, Claire and I went to see Sam Sanfillippo's amazing taxidermy museum, located in the basement of the unassuming Cress Funeral Home in Madison. We met our new friends Tom and Matthew at the funeral parlor, then we were guided past the chapels and viewing rooms to a door in the basement. When we crossed the threshold, we all stoped dead (no pun intended) in our tracks. The room was filled floor to ceiling with taxidermy fish, raccoons, badgers, birds and SQUIRRELS! Over the years, Mr. Sanfillippo, who was a director of the funeral home, amassed a huge collection of squirrels that met with unfortunate accidents (ranging from automobiles to golf balls--leave it to a funeral director).
According to this post at RoadsideAmerica.com, The squirrel dioramas were all conceived by Mr. Sanfillippo and executed (sorry...again, no pun intended) by Vito Marchino, obviously the most talented taxidermist on the planet. It all makes sense to me now. The inner lives of squirrels were always opaque to me when I watched them scurry around the park, but after seeing them at work and at play, their lives and loves have deeply moved me. Mr. Sanfillippo's dioramas command respect--many are mechanized and kinetic, but they are all arranged with massive attention to detail.
At a carnival for ground squirrels, a cotton candy vendor hawks his wares very successfully as squirrel families circle the merry-go-round and other attractions, including a nod to adult proclivities, the "Topless Girlie Show". The pretty ladies that dance are actually wearing MORE clothing than all of the squirrels in the diorama...but that's probably what makes the entertainment exotic. Cowboy squirrels peacefully coexist with dinosaurs, the carnival-goers happily go about their business with an old-school plastic safari hunter in their midst.
Never does Mr. Sanfillippo lose his ability to surprise. Just when you think the three-legged goose is the ultimate attraction in the room, a huge taxidermied trout wearing a waistcoat and a monocle grabs your attention. Our group spent close to an hour wandering through the museum. Unfortunately, Mr. Sanfillippo is getting on in years and wasn't available to show us through the collection in person, but the staff at Cress obviously adore the museum and were very kind to us. If you'd like to visit (if you're reading this, I'm SURE you want to visit), just give the funeral home a call at 608-238-8406 to make a reservation. If there is no service going on, they'll be happy to escort you through their little slice of heaven.
If you're not going to be able to make it to Madison for a while, take heart! I posted 36 of my best photos of the museum to my FLICKR account for your amazement. See you in Wisconsin!
"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.
