Extreme Craft

The Year Funk Broke

Most people in the craft world are familiar with Robert Arneson.  During the 60s and 70s, when crafters were wringing their hands about their exclusion from the art world, Arneson satarized the lowly stature of ceramics by talking about "The World's Most Fascinating Hobby".  As a founding member of the "Funk" movement, he embraced the scatological potential of ceramics, which culminated in his "Funk John", which was originally exhibited in 1963, at an exhibition alongside works by Peter Voulkos and John Mason.

When I was going through the Smithsonian's archive of oral histories, I found an extensive interview with Arneson that gives (among a zillion other things) a history of the Funk John.  After the piece was unceremoniously removed from its original exhibition, Arneson sold the piece to a former student of his, who installed it in her living room (despite strident objections by her husband).  I'll let Arneson finish the story.

Some time later Nina came back to see me at Davis, and she was very upset. She discretely asked me, “How does one fix ceramics?” I didn’t know what she meant. She said, “Well, how do you fix things that are broken?” “Well, what’s broken?” She said, “Well, I must tell you. My husband opened the living room door the other night, took your toilet that was on rollers and rolled it right out to the front porch and down five flights of stairs. It tipped over and was just really pulverized. I gathered up all the pieces and put them in the yard.” So I said, “Well, just bring up all the pieces and let me see what we’ve got.” So she brought up all the pieces back to me. Remarkably, she had them all. It broke in a nice, wholesome manner. There weren’t a lot of little shards, so I restored it to its original.

One thing about my art is that I have always had an impatience with my processing. My work always cracked and did weird things. So I learned to fabricate and repair them. In some cases, I also forgot to make certain sections of my work that were missing, so I always had to fabricate them out of plastics. I really learned how to fit and make pieces belong and come together that were negligent originally in their construction. I put the piece together very nicely. I didn’t give it back to her since I didn’t want a violent act repeated on the piece as I was really liking it. So I asked her, “Now where is it going to go? We have to find a friend of yours.” Eventually Nina was able to finally bring it back to her own home, and hide it in the back of her garden somewhere under a shrub so it wouldn’t be offensive.

Later on when I had my retrospective in 1974 at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, that toilet was certainly one of the pieces that I wanted to have in my exhibition. I made arrangements to borrow it. It had been sitting at the Kelley’s under a shrub for about ten years. Some of the epoxy had deteriorated under the weathering process. I had to bring it back to my studio at Davis and spend about two days on it, etching it in acid and removing some of the shearing epoxy pigments that were coming off, loosening up the epoxy that was wiggling away. I rebuilt it, putting it back together to make it certainly even better than new. And it was a beautiful piece after that.

When that show came down, I had reached the point where I decided – I knew that the toilet was such a crucial piece in my life that I really wanted it back. I offered the Kelly’s the opportunity to have any work that they would wish or they could even commission a piece, for that toilet, which they had originally purchased for $500. At current value in 1974, they could have something closer to $3,000 or $4,000, whatever they wanted, or I would make them a piece, or they could choose a piece within the next few years, irregardless. Anyway, looking back on those toilets, that was the impetus to a body of work on my part that I felt was finally arriving at what Bob Arneson’s art was going to be about.

If you're interested in reading more of the extensive interview with Arneson, follow this LINK.  I can wholeheartedly recommend the entire Smithsonian oral history archive, which has transcripts of incredible interviews with artists, crafters, collectors and thinkers.  It's a treasure trove that will fuel tons of craft researchers in the new millenium.

LINK to Smithsonian oral history archive

Ready to Wear

Whoa!  My mind keeps getting blown again and again by how awesome Craft Horizons was in the early 1970s.  I'll extend that to include the Museum of Contemporary Crafts (now the Museum of Art and Design) in New York.  I keep reading article after article about amazing shows they held at that museum that incorporated performance, modern dance, happenings and other shows that would be cutting edge if they happened in the craft world today.

Among my favorites was an account of a show that was reviewed in the June 1971 issue by Carl and Heidi Bucher, Swiss artists who built environments and wearable sculpture that all but defied museum goers to participate.  The images you're looking at are a couple of wearable sculptures by Heidi Bucher that are made out of foam and covered with nylon.  The magazine didn't have photos of the really crazy things, which included entire walls covered with magic slates...you know, the kind you wrote on with a little stylus when you were a kid, then "erased" by lifting up the top layer of plastic.

Here's a paragraph about some of Carl's contributions to the show that I'm still trying to wrap my brain around:

Motivated by his wife's "Wearables," Bucher developed "Phosphorescent Inflatables," hung and strewn in a darkened room, waiting for bodies to become involved, engulfed in soft white finyl.  Face to face with others, the participant who peered out of his solo capsule window realized that he resembled the peculiar visages he was confronting.  Being confined encouraged lots of motion which activated dangling vinyl "arms," flailing radially as one turned.  Sounds--the dull thuds of prizefighters working out with punching bags--reverberated within the vestments and without.  Figures swung and thumped until lights went on (seemingly a signal that the ghostly ritual or bumper car ride was finished), dispelling the phenomenon of phosphorescence. 

Heidi went on to become a famous artist in her own right.  Her body of work in the 1980's focused on "casts" of interior spaces that prefigured artists like Rachel Whiteread. 

Sadly, Bucher passed away in 1993.  Fortunately, a website has been set up that contains some image of her work from the 1980s and 90s, but also some rare video of the Bodyshells in motion.  Enjoy.

LINK

Horseshit? You Be the Judge

Here's another of my favorite "finds" from the pages of Craft Horizons.  I found this little gem in the June, 1971 issue.  Aside from the fact that the process sounds absurd, there was something about this "George Gladstone" that made me a little suspicious.

When I did a little bit of searching for "Horseclay" on the internet (Google initially asked me whether or not I meant "horseplay"...but I assured it that I did not), my suspicions were confirmed, and I learned that the author was none other than Clayton Bailey, ceramic prankster sans pareil. 

Here are Bailey's instructions from his website:

This collection of test tiles demonstrates Clayton's discovery of Horseclay, and explains his Internal Combustion Ceramic process:

1. Mix together 50% pulverized Quarter Horse Manure and 50% Clay.
2. Add water, and use the clay immediately. Prolonged storage will cause sprouting of the seeds in the manure.
3. Ignite the object with a flame when it is thoroughly dry. (Works best in an insulated kiln chamber.)
4. The fired object is light and porous. The honeycomb structure of the fired clay makes Bare Hands Raku possible.

Ah.....bare hands raku.  I suspect that the original letter was written in the early early part of April.  Do all of my suspicions mean that you shouldn't rush out to the pasture and start experimenting with "self-combustible" ceramics?  Don't let me stop you.  I'll let you know if I unearth any responses from earnest Craft Horizons readers.

Glass Clown

Question.  When is John C. Reilly going to star in a Dale Chihuly biopic?  Surely I'm not the only one thinking this.

Magic Carpet

I'm working my way through a giant stack of Craft Horizons magazines from the 1960's and 70's.  My research keeps getting sidetracked by all of the amazing finds.  I just read an incredible article by Joy Wulke, a sculptor who has spent her career making large public art projects for civic and commercial clients.

One of her early projects was a large-scale carpet that she wove for the Windows on the World restaurant on top of the World Trade Center.  Wulke worked with the restaurant's architect, Warren Platner, and his interior designer, Lee Alstrom.  The concept was a sixteen foot square hand-woven carpet that would be one of the centerpieces of the space.  For anyone who ever worked on a large commisison, Wulke's saga will sound pretty familiar. 

After she worked up some samples, the designer told her she had to create the same effect at half the price, with half the wool that she had originally planned.  Then, her wool supplier in Pakistan came down with a case of anthrax, so she had to find another supplier.  Then, she had to commission woodworkers to build a loom that big in her relatively tiny studio.

After all was said and done, Wulke was left with $1700 to pay for her labor and that of her assistants.  That's something like $6000 when adjusted to today's dollars, especially considering the project was so monumental.

I've been thinking a lot about 1970s interiors.  It's pretty mind-blowing that a corporate building like the World Trade Center would have a restaurant built around something so handmade...and so... PIMP!  Say what you want about the 70's, but the public was definitely receptive to natural textures... and plenty of them.  I managed to uncover the original New York Times review of the restaurant's interior (along with another amazing article about the quantity of silverware and other accessories were being stolen by the souvenir-hunting public).  Here's an excerpt, and you can download the entire review by clicking HERE.

It is not, in principle, a bad idea. Miesian purism by now is commonly acknowledged to be a style of the past, and anyway it was never very able in its cold rigidity to provide dining spaces that satisfied the imagination as well as the rational eye. Dining in a restaurant is a fantasy experience, and there is nothing wrong with a restaurant's design playing up to this.

And play up this restaurant does. The main dining room of Windows on the World, as the 107th floor is called. is done in soft pastels, with tufted vinyl banquettes, lots of brass, and fabric-covered walls. The room is so lush that even the simple wood-and-cane Prague chairs used at the freestanding tables, a classic modem design, take on a certain voluptuousness.

No mention of our hand-woven rug, but you get the idea.  I'm sure it didn't take long for that interior to be replaced by some serious Gordon Gekko-esque gold and black lacquer during the 80's.  In 1997, Ruth Reichl had this to say about the 1990's Windows on the World interiors:

"Despite recent renovations, New York's highest restaurant still looks like an airport lounge; if not for the fabulous view, you could be in a bland hotel in the Midwest."

Of course I mourn for the loss of the World Trade Center...but I also mourn for the funky, fuzzy interiors of the 70's.  How are we supposed to appreciate fondue without them?

Ilene Marries Mr. Wright

So....I brought you the gingerbread Falling Water cake earlier in the week, but I just found a photo of this little gem that my friend Seth rolled out for his wedding in Atlanta last week.  His groom cake was a delicious Fallingwater replica.  No surprises here, it actually looks more structurally sound than the gingerbread cake.  I'm sure it's much more edible, too!  Mazel tov, Seth and Ilene!  May your relationship have way fewer structural flaws than Wright's building.

Africanned

 

Since I wrote about an amazing gingerbread house yesterday, I'll stick with the cake theme.

Sometimes, despite my efforts to the contrary, I live in a very sheltered, womblike world.  I, Garth Johnson of Extreme Craft, despite my love of trashy food shows and trashy food, had never heard of Sandra Lee.  Most of you are rolling on the floor and laughing at my naievete, but a few of you probably share my ignorance.  For those few, here's what I can glean about Sandra Lee.

Sandra Lee is a Stepford Wife culinary harpy with her own show on the Food Network.  Her claim to fame is a dislike for cooking that makes Rachel Ray look like Alice Waters.  Apparently, Sandra Lee's show, Semi-Homemade consists of her stuffing every imaginable form of canned, frozen, pre-mixed and otherwise overprocessed food and stuffing it into her pustule-filled keister, where she proceeds to let everything ferment (for no more than 30 minutes...that seems to be the outside amount of time that she'll spend on a dish).  Then Ms. Lee does a cheerleader handstand and proceeds to projectile-diarrhea the resulting mess onto a plate, where an intern food stylist puts some sugar sprinkles or a cocktail umbrella onto it and serves it up to an adoring public.  Did I mention that she's dating New York Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo?  Let me know how that works out!

The Sandra Lee Kwanzaa Cake debacle is a couple of years old now, but I just found out about it today, and I'm speechless (with the exception of the above diatribe, of course).  To celebrate Kwanzaa in a culturally sensitive way, Lee created a desert that the Food Network will have to end up paying reparations for.  The recipe is a store-bought angel food cake, sliced in two with some doctored frosting and a can of apple pie filling dumped in the middle.  Add some corn nuts and some crappy candles and Voila!

Fans of the Sandra Lee Kwanzaa cake will be glad to know the entire story.  Denise Vivaldo, a seasoned food industry professional who makes her living through churning out recipes for the cooking show industry just confessed to having created the recipe for the Sandra Lee cake.  Her fascinating confessional article throws back the curtain on the "talent" behind food shows.

I can honestly say Ms. Lee had nothing against African Americans or Jews. She just has incredibly bad food taste. She was not discriminating about who would be harmed from her culinary "creations." Think what your taste would be like if you came from carnival or circus people. Did I just offend Paris Hilton?

When the Angel Food Cake Collection came to life, Ms. Lee was converting to Judaism herself for her new husband and she seriously wanted to bring her new "cuisine" to an entire nation. Well, let's put it this way, she wanted to sell a shitload of books. And she did. She wanted fame and money. And she succeeded. I believe that's often thought of as the American dream by many, isn't it? Note to all American Dreamers: This may be a good time to take a look inward.

--cough--  I should have figured that only somebody this sarcastic could have come up with a confection like the Kwanzaa cake.  Now I'm stuck with another sick cooking show fascination.  Maybe I need to be thinking up some recipes to shop to her.  Any ideas?

LINK to Denise Vivaldo article via Cathy of California

I'm Dreaming of a Wright Christmas

Over my holiday break, I finally had time to finish reading The Women by T. Coraghessen Boyle (the author that brought you The Road to Wellville and The Inner Circle).  The Women is a work of historical fiction about Frank Lloyd Wright... a seen through the eyes of his wives and mistresses.  The book is a juicy, scandalous quick read that shows Wright's genius (and ego) in all of its prickly glory.

I give the book my wholehearted recommendation.  If you're looking for some Holiday reading, it's not exactly the feel good book of the year, but totally engaging.  One detail in the book that I hadn't known before is how much Wright loved the holidays.  Even though he was all about micromanaging how his clients lived in their houses, he couldn't help but deck the halls at Taliesin with boughs of holly and whatever else he felt was appropriate.

I'm pretty sure he's looking down at Melodie and Brenton at Garden Melodies with a big ol' impish smile.  They created a SUPER ELABORATE Fallingwater gingerbread house out that:

• took over 12 hours to design
• It took Brenton and I around 40 hours to build and decorate
• There are around 164 different pieces of gingerbread
• It took roughly 12 square feet of gingerbread dough (that’s four large batches) to make all the walls, floors and roof
• Over 8 bags of powdered sugar were used to make all the frosting 
• It took over 40 sleeves of large Smarties which are used to simulate dry stack stone on the building exterior
• The river and water fall are made up of three batches of hard candy

The little details are killing me.  The Smarties are such beautiful pastel holiday stand-ins for the locally quarried stone that Wright incorporated into the design.  The icicles, trees, candy waterfall and cantilevered slabs of ginerbread concrete are beautifully rendered.  Melodie, the mastermind behind the gingerbread house, has a degree in landscape management, which she followed up with a stint in culinary school.  It's good to know that those two skills can exist in perfect harmony (in Melodie).

Let's hope preservation of this gingerbread house takes less than the 11.4 million dollars (and counting) that the original Fallingwater has needed for restoration.  Happy Holidays, everyone!

LINK via BoingBoing

 

What a Tool

I'm sitting on my couch, clicking through some research that I'm doing for the exhibition and lecture that I'm putting together at the Museum of Contemporary Craft that opens next month.  I found this tidbit in a May, 1970 issue of New York Magazine.  I'm baffled...and intrigued that an exhibition based on a tool collection could happen in a New York gallery, and also by the accompanying blurb.  Enjoy!

How Swede It Is

I found myself craving pickled herring this morning.  Pickled herring is one of the foods that I associate with Christmas, so it's actually surprising that it took this long for me to start pining for the stuff.  My father's side of the family are full-blooded Swedes who thrived in the Swede-friendly environs of Eastern Nebraska.  One of my great-grandfathers was a blacksmith...I can trace part of my craft heritage back to him. 

My forbears were resourceful Swedes who weren't afraid to build things themselves.  That extends to my father, who is fond of taking cars and antique gas engines and Frankensteining them back to life with a dose of careful craftsmanship and resourcefulness. 

I was already craving pickled herring this morning when I picked up the New York Times and read their article about the Swedeborgian Church in San Francisco.  The church dates back to 1895, and is located on the corner of Washington and Lyon streets.  It's a nifty early example of Arts and Crafts style--in fact, one of California's earliest.  There's a great synergy between the church and the Swedish no-nonsense "truth in materials" ethos. 

The Swedenborgian church in San Francisco was founded and designed by Joseph Worcester, a Harvard graduate who was captivated by California and spent significant time with John Muir.  Worcester drew up the original plans for the church himself, and had to fight his architect over using eight red madrone trees to support the roof.  Worcester even left the bark on the trees, so as to retain their original character.  Check out this excerpt from an 1895 San Francisco Examiner article about the church:

Those madrone trees are now in the church. The base of each rests upon a pier of concrete. Divided into sections, the pieces of each tree are notched into one another and bolted together, every tree forming one-half of an arch. On these four arches rest hewn timbers, rough from the ax, upon which the planks of the ceiling are laid. Over this vaulted ceiling are the thick tiles. The exterior walls are plain brick, a little tower rising from the southern side wall, capped by a brick coping, with an interstice under the coping in which may be hung two bells, one each side a marble column.

I'm excited about visiting the church when I'm in San Francisco again.  The Swedeborgian worldview is an interesting mix of mysticism and humble Swedish virtues.  The Swedeborgian church serves as a reminder that we, the folks living in the 21st Century who care about the spaces in which they live and work can trace those impulses back to our ancestors.

Christmas brings out the Swede in me.  I'll probably also be craving my mother's rice pudding, my childhood Christmas service (with hymns in Swedish) and a glass of glögg.  I may also be be saying a word of thanks that I'm not so sentimental as to inflict lutefisk on my friends and family.