Saturday, March 15, 2014

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.



Thursday, March 13, 2014

Lacis: Here is the story and I am sticking to it. . .

Normally I am not a cutesy kind of person
But. . .I do very much honor tradition
So,
Once upon that time when I paid a visit to that wonderful store Lacis in Berkeley and after buying most wonderful items found with great difficulty right there and no place else upon this earth I wandered down the street. Antiques for sale said that sign that brought me inside to find a wonderful tattered very used and soon to be treasured (again) crazy quilt. This crazy quilt is obviously made by a real American woman who used little bits of her treasures to savor for many other eyes in many other times.
This hangs in my upstairs studio that I use in the winter months. It is snowing again today and to cheer myself I choose to share this along with something I am working on at the moment waiting for spring to show it's pretty little head. A contemporary take on crazy quilting of my own is in progress. Soon I get to the good part which is the embroidery. I hope this little bit of a story brings something nice to you or you can come along for a mad tea party where this is down the rabbit hole.
We will have such a nice time.
Oh yes, I forgot to tell you that I really really did have a wolf at my front door the other day.