Employed! A 24 Hr Project

One week after moving to Chicago, I managed to land myself an art show! Thanks to my cousin's amazing girlfriend, and my new friend, Tory, I was invited to participate in a 24 hr project with opening to follow. Each participating artist was to bring all materials necessary to make work to a warehouse space near Chinatown and all work created during the night would be hung in the Nichole Villeneuve Gallery.

What I managed to miss by not reading the fine print of the waiver was that the artists were also responsible for providing tables and chairs. Oops.. good thing I found that chair lying around or it would have been a really long night. You know.. even longer than it was already.

The space was huge and beautiful. Apparently, this particular warehouse used to be owned by Al Capone. It was handily located right on the river... good for dumping bodies? Rumor has it that the basement and freight elevators are haunted! But we saw no evidence of it during our night there.

There were all sorts of artists: painters, sculptors, installation artists, and me: fibers

One of my goals for moving to Chicago was to get back into the studio in a really serious, conceptual way. For the past few years I feel like I've really only been touching upon projects- starting things without finishing them... not really taking the time to think things/concepts all the way through. I haven't, however, lost my crazy thirst for historical details: my most recent research topic has been FDR, the New Deal and the Great Depression. In keeping with that theme, here was the proposal I submitted to the curators of this show:

FDR’s New Deal programs and the American experiences during the Great Depression seem to me to be particularly enlightening in the context of the contemporary “Great Recession” and the global financial crisis. During the 24hr project, “Employed,” I plan on exploring the relationships between the Great Depression and the Great Recession through fibers techniques such as scrap quilting and embroidery: both techniques popularized by the necessary frugality of the hard times of the 1930’s. By utilizing text and images I hope to create a series of compositions that can act individually or as a series.

My research included everything from listening to FDR's fireside chats from the 1930's to reading Paul Krugman articles comparing the economics of the two time periods. But what I found most compelling were the hundreds of posters designed and printed by the Works Progress Administration between 1932 and 1943.

The WPA was the primary institution responsible for getting people back to work during the great depression. They did so by initiating thousands of community improvement projects across the US. Many of these were infostructure building: road construction, bridge construction, etc. But many of them were cultural. The WPA organized and provided funding for murals, musical concert, theater... anything you can think of. And their posters advertised them.

I especially loved the WPA posters that focused on the idea of the importance of work, itself.

I mean... first of all, way to glorify the working class. It just doesn't happen that often. But also, it's so true that being unemployed in a country that idolizes productivity is the difinitive road to depression. No wonder the Great Depression was so totally soul crushing, right?

Uhm, amazing poster much? Totes.

This next one was my favorite. It seemed to bring together all of my research with my personal situation of being an unemployed and unconfident artist with the title of the show, "Employed," with my research of both the past and the present.

What these posters really drove home to me was that the WPA wasn't only battling an economic depression... it was trying to assuage an emotional depression that was affecting the entire American population. Spirits had been hit so hard that fixing one was impossible without fixing the other. This was one of the main differences between the Great Depression and the Great Recession that I chose to focus my work on: it seems like now, although times are tough, the American population has kept from sliding headfirst into an emotional pit. Consumerism (apparently the best way to guage people's spirits) is still fairly up. Apple is still releasing ridiculously priced sci-fi products and people are racing to get their hands on them. NPR is still featuring stories of individuals who, after being unceremoniously fired from their boring office jobs, took the "opportunity" to change careers- to become self employed or follow dreams they had never thought were possible.

See? Optimism! And Hence: a flourishing indy crafts movement. The contemporary independent crafts movement combines the comfort seeking nostalgia of handmade objects with the anti-establishment mentality of an unpopular war and the rampant excuse for capitalism that Americans feel is their constitutional right. (Okay, clearly my feelings about the crafts movement are many and varied. And I am admittedly a part of it... but for this project it serves as a complicated muse.)

For my work for the "Employed" show I decided to combine fabrics common to the indy craft movement with images and techniques from the Great Depression.

To me, the forthcoming pieces are a sort of hilarious paradox of domestic memorials (handmade objects that hang in the home) with the mass-produced popular fabric styles and the incongruous images from the WPA posters. Were these posters ever meant to hang in the home? Probably not. But now they can be remembered for the place they hold in America's heart. (I mean, everybody knows this history, right? Ha. Hence my point.)

I chose to leave the images empty for a few reasons: first, because I forgot how god-awful long it takes to embroider anything. I had planned to make maybe six of these compositions but I barely finished three. And second, because I really liked the visual competition of the fabric patterns and the images; like the past and the present were battling to be seen.

Ok, so it's clearly not a finished body of work. But I think there's potential here. I would love to continue the project and make a whole hell of a lot of these guys. I would LOVE any feedback that people have on these, too. Please? Criticism welcome? I need to get back into critique mode.. I've been a bit coddled lately. (Mostly by myself.) Bring it on.

So, a final word on the show experience:

Now, I've done 24 hr projects before... and not with the best success or enjoyment. But the difference between the show I did when I first moved to Philly and this one was that in this case we weren't trying to create collaborative work. When you're relying on other people- people you may not even know- to create a piece that will have your name on it... tensions tend to run very high in the middle of the night. Nichole's show allowed the artists to only feel responsible for their own work... which meant that the rest of the artists involved could be respite and community. I feel like I got to know a bunch of people in the area and see into their creative processes a little bit. It was really awesome.

I thinking Chicago's gonna work out, and I'm really excited to get involved with the art scene here. Too bad i'm leaving for a month in.. like 45 min. I guess I'll try to pick up with this project when I get back in July! In the meantime, stay tuned to the blog for Snow Farm 2010! A week with my amazing nephews! And trying to drive fast enough to escape my personal demons! (Wish me luck. Also safety.)

Wool Equal Bronze/ Time Does Not Equal Money

The past few month, during which I have been admittedly blog-negligent, I have actually been quite busy! It was just the kind of busy that takes a few months to get results... y'know... applications kind of busy. Show submission, summer scholarships... I feel like all I did in February was apply for shit. (After which was followed by a period of unprecedented productivity.) But it's all starting to pay off! I'll be posting exciting news as it is confirmed.

First! I've been offered a Teaching Assistantship at Haystack School of Craft in Deer Isle, Maine! If you haven't heard of Haystack, it is a fairly prestigious program for students of all ages. Last summer I didn't even get in, so I'm pretty stoked about this year.

("Studios remain open 24 hours a day, seven days a week while workshops are in session." Basically, all I want in life.)

The class I'm going to TA is called Knitting: Wool Equals Bronze/ Time Does Not Equal Money, with artist Janet Morton:

"This workshop will explore hand knitting as a valid and vital sculptural/installation medium and as an alternate means of measuring time. Through a series of slide talks, discussions, and exercises, participants will be encouraged to playfully and critically examine their relationships to the natural world, everyday objects, and equations that link time to “value”. Experimentation with materials, scale, technique, and ideas will be encouraged. Participants will develop personal projects, and will be invited to work collectively on an onsite project."

O. M. G. !!!!!!

Sorry for my temporary lapse into 14-year-old-ism but, c'mon! Could this class possibly sound like something I'd be MORE into?!? The TA application asked for a MFA level education in the subject you were hoping to work with and since there really are no MFA degrees in knitting I managed to convince the scolarship committee that my two-straight years of doing basically nothing BUT knitting (and watching copius amounts of tv-on-dvd) was just as good as a degree. It's SOO vidicating: I'd been spending quite a bit of time lately bemoaning my "waste" of knitting time spent over the last few years... mainly because I wasn't making Art (capital letter.) Now I feel like it was worth it... and here's my chance to transition all of my new knitting skills back into a conceptual avenue. YES!

I refrained from looking up Janet Morton's work until I got into the program (mostly in an attempt to not get my hopes up, I think.) It's AMAZING. Here are some of my favorites:

Sweaterbike, 1994. hand knit bicycle covering
When you're cold... put a sweater on your bike? Now I really want to make one for my bike... but I'd have to make it removable for easy laundering.. this city is so dirty...

Canadian Monument #, 1994. hand screened red flannel, dinner plates. 20 x 12 ft.
Lucy Larcom reincarnated! Maybe a lumber-jack love interest? Anyway, totally awesome.

Newsflash Blanket, 1995. hand knit blanket. 23 x 9 ft.


Newsflash; Madame Defarge Eat your Heart Out, detail. 1995. stacks of the three Toronto daily newspapers, 12 framed images of knitter, 1000-plus balls of wool, a false floor, chair, vinyl text, and a television playing.
I think the title for this is HILARIOUS because my mother mentions this Dickens character in response to all of my text-based fibers work. Seriously, she's mentioned it at least 3 times. Here, at least some of the irony is the fact that knitting anything that complicated can HARDLY be called a "flash." To me, it also references traditional women's work and the overwhelming contemporary news consumption.

Capitol, 2004. hand knit model of the Capitol Building. 30 x 20 in.
Swoooooon. This way beats the knit turtles.


Felled, 1997. 300 leaves sewn from used work socks form poetry translation.

Felled, detail. 1997.
"I interpret this making of beautiful delicate items, from work-worn, day-to-day socks as a mark of respect for the labour they participated in." (From the Lovely Textiles blog, linked to below.) I also wonder if the title isn't a reference to the sacrifices one makes for "work;" injuries and sheer time spent toiling.

Changing Channels, 2000. 36 gutted televison sets, plants.

What a fantastic container garden! There are a number of my favorite artists who blend fiber art with gardening. I know that Ghada Amer has spoken briefly about the connection between gardening, domesticity and women's work, but I feel like there might be something more there. It's a topic I might explore more in the near future.

And those were just the highlights! For a much better interpretation/discussion of Janet Morton's work, check out this blog I found while google-ing "Janet Morton". Also check out the rest of Janet's online portfolio. Amazing!

I can't wait to have the opportunity to work with such an amazing artist and to experience the creative atmosphere I've heard such wonderful things about at Haystack. The end of August it gonna rule!

Myth and Modern Art

I don't even remember what my mother and I were talking about when she handed me a little book entitled "A Short History of Myth" but it has certainly influenced my thoughts over the past few weeks. The short tome by Karen Armstrong is a succinct exploration of human development, both psychological and sociological, and how our myths shifted in order to reflect our evolutions: starting in the Paleolithic Period, it travels all the way through the industrial revolution (aka, the Axial Age) and into the "Great Western Transformation." Even from the first few pages, it was startlingly apparent that "myth" is intrinsically linked to my own definition of "conceptual art." So, I have been working out how that is and what that means for my art and for society at large.

Ideas of "truth" are very complicated in modern times. For us, something can be scientifically proven, or historically reliable and objects are objects- they have their own production history, but their symbology is limited to what they are and nothing more. However, human beings thousands of years ago had no way of distinguishing between reality and the sacred. In language it's referred to as the Holophrasic Theory of Language. Think of it as a "star with the points representing where we are today- cognitive language, scientific language, emotive language, poetic language, utilitarian language- and the center of the star symbolizes that earlier linguistic imploded time when myth was science and science was belief and belief was poetry" (Campbell, 54.) In other words, we have multiple truths as defined by the different languages mentioned above: an emotional truth, ie: "I love you", cannot be proven or disproven by the language of science (although that doesn't seem to keep us from trying: pharamones, what?) It's truth is not denied because of it's lack of scientific proof. But back in the Paleolithic Period (c. 20000 to 8000 BCE) even objects took on all qualities of their sacred implications. Stories were told to help people understand the sacred ramifications of the world around them. "The earliest mythologies taught people to see through the tangible world to a reality that seemed to embody something else. ... When these early people looked at a stone, they did not see an inert, unpromising rock. It embodied strength, permanence, solidity and an absolute mode of being... (Armstrong, 16.)

Now that, to me, sounds a lot like Joan Watson's Introduction to Sculpture class. I think it took her an entire semester to get us seeing material for what it embodies, not how easy it was to work with or whether we would be forced to use a hot glue gun (what?!? Hot glue!! Fired from art school!) But I'll get to this in a second.

Ok, so back to myth. Throughout human development myths, in this case orally transmitted stories, were told in order to help us figure out how better to be "more fully human." Logic and reason can allow us to kill animals and eat them in order to avoid starvation, but it could never help us cope with our grief or with the greater questions of humanity that were inflicted by such a violent action. They were stories about how to act toward eachother, toward the planet, and toward the animals we hunted. When we turned to agriculture, the stories turned toward tales of copulation and fertility. Once we developed cities, our myths and "gods" shifted to reflect city-living. It wasn't until we started to live by the rules of industrialization and capitalism that that the Institution of Myth was fatally challenged.

The birth of Western Civilization in Europe (c. 1500 give or take a few hundred years) was closely followed by the fracturing of Christianity, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial/Consumer revolution. As each of these developments were solely founded upon ideas of Logic the human need for myth was negated. Myth was now seen as something useless, false and outmoded. "Unlike myth, logos must correspond to facts; it is essentially practical;... it constantly looks ahead to achieve a greater control over our environment or to discover something fresh" (Armstrong, 121). The world that we are living in today has been without Myth- Myth as human beings have understood it since the dawn of understanding- for almost 500 years, and the psychological toll has been obvious. "As early as the sixteenth century, we see more evidence of a numbing despair, a creeping mental paralysis, and a sense of impotence and rage as the old mythical way of thought crumbled and nothing new appeared to take its place" (Armstrong, 122).

I think that the evidence of our looking forward is obvious: we can see it in the technology we strive for, the pop culture we cling to, and the fact that nobody respects their elders any more. The grand anomie is obvious, too: anyone living in a big city like Baltimore or Philadelphia can express that sense of overwhelming ennui, that feeling that everyone is trying so hard for no real gain, no change in life, no real ramifications. But are humans capable of living without myth? It seems to me that even as the definition of truth splintered, especially more recently with the rise of postmodernism, we have found ways to fill that need: Art. "In art, liberated from the constraints of reason and logic, we conceive and combine new forms that enrich our lives and which we believe tells us something important and profoundly true" (Armstrong, 9-10).

The parallels between myth and modern conceptual art are astoundingly multifarious.

Art exercises it's own rituals similar to those practiced with mythological story-telling. Where myths' ritualized actions included dance, song, and litany, art has it's own trappings: shows, openings and critiques. Where the responsibility for passing down myth and it's implications rested with chosen individuals, so, too, does the art world have it's hierarchies: artists, critics, art-historians. Art even has it's own sacred spaces- museums, galleries, institutions- in which one is expected to behave in a properly awed and respectful manner.

Artistic concepts are basically metaphors that make social and historical references.  Materials take on certain (and uncertain) symbologies through their inherent characteristics and their history:  how we as a species (and more specifically our place in the species: race, religion, nationality) have interacted with a given material effect how we think of it and thusly, how we read certain art expressions.  Art pieces are basically combinations of situations that make new statements.  The topics that artists choose to explore reflect society, history, technology, future, anthropology- the things that are pressing on the minds of society.  Modern art is a place to ask the important questions away from the baggage of religion.  Secular experiments for a secular society.

However, there are a few differences between myth and modern art that, I feel, are truly rooted in contemporary culture.  Where as myth was the responsibility of one story teller to carry on the traditions and to pass down the stories, modern art is utterly postmodern in it's availablility to anyone with a voice; it accepts that any truth is truth as long as the artists can convince you.

I really like thinking about my participating in the history of myth and humanity.  I love exploring the world through metaphorical eyes and proposing ideas and starting conversations.  I'm glad to be a part of this community.

(Books Referenced:  A Short History of Myth, by Karen Artmstrong, and Artistic Citizenship, by Mary Schmidt and Randy Martin.)