The Concept

Conceptual

What does a button have to do with art? Why would anyone want to make a button in 2014? This question is on my mind this morning, along with the topic of plastic brains, and kinetic sculpture. This reminds me of a time when it was being said that “art” is dead.

I think it is alive.

I think that living is art and for me, myself, art is a living state of mind. Everything is fodder waiting to be used in an artful way. For instance, a plastic toy which is in the form of a very pink plastic brain which when wound up by a human being: walks. Now, it takes energy to make it move, my energy or your energy. Imagine if you will, a parade, a kinetic sculpture parade, with hundreds of walking brains marching down the street. This would be a kinetic sculpture parade, right?

Imagine walking into a toy store to push every button on every toy cat to make it meow, all at the same time. Well, I do this often, just for the fun of it, but this is not a parade, right? Well, maybe it is if we put them in a wagon and someone pulls it while pushing all the buttons as they walk down the street.

These things still take energy. A wind maker is making energy but the wind in motion is making the energy. So it moves. But this is not a parade, either, unless someone marches down the street with turbines. I saw a forest of wind turbines every single time I would drive from Northern to Southern California. I think they are interesting and wonderful.

So, back to the button, it is not art. But it will make a sweater more beautiful. I choose to make things like folded photography with amazing folded lines dictated by the image. Is that art?

It is the concept, it is the idea, it is in the seeing of something that did not exist, before, to look at what is in front of my face, no matter where I am in space or time, this is the purpose, to create.

Oh yes, one more thing, I am so pleased to know that brains are plastic in that they can be changed by practice and creating new grooves in gray matter lighting up neurons that show up on a scan.