Finished model

This is a model for a large scale outdoor sculpture proposal.  The scale is 1 inch = i foot.  In the full scale version, the crocheted part would be done with rope.

String, Felt, Thread

This book looks nice.

A beautifully illustrated history of the use of fiber in the American art world in the postwar era

String, Felt, Thread presents an unconventional history of the American art world, chronicling the advance of thread, rope, string, felt, and fabric from the “low” world of craft to the “high” world of art in the 1960s and 1970s and the emergence today of a craft counterculture. In this full-color illustrated volume, Elissa Auther discusses the work of American artists using fiber, considering provocative questions of material, process, and intention that bridge the art–craft divide.

Drawn to the aesthetic possibilities and symbolic power of fiber, the artists whose work is explored here—Eva Hesse, Robert Morris, Claire Zeisler, Miriam Shapiro, Faith Ringgold, and others—experimented with materials that previously had been dismissed for their associations with the merely decorative, with “arts and crafts,” and with “women’s work.” In analyzing this shift and these exceptional artists’ works, Auther engages far-reaching debates in the art world: What accounts for the distinction between art and craft? Who assigns value to these categories, and who polices the boundaries distinguishing them?

String, Felt, Thread not only illuminates the centrality of fiber to contemporary artistic practice but also uncovers the social dynamics—including the roles of race and gender—that determine how art has historically been defined and valued.

http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/A/auther_string.html

new project idea: Strainer

My family and I moved out of the small house we had lived in since I was a baby  into my great grandparents house the summer before I left for college.  The move had a big impact.  One way is that I started paying attention to the objects around me more.  So many of my great grandparents things were still in the house.  Things they had made and altered to fit what they needed and wanted.  Things that had been lived with by members of my family for about a billion (50 or so) years.  Lots of times when I would come home from college, it would be weird because I wasn’t familiar with the house. For instance, I still don’t know where all the dishes go when I put them away.  Also, our dishes have doubled because we now have all of their old stuff.  Alot of the junky things we had from the old house got thrown away in the move.  I associated these things most specifically with that place, the old kitchen, the old basement, etc…  I guess because they never got a new life at our new house.  I often try to remember these things and their details.  For me they become memories of the old house itself and the feelings associated with it.

My idea for my next project is to make one of these items.  It was a plastic, sea-foam green triangle shaped strainer.  It was annoying because it never stacked well with the other dishes.

It was shaped exactly like this one that I found online. But the holes were different.

Rough sketch.

mock-up, orange only for model. Final will be sea-foam green

stitch detail

By crocheting out the bottom, I hope to imbue it with some of the qualities of the house.  I also want to make it big, like three or four feet wide.  I am not all the way sure why I want to do that.  To get away from the strainers as a sign for it’s function?  If it is small, you imagine using it, if it is big, it starts to represent something else?  Maybe because it was familiar to me when I was literally smaller?  Right now I am planning on fabricating the un-crocheted part out of sheet metal.  This might change.  I am also thinking about hardening the crocheted part with wax.

Material study: Crocheted things hardened with wax

I

still need to work alot of things out about the strainer.  Another project I am thinking about that came out of a lot of the same ideas as the strainer is a French door from my old house.  It would be made of nine glass panels and a door knob crocheted together.  Here are some drawings:

Things I’ve been looking at recently

I have been looking at interesting ways in which people combine crochet and found objects

This is interesting because of its function. There are directions online to show how to crochet reusable "swifter" alternatives

Art St. Louis Exhibit

http://www.artstlouis.org/

My cousin in front of my piece at the exhibit the day before it closed.

updated “Fixed” series

Previously blogged about as “Fixed” Series

updated “Family Study”

Previous entry on this piece

I am not sure about the title for this piece.  These photographs are the final product.

currently untitled

messing around

I actually found a book I was looking for!!!!!!!

Henare, Amiria et al. 2007. Introduction: thinking through things

This is the first time I have found a book I wanted at the library!!!!!!!!But of course, irony wins, and i am at home for break and can’t go get it.

So anyway, the book, I read a good review of it here:

http://blogs.nyu.edu/projects/materialworld/2006/12/thinking_through_things.html

Warning, the review focuses much at the end on the significance of this book choosing to not identify with the label “material culture”, apparently some anthropology hot button issue that went over my head.

The book includes an opening essay followed by a selection of essays.  From the various reviews I read, the book appears to address the negative impact segregating the study of artifacts from society and analytical methods for approaching thingy things generally.

I hope no one checks it out before I get back from break!