After this week's presentation I find myself asking "What did fibers mean to me before this week?"  It's an important question being a Fibers Major.  I suppose it meant quilts, embroidery, spinning, dying, weaving, knitting, crochet, macrame and perhaps fashion design.  The reason I want to be a fibers artist is that I think some really amazing and beautiful things can, and have been made in this field of work.  It is extremely broad, also.  Just look at the list of all the different categories that fit into Fibers, and then think about how many different variations of each one there is. 

Macrame can be amazing!

   
I know that when a person thinks of quilts they think of the quilt their great grandma made 100 years ago, and embroidery evokes thoughts of colonial samplers, and that macrame repels people with the hideous sculptures and owl-shaped plant hangers of the 60's and 70's, but each one of these fields is so much more than that!  Just look at what a person can make by tying basic macrame knots!

     
And check out this amazing art quilt!  This is only one example of the wonderful things that can be created with fabric and thread.

This one has always been one of my favorites!

    I forgot to mention batik as a category earlier, but I know a woman, Gael Nagle, who creates the most incredible "paintings" with batik.  There is no one else like her!  She creates these astounding scenes with fabric, beeswax, dye and a paintbrush.  She's so inspiring!

     After this week, I think I have to expand my definition even further.  Ty reiterates in every class that an artist approaches every medium from the perspective of that artist's main medium, or genre.  She is a print-maker therefore she thinks of her digital art as prints.  This idea is extended through every artist.  Ann Hamilton is a Fiber artist and it shows in every piece she creates.  In a way, the act of pulling out the threads of the numbers on a glove in Kaph is even more meaningful than the act of sewing the numbers on there in the first place.  It's very philosophical and I don't think I have enough time or space to include all my thoughts on this single piece of art!

 

The sole purpose of your existence is to be unwound...

      After reading and seeing all the pieces and hearing what Sara Rabinowitz, Ann Hamilton and Cai Guo Qiang had to say about fibers as an artform, I was completely shocked to hear that there are still people in our class with a bias against it.  I heard references to grandmothers and bored housewives.  I would have expected those comments a week or 2 ago, but how can anyone see the things we saw in class and on Art 21 and still think that?!  Sure, if you google "crochet patterns" you'll likely come up with something like this:

But really there is so much a person can do that is much more functional, beautiful, captivating, awe-inspiring, and any number of positive words, than this shameful use of acrylic yarn (which is pretty shameful to begin with).
  
One of my favorite places to look for inspiration with fibers is a website called Knot Just Knitting (www.knotjustknitting.com) where one can find such "freeform knitting/crochet" creations such as this one:

It's hard to see any detail in this photo, but here is a detail of a different freeform knit/crocheted creation to give you an idea of what can be done in this medium that cannot be achieved in any other medium:

     After realizing that beading also falls under the category of fibers, as demonstrated by Liza Lou (awesome name, BTW) with her extremely detailed work entitled "Kitchen," 

I asked myself then does my friend Jason Leannah's Geo Metro, "Claire," onto which he tirelessly glued and screwed toys, combination locks and hundreds of bottle caps among many other objets trouves for over a year also fits the description of a fiber art project.  Apart from the fact that Claire is fully functional, it appears to be very similar to the "Kitchen" creation.  I'm not sure how to share the photo on this blog, but it can be seen on Flickr at this address:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/s4xton/870718992/in/set-72157600950930005/lightbox/#/photos/s4xton/870718992/in/set-72157600950930005/.  I highly recommend checking it out as it is fabulous!
   
     Now, I will address the issue of gender.  Most of these categories hearken back, as we discussed in class, to the days when quilting, embroidery, knitting, crochet, et al were necessary for functional use and were deemed as "women's work".  It was appropriate in times gone by to see it that way.  However, I think its functionality is far outweighed in this modern day by the opportunity to make fiber creations for the sake of art.  For beauty, for challenging oneself and the perspective of society to see how far out of the box it can be taken!  I found it very curious when Ty said that Do Ho Suh was never questioned whether his organza "portable homes" were art or not.  Was that because he is a man?  Was it because there was something fundamentally different about his process that made it stand out from women's fiber arts? 

 Is a silk organza toilet cozy actually more valid than a room with wine-soaked horse hair covering the floor simply because of the genders of the artists who created them? 

  What about Cai Guo Qiang?  Is his art so different that there's no question about it being art?  Well, actually it is if you ask me, but for other people, does the fact that he's a man outweigh any aspects of his creative process when it comes to determining whether it is art or not? 

   
     I watched an independent film called "Who Does She Think She Is?"  last year.  I think it was made by the Guerilla Girls, who also wrote a book I read once called The Guerrilla Girls Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art.  In both the book and the movie viewers (readers) were challenged to recognize that women ARE artists and are just as amazing and talented as any male artist who ever lived.  In the film, the 2 of them stood outside of a museum and asked people as they were coming out if they could name 10 female artists.  This was AFTER they looked at possibly hundreds of artists' works.  None of the people questioned could come up with ten.  I think it would be even harder if the list were to be exclusive of fiber artists.  I don't know what that means, but I think I am going to have to take myself up on that challenge!  Later.
     I wonder if that conundrum should be figured in when asking oneself "How does making matter?" as Ann Hamilton confronts herself.  We were asked to follow Hamilton's lead and also ask ourselves how making matters.
     For me, "Making matters" as a necessary antithesis to the tenacious tendency of entropy.  Everywhere there is destruction, decay, an enormous waste-stream (I'm starting to sound depressed, but I'm not), and the cure for all of that is creation.  Recycling, or making new things is going to keep happening, and I think, in an extremely tiny nutshell, that if there is going to be this cycle of creation and destruction, then the new creations should be beautiful and/or inspiring.  
     Cai Guo Qiang really exemplifies this ideal in my opinion.  He is creating things in a way that no one else ever has before.  He is the only artist I've ever heard of using gunpowder to make drawings, and temporary displays such as the black rainbow.  Not only is he making really incredible art, he invented his own medium and way of applying it.  He is making an impression on the world in a completely original way. 

A few last words regarding week 3 readings/presentation/entry

First, I want to mention that I tried really, really hard to insert a video from Chris Coleman, but couldn't figure out how to do it from vimeo.  (The only options I could find were from YouTube videos or personal videos).

The other thing I want to talk about is how uncanny I find it that not only in Art 101, but also in my Anthropology class this week, both Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz were part of the reading and/or presentation.  What a strange coincidence!

"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more."

―Dorothy Gale

"Well, if there's a bright center to the universe, you're on the planet that it's farthest from."

―Luke Skywalker, to C-3PO^[src]

Additionally, one of the main points my Anthropology teacher has been making is that humans are "meaning-makers"; we are bound by making sense of stuff. Isn't that also the point of the excerpt from "Understanding Comics" that we read?  I'll use the same quote I used in my official blog entry again, "by stripping down an image to its essential 'meaning' an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can't".  Considering these two opinions together, one can see why we can take an extremely simple icon, and turn it into a personal experience.  We have to make everything mean something!

I think this means that somehow I was guided by the universe to take these two classes simultaneously in order to enhance the experience of both!  Sweet!  I love it when that happens :).

Why?: Art, the Icon, and Simplification.

Why this message?

Why?  This is the question Michael Salter likes to ask, and hopes his art inspires others to ask.  He considers himself an” obsessive observer”.  He doesn’t take anything at face value, and over-analyzes everything he sees.  I can fully relate!  I feel like I am somehow from the same “school” or “generation” as Salter, even though I was only one year old in 1776 when he designed his first art production.  Because I am coming from a similar place of asking why, I truly appreciated his slide show (which he said was more than twice the number of slides one would hope for, yet I was disappointed when it ended).  One of my favorite things that he showed us was the sign for the pancake restaurant on W. 11^th.  You know the one, with the man that Salter likened to Ron Jeremy, the famous porn star.  I thought the man in the sign looked more like a creepy, smelly pedophile, but hey, similar vein.  But exactly “why” would that be the image you want EVERYBODY to see when they think about eating pancakes?  Why?  I have asked that question numerous times upon reading people’s t-shirts.  I can’t think of any really good examples from the top of my head, but I am constantly wondering, “Why is that the message you want to send to the world?”  Here are some prime examples of t-shirts that make a person wonder, "Why?"

Salter said, “Everything you look at matters.  It informs and defines you.  It has an effect on the way you think.”  I believe this too.  That’s why I think it’s so important to surround oneself with amazing, positive, inspiring things instead of most of what we see in our culture right now. 

I didn’t really like Chris Coleman’s art.  His “My House is not My House” series was all wrong for me.  It wasn’t just a picture; it did stuff.  But I kept expecting it to do more “stuff”.  I suppose he wanted it to be more than just a picture, to be interactive, but I found it actually less captivating than a still painting.  I wanted it to be MORE active if it was going to be active at all.  Either be a painting or be a video.  Why were all of the videos 5 – 6 minutes long?  Is that the amount of time it’s supposed to take for me to get it?  I think maybe the video clips should have been shorter so that I wasn’t waiting for something else that wasn’t going to happen.  Well, at least I’m asking “why”.  Maybe that was the point, just like in Salter’s art.  

The rest of Coleman’s art was too dark, bloody, warlike, and strangely science-fiction-y.  Not in a good science-fiction-y way like the Battlestar Gallactica and C3PO of Salter’s slide show.  The eery science-fiction-y way that makes me uncomfortable.  Kind of Orwellian.  Again, perhaps that was the point. 

I found the excerpt from “Understanding Comics” to be very captivating.  Most notable is the style in which it is presented.  How clever to write a book about comics in comic format!  Like our little iconic friend says, “The ability of cartoons to focus our attention on an idea is… an important part of their special power…(31)”  Case in point.  This chapter proves its own existence.  It’s so brilliant! 

Icon-man (he probably has a name, I’m sorry) says that “In pictures… meaning is fluid and variable according to appearance.  They differ from ‘real-life’ appearance to varying degrees (28).”  I guess that’s why when we look at the pancake sign we can see a porn star or a pedophile instead of just seeing a sign for a pancake restaurant. 

People are attracted to icons.  They’re just representations, but they can invoke meaning in such an effective way. The reading defines this as “Amplification through simplification.”  The reason it works is that “By stripping down an image to its essential ‘meaning,’ an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can’t (30).”  The goal of the icon, or the cartoon is very similar to that of Michael Salter with his art.  Basically, they are both taking a complex concept and breaking it down to its most basic form.  In this way it is both simplified and personalized at the same time.  I say it’s personalized because as Scott McCloud points out, our perception of a comic or cartoon is our own interpretation of ourselves.  We see ourselves in everything.  Some examples from the reading were an electrical outlet, a Kraft cheese shaker, and a car’s front end.  What do these things mean?  Well, they have their obvious utilitarian purposes, but when presented as an art concept, it means whatever the viewer wants it to mean.  That’s the point of art.

Defining the Boundaries Between Art Forms

           I enjoyed Laura Vandenburgh’s presentation in class on Tuesday.  She made drawing sound much more common and universal than the way I have perceived it for the last, I don’t know, maybe my whole life!  I have always said, “I’m not a drawer or drafter or whatever the word is.   I can’t do it and I don’t know how to say it.”  (You know, because that is a really awkward word to say out loud, drawer; besides, it’s also one of those things in your dresser.  I am totally digressing.)   Anyway, as Laura said, everyone draws.  I shyly admitted to myself that I actually agree.  I have doodled many, many times.  I guess I have tried to fool myself into thinking that I’m not truly drawing by doodling mostly block letters, but then I always have to embellish them in some way.   That’s drawing. 

                Laura also helped me expand my definition of drawing by presenting versions of drawing that are completely outside the box.  Forming shapes in space with wire? I would have thought of this as sculpture!   Arranging scraps of paper with notes on them in a geometric pattern?  I would have called that a collage!  Casting a shadow on the wall with a pile of garbage?  I don’t know WHAT I would have named that artform!  But it was amazing!  As Ms. Vandenburgh said, It’s not so clear where those boundaries are drawn.  She believes that those things I mentioned can be considered drawing as opposed to sculpture or something else because it gives the viewer something to think about , as drawing does, rather than presenting a completed object that just defines itself for the viewer. 

                I think my favorite piece in the presentation was the Wall of Notes.  I loved it.  First I loved the way it looked, especially that all the white and off-white papers were grouped together with the bright colorful papers juxtaposed next to them.  The contrast was striking.  Also it struck me that there were equal amounts of each category of papers.  I’m a Virgo, so this seemed like the kind of thing I would have done if I had thought of it.  It  immediately inspired me to create a number of similar pieces of art.  Lastly, I have to say that upon learning that these notes were written between a hearing and a deaf person made me love it even more.  I used to know a deaf person, and I spent many hours communicating with her.  So the “drawing” (or collage, if you’re me) brought up my connection with Ethel.  It also was just warming to learn that it was a piece of the artist’s personal life.  

                This new way of defining drawing helped me see how Margaret Kilgallen’s paintings are just really big drawings done very carefully with paint.  Painting can be just like drawing the way she approaches it.  It’s not like a painting in which every square inch of canvas is covered with paint and all the lines cover each other up.  At first I wasn’t sure how I felt about Kilgallen’s art.  I liked the idea of it.  Bring an indoor art form outdoors.  Focus on the female hero.  Use colors that were typically used in the original form of the art that inspired her.  I liked all of those things, and the way she presented the works, but I just don’t like the look of the people she paints.  It’s partly their large lips, but that’s not exactly it.  Just the style of their look.  I don’t know how to put it into words, but anyway, that doesn’t take too much away from being able to appreciate the feeling Kilgallen‘s art provokes.

I find the story of her death so sad and moving.  I can just see her husband taking his little infant with him to spray-paint the sadness away on the side of a train.  That sounds silly, but in my head it’s much more tragic.

                Sometimes it’s hard to draw a boundary between art forms, as Vandenburgh demonstrated with drawing and potential sculpture.  It is also demonstrated by Kilgallen whose paintings greatly resemble drawing.  I think that was basically the point of the founders of each new art movement through the last few centuries.  That’s the main thing I learned from the “Art Theory for Beginners” excerpt.  Each era found a new way of challenging the dominant definition of art.  Picasso incorporated collage into his painting, Pollack abandoned the paintbrush altogether and used objects such as a stick to apply the paint to the canvas, and others tried to see how far they could go and still call their “creation” art, such as the urinal that Duchamp signed with a pseudonym.  I guess each artist needs to define for him or herself exactly what makes art.  I think at this point that an artist needs to challenge, not only society’s idea of what art is, but reach beyond his or her own boundaries of defining art.

Amazing drawings can even be made with sand! Tibetan Sand Mandala