Craft and Methods of Production

Our guest presenter for this week was Anya Kivarkis.  Her presentation was very fast-paced so it was hard to engage in each slide, but I was exposed to some very outlandish, unique and interesting artistic ideas. 

One of the things that stood out to me was Richard Nelipovich's Emergent Tableware.  His method of production is called "Mass individualization".  His idea is to make multiple copies of a piece, but make each one completely different from the others. 

Notice how each fork has, not only its own unique handle, but even the tines are different on each one.  Nelipovich uses a computer program to configure multiple variations of a design, and makes it reality.  I looked at his website http://www.designercraftsman.com/portfolio_digital_craft.html because I was interested in this Mass Individuation, and discovered that he uses the same (or similar) computer program to design many different products including jewelry, chairs, bowls, vases, and more. 

 Looking around at other things in his portfolio, I discovered that he also invented a large number of products that are being sold by big name companies such as Sears.  When I learned that, it made me like his design-ware a little bit less.  That's a curious thing to me.  Does the fact that he sells his art through major department stores actually devalue them in some way?  I'm not sure where that bias came from.  I'm also not sure where I thought all those products came from -- little elves maybe... surely I didn't think that the CEO's of those companies came up with all those designs themselves!  It's just one more thing to think about now.

I think that's part of the point of Kivarkis' presentation.  She showed us a number of artists who take previously mass-produced products, and use them as a base for an artistic creation.  For example, Gijs Bakker takes old cheap costume jewelry, which is made of glass and fashioned after jewelry that is made of real gems, makes a smaller copy of it out of real valuable gems and attaches it to the original "copy".  A valuable copy of a less valuable copy of a valuable piece of jewelry -- it's ironic!

Can you see the smaller version attached to the center of the larger one?

The artists presented by Kivarkis create objects that require the viewer to think.  They're almost making a mockery of the things they are emulating, and questioning the function of each object.  John Feodorov, the artist from our reading for this week, also brings the same challenge to his viewers. 

Feodorov is Native American and was raised as a Jehovah's Witness.  Living in such dichotomy created in him a person who questions everything around him.  "Brought up both in the suburbs of Los Angeles and on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico, Feodorov early experienced the cultural differences between his dual heritages. He also observed the stereotypes present in American culture at large, where Native Americans were idealized as the living embodiment of spirituality by New Age consumerists."  (Oops! --  I'm one of those New-Agers who thinks of Native Americans in that light!)  He reiterates a few times in the reading that he's not trying to be funny, he's just trying to present both perspectives simultaneously.  Last week we learned that interpretation is up to the viewer, and I don't know what this says about me as a viewer, but I was giggling and cracking up over almost every piece of his artwork that I saw.  The irony is so, I don't know, I guess hilarious.  Just take his Animal Spirit Channeling Device for the Contemporary Shaman for example:

He took this mas produced children's toy that we are probably all familiar with in one form or another, and added feathers and the word "spirit" under the name of each animal.  That's how the modern consumer can discover his or her animal spirit guide.  No inconvenient rite of passage necessary, just pull the string.  (If you don't like the first one the feathered arrow lands on, just pull the string again!  It's easy and fun!) 


I appreciate his use of Barbie doll arms in many of his installations.  I am hoping that he acquires all the dolls second-hand, as well as the teddy bears he uses for his "Totem Teddies," rather than supporting the industry which he is mocking by purchasing them all new.  Here is a picture from his production "Art in the Twenty-First Century".

Feodorov says, "the branches are made of doll arms and are holding little plastic miniature toy animals, again sort of reflecting the Disney mentality of nature that I think has evolved just this century."  Good point, and thanks for making people think about what they are seeing, not only in your art, but in the things in their everyday lives.  There's a lot we take for granted, but there is way more than one perspective on everything.