What was the first piece of art that really mattered to you?
When I was a child, I lived in a Victorian house with a high-walled stone yard that never really got much light. I was standing in the yard one day, looking up at the sky, which was contained as a perfect blue square by the perimeter of the walls. Seconds later, a high altitude aircraft entered the blue square precisely at a corner and I watched it slowly make a diagonal white line to exactly the opposite corner and then it disappeared. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
A friend recently told me about a lie detector test he voluntarily took, to proceed further in his job. It was not necessary for the job he had, but if he wanted to earn more money he had to take the test. He deals with investments, so he is sometimes responsible for information worth a lot of money, therefore, he must be trusted. The test took place over two days, the doctor examining him had 25 years experience using a polygraph. My friend told me about all the different pieces of machinery attached to him; a clip on his finger to measure heart rate,one to measure perspiration. A contraption across his chest which measured breathing rate, and a sensor pad on his seat to detect any tiny unusual movement. I found it fascinating, not exactly the question of 'truth' and 'trust' but the attachment of wires and synapses to the human body. And the fact that this machine was painstakingly designed in the first place, and it still, in 2011, takes 2 days to conduct the test. I am interested in the apparent delicacy of the human body's slight changes influencing this incredible machine, the any other machines that attach to the body, hospital equipment, intravenous drips, dialysis machines...
Partly inspired by Franz Kafka's 'In the Penal Colony' and partly by the American system of capital punishment as well as the current political situation, the piece is an ironic approach to killing and torture machines. A moving megaphone speaker encircles an electric dental chair. The chair is covered in pink fun fur with leather straps and spikes. In the installation are two robotic arms that hover and move- sometimes like a ballet, and sometimes attacking the invisible prisoner in the chair with pneumonic pistons. A disco ball turns above the mechanism reflecting an array of coloured lights while a guitar hit by a robotic wand wails and a wall of old TV’s turns on and off creating an eerie glow.
In our culture right now there is a strange deliberate and indifferent approach to killing. I think that our interest in creating this piece comes from a response to that.
"On average it takes Wigan about eight weeks to complete one sculpture and there is an enormous personal sacrifice involved in his working process. Because the works are so minute, the pulse of the artist's finger could easily destroy the entire work. Wigan therefore has to control his nervous system to ensure he does not make even the tiniest movement. Wigan, when working, enters a meditative state in which his heartbeat is slowed, allowing him to reduce any hand tremors and work between heartbeats.
To carve his figures, Wigan uses surgical blades or hand-made tools, (some of which are custom made out of a sharpened microscopic sliver of Tungsten), which he makes by attaching a shard of diamond to a pin. The sculptures themselves are made of a wide range of materials. Wigan uses for instance nylon, grains of sand, dust fibres, gold and spider's cobweb, depending on the demands of the piece he is working on. To paint his creations, Wigan often uses a hair from a dead housefly, whilst making sure no flies are killed during the artistic process"
"Everyone carries a room about inside them. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one's ears and listens, say at night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall."
After a long break from using this blog for research, i have come back to it but have moved on from knitting. Now I am looking at wallpaper, Glasgow, regeneration in Glasgow, regeneration in the Gorbals, art in the Gorbals, community work, community arts, demolitions, failure of high-rise flats, families being displaced to new homes, leaving the lived in cells of high-rise living... more to come.
First, i'm looking at Stina Wirfelt's films, some are Glasgow based, 'Shelter From The Storm' is especially poignant to my work at the moment.
American artist Vija Celmins makes paintings, drawings and prints. Using charcoal, graphite and erasers she produces delicate monochromatic images based on photographs of the sea, deserts, the night sky and other natural phenomena. Through her slow rigorous approach, the meticulous precision of her technique, and serial exploration of her subjects, Celmins seems to question the nature of representation.
Aurélien Froment
Memory, word games and puzzles; knots, conjuring tricks and cinemaMemory is an inexhaustible cultural goldmine. Sigmund Freud, W.G. Sebald, Barbra Streisand and Plato, amongst others, have offered words of wisdom about this elusive, intractable topic and its connections to knowledge, trauma, exile and love. Countless writers and artists use representations of memories – memoirs, souvenirs, photographs, memorials, albums, archives – as inspiration, material or form. By virtue of its omnipresence, memory is also as banal as it is universally resonant. So, to remark that French artist Aurélien Froment’s work traffics in memory is perhaps predictable. However, Froment approaches memory from the somewhat less conventional angle of its mechanics, which is both a refreshing and challenging aspect of his work. Memory runs through his cultivated maze of installations, photographs, videos, performances and publications like Ariadne’s red thread – which could also be a red herring, a diversion that provides a false sense of interpretative security in the midst of shifting associations, repetitions and slippages....rest of article - http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/aurelien_froment/
Violently displaced from its body, a car engine lies in a pool of leaked oil. In case it should suddenly leap into life again, a military official levels an automatic rifle at the inert lump. Presented as a group of framed inkjet prints, My Neck Is Thinner than a Hair: Engines (2000–3) is the first in a series of works in ‘Funny, How Thin the Line Is: Documents from The Atlas Group Archive’ that examine the spate of car bombs detonated in Lebanon between 1975 and 1991. A wall text informs us that the engine is ‘the only part that remains intact after a car bomb explodes’, and that ‘during the wars photojournalists competed to be the first to find and photograph the engines’.... http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/walid_raad_the_atlas_group/
Judith Baca
Judith (Judy) Baca (b. 1946), a Mexican-American artist and activist working primarily in Los Angeles, has dedicated her career to demonstrating the ways in which public art, created in partnership with community members, can be a force for social change. One of her first undertakings after college was a collaborative mural project aimed at tempering gang violence (1969). In 1976 she co-founded the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), which has been a source of inspiration, support, and sponsorship for projects that address the identities and concerns of underrepresented populations such as women, immigrants, and the economically disadvantaged. Because these murals and related public art installations are located in the neighborhoods in which the participants live, a strong sense of joint ownership accompanies the works’ creation.
Baca’s most celebrated work is The Great Wall of Los Angeles, a mural project begun in 1973 in the Tujunga Flood Control Channel of the San Fernando Valley. Completed over the course of five years, The Great Wall acts as a visual narrative of centuries of California history—especially of that history which has consistently been underrepresented in “official” documents and textbooks. It, and Baca’s mural projects in general, find their stylistic precedents in the works of the Mexican muralists and the W.P.A., yet the social activism and specific themes that they espouse are decidedly contemporary.
Friday, April 30, 2010
About Lynn M Zwerling
When I retired, I established a Knitting Behind Bars project to benefit inmates and the community. Inmates at Jessup Pre Release make small cuddly dolls to be given to truamatized children. Patience, anger management, goal setting and appropriate communications are skills developed. To distribute these inmate-made comfort dolls to first responders. Introduce the "behind the walls" population to the communty. Practise goal setting, anger management and communication skills. The inmates learn vital life skills and accomplish a creative task. Encourage real people to interacte with cons in a creative process. Overview The project began with a handful of men incarcerated in JPRU and now there is a waiting list for future sites and future participants. I need funding for supplies, administrative costs and promotional materials and a stipend for my volunteers. Our plan is to encourage our knitters to "pay it forward" by teaching these life skills to other inmates. I presently have 3 volunteers who go to the prision weekly teaching life skills and knitting. Yes, knitting. I tell the inmates that knitting is the new yoga and they rave about the changes they have seen in their attitudes and relationships. After learning basic knitting skiills, a small, cuddly doll is made by the inmates and then presented in an in-person event to first responders in the community. Concept is to give inmates the opportunity to do something good while incarcerated, to build a bridge to a future community.
Goal is to develop other sites
How will the 50K be Used?
Budget Notes: Cost of traveling to public relations meetings and events Cost of memebership fees for community organizations Transportation cost for volunteers to facilities
"Those of you who feel knitting has changed your life, welcome to the club. I can think of no better occupation to reveal your own creativity" - Kaffe Fassett
"Like so many other crafts, knitting has the potential to create magic in our lives".
From booties and scarves to art and fashion, The Culture of Knitting addresses knitting as art, craft, design, fashion and performance, and as an aspect of the everyday. Drawing on a variety of sources, including interviews with knitters from different disciplines as well as amateurs, the text breaks down hierarchical boundaries and stereotypical assumptions that have previously negated the academic study of knitting. The book also highlights the diversity and complexity of knitting in all its guises.
The Culture of Knitting investigates not merely why knitting is so popular now but also the reasons why knitting has such longevity. By assessing the literature of knitting, manuals, patterns, social and regional histories, alongside testimonial discussions with artists, designers, craftspeople and amateurs, the book offers new ways of seeing and new methods of critiquing knitting - without the constraints of disciplinary boundaries - in the hope of creating an environment in which knitting can be valued, recognized and discussed.
About the author
Joanne Turney is Senior Lecturer in the History and Theory of Design at Bath School of Art and Design.
Contents
Introduction
Chapter One: Knitting: a gendered pursuit?
Chapter Two: Knitting the Past:: Revivalism, Romanticism and Ruralism in Contemporary Knitting
