Sculpture and Advertising

Using animal training and sculpture, this funny Dog Goldberg machine advertises the brand Beneful. 

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Sadly, the creative minds of this ad are uncredited.

Sculpture and Painting

The year 1642 meets 2013. In a shopping mall.
This video is funny, exciting, superbly executed and very clever.

Why does it fill me with despair?

Holland's Rijksmuseum staged this elaborate tableau vivant of Rembrandt's "Guards of the Night
in a busy shopping mall. As marketing for the museum, it demands your attention.
If Art doesn't sell, entertainment certainly does.



Is making a spectacle the only way to get an already distracted public to notice art at all?

One of my problems with this approach is the enforced mash-up of spectacle and private life.
I hate being a captive audience. I don't know about life in Holland, but here in the USA,
if I saw people with guns and spears coming towards me while shopping, I'm not shopping anymore.

I'm gone.
Too many real crazies for me to stay around to see if it's really just an advertisement.
Is art supposed to ambush you?

Looking at art depends upon your active engagement with seeing what the artist intended.
Art about the art is a hallway of mirrors, endless commentary but no dialog of you and the art.

After the excitement of this enactment, who is going to be satisfied with spending 30 minutes quietly looking at this or any other static work of art?

What do you think?

Sculpture and Dance

Exquisite partnerning in this dance, Flesh. Choreography by Iván Pérez

Nederlands Dans Theater II
Premiered 24th of Februrary 2011
Lucent Dans Theater.

Choreography Iván Pérez
Music: Arvo Pärt, Eric Withacre
Dancers: Sarah Murphy, Chloé Albaret, Astrid Boons, Meng-Ke Wu, César Faria Fernandes, Quentin Roger, Spenser Theberge, Marco Blázquez.
Costume design: Carlijn Petermeijer
Light design: Tom Visser
Decor concept: Iván Pérez
Poem: Keith Douglas
Voice: Sarah Murphy
Sounds editing: Thijs Scheele


www.ivanperezaviles.com

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Sculpture and Construction

What comes down must go UP!

There was no margin for error because of my schedule. The new storage shed went up three days before the Siting Sculpture in the Garden workshop. Two men from Tuff Shed installed it in one day.
Watch how they did it.....

Installation of my new sculpture storage shed from patrick gracewood on Vimeo.

Sculpture and Taxidermy

In the Middle Ages, sculpture was an educational tool. The illiterate could see narrative Biblical stories carved into church facades. We'd like to think we've come so far from then.

We haven't. Not really.
Sculpture still tells us stories of meaning, of Eden's lost.

Photography by Michael Kirby Smith for the NYTimes

Lonesome George, the last surviving member of the Pinta Island subspecies of Galapagos tortoise, died last year.  His body is being preserved, a combination of his actual shell and castings taken from his body, so that he can go on display at the research station in the Galapagos Islands where he lived for forty years.
Giant tortoises can live to be 200 years old. Sculpture, even taxidermy, can last even longer.

Alginate casts of Lonesome George's head

The giant tortoise is a symbol for conservation of the Galapagos Islands.  "George was a reminder of what we as a species are capable of doing out of ignorance." said Johanna E. Barry the Galapagos Conservancy 's Founder and president.  Read the article in the NY Times here.

Sculpture and Demolition

The essence of sculpture is an experience of form, space and volume.

Making no claims to art quality, the demolition of my very tired shed gives you a sense of
solidity and mass transformed into space and void. And it's funny to watch.

Demolishing the shed from patrick gracewood on Vimeo.

I hired a good crew. They took it down and hauled it away in two hours, cleaned up the site and didn't destroy a single plant in the garden. Writing their check was a pleasure.

Sculpture and Molds

Fee, Fi Fo Fum, I should have eaten those baby squirrels when I had the chance. Crunch, crunch.

But, no, they were so tiny and helpless when I discovered them.
I closed the shed and let them be.
And now I am paying for it.

There were generations of squirrel nests in the shed. They pooped on every mold stored there and used the protective cardboard covers for nests! It's filthy.
And so discouraging to see my life's work covered in feces.

"Everyone's a critic! Those squirrels may know shit but they don't know art."

 Wash and scrub each mold. This soapy mold of the peony looks like a winter scene.

Clean and in temporary storage in the garage while we tear the old shed down.
The new building will be squirrel proof! And probably baited. This is war.

The positive aspect is I'm finally organizing and cataloging my work.