Sculpture and Upholstery

The worst aspect of artistic blues is the tendency towards "TERMINAL UNIQUENESS".
The focus narrows down to one's own troubles exclusively.

Reupholstering a chair can wake you up. 
This chair as been in R's family for three generations...

Removing layers of fabric, you see how folks made do with not quite enough material and their solutions to that problem.
You see how used (dirty) the material became before it was reupholstered.

You can see how faded the material is by looking at the reverse side. Same for the bottom layer of material.

They were taking care of other things.
They didn't throw it away. With not much money, they made things last.

There was no horse hair padding in this chair, just cotton and straw. Old straw.

Somewhere in the craft of reupholstering an old chair,
there comes an understanding of how others have lived
and struggled..........................................That awareness is a good path out of terminal uniqueness.

Sculpture and Upholstery

What do you do when you're between big projects?
Or discouraged with your work?
Or just plain discouraged?

A project that requires precision but not a great deal of thinking helps fight existential blues.
I re-upholster tired chairs.

Reupholstery is exacting, tedious, and demands all my attention. But it isn't rocket science.

(Or ART.)

It's one simple step after another. There may be surprises but there are no big un-answered questions.

This chair belonged to the grandmother of my friend Richard Brand. He selected the material because was similar to what was on the chair when she was alive.

 Still a link to a loved one, his chair is now both old and new.

And those existential blues? They went away somewhere in the process of working.

Sculpture and Fireworks

Happy 4th of July

Most people don't think of fireworks as sculpture, but they are.

Someone designed each one to explode in that particular way with that unique set of colors.

And best of all, the big fireworks make you aware of the space and time that they occupy.

What do you experience watching fireworks?

Sculpture and Ennio Marchetto

How do you distill what you are trying to convey in your art 

into the most simple and direct expression?

Ever try to make a paper costume? Or do an imitation of someone?
It's a lot harder than it looks.
Ennio Marchetto, the living paper cartoon, makes it look easy (and funny.)



What makes Marchetto's work more than drag lip synch is the creativity of the costumes and his skill in movement and suggestion. Performers are conjured up with an iconic costume or gesture. Watch his Gene Kelly glide, and Liza Minelli's tortured contortions. His transition from Bollywood to the Supremes is inspired.

His video got me thinking about style and styling.
It's not just what you make, but HOW you think about making and presenting your work.

Ennio Marchetto 

Sculpture and Presentation

 Without good presentation sculpture is often dead.

While a good base shows the art well, it is also designed is to protect the art. 

This very quirky Dogon antique wooden puppet suffered from being horizontal.
I offered to make a base for this puppet because I wanted to understand how it was made and used.
When you help restore artwork it feels like you are the second person to really study the art.
 
Parts of the crest were broken, the tip of the bill was damaged from being dropped. The cord string is hand made and fragile. Also fragile is the lower bill because it is mobil, connected to the head by that cording.

I used a dark brown waxed linnen cord to to stabilize the lower bill. Two knots at upper and lower bill on both sides restrict the movement while allowing enough play to give the idea that the bill was made to move and clatter in a dance ceremony.

The art is much more animated now that it's vertical.

To compliment the hand carved textures of the art, I carved the post and smaller base to match. That texture and hand work also hides the fact that I don't have a chop saw and can't make a crips square cut! (Perfection is vastly over-rated.)

The base is a scrap of ipe wood from a deck project. It's heavy which is good for a base, but its rich color was too vibrant so I spray painted it black so it didn't upstage the art. 








Louise Nevelson was right, wood looks great painted black.

Sculpture and Dance

Reality is so much more interesting than computer generated special effects. What the trained human body is capable of doing is truly amazing.

Montreal's Post-Modern Dance company, La La La Human Steps, performing 'Human Sex'.
The choreographer is Édouard Lock, the feral blond is dancer Louise Lecavalier. Her equally talented partner is not credited.



Here's another version with live music, caught from much closer up.

Notice how the cropping intensifies the visceral, emotional impact of the duet
but looses the overall shape and skill of the dancing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q876pJ0tWE

Sculpture and Painting

Thanks to Sue Favinger Smit at Ancient Artist for recommending What Painting Is.

I'm enjoying it. You might too. 

"Sooner or later every one of a painter’s possessions will get stained.
First to go are the studio clothes and the old sneakers that get the full shower of paint every day.
Next are the painter’s favorite books, the ones that have to be consulted in the studio.
Then come the better clothes, one after another as they are worn just once into the studio
and end up with the inevitable stain.
The last object to be stained is often the livingroom couch, the one place where it is possible to relax
in comfort and forget the studio. When the couch is stained, the painter has become a different
creature from ordinary people, and there is no turning back.

No one who has not experienced that condition can understand the odd feeling that
accompanies it. When every possession is marked with paint, it is like giving up civilian clothes
for jail house issue. The paint is like a rash, and no matter how careful a painter is, in the end it is
impossible not to spread the disease to every belonging and each person who visits the studio.
Some artists keep fighting it, and they turn up for work wearing clothes with only a few discrete
stains. Others give way, and they become funny mottled creatures, like GI’s in perpetual
camouflage."

From the book, What Painting Is by James Elkins
I'm enjoying it. You might too.