Art reader's digest

From "Thinking Through Craft," by Glenn Adamson:

The Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi casts a long, sheltering shadow over the crafts. ... He provides a stable and reassuring point of reference for functionless, formal, abstract sculpture in organic materials -- a description that covers the majority of works sold in the upper stratum of the crafts marketplace....

Constantin Brancusi, Bird in Space
















From a certain perspective, one might say that this is a perfectly acceptable state of affairs.  Who doesn't love Brancusi?  He invented abstract sculpture.  His works have tremendous presence.  He was a master craftsman, and his works show ample evidence of his skill in their carefully shaped volumes and beautifully modulated surfaces.  Perhaps we should be grateful that the flame he lit is still burning in one corner of the art world.  And yet, seem from another perspective, the crafts' adherence to Brancusi seems distinctly reactionary.  His groundbreaking abstract works are now nearly a century old, and have not been "contemporary" since well before the Second World War. ... So what should we make of the craft world's collective homage to Brancusi?  We might simply conclude that the crafts have become a preserve for outmoded models of art.  The crafts, we could argue, are an arena in which those who don't care to pay attention to contemporary art play at being involved in an art historical lineage.  For them Brancusi is not only a source of aesthetic power, but also a convenient rhetorical device.  His precedent authorizes craftspeople to ignore the art discourse of the present day, and permits collectors to pile up objets d'art without worrying about the modern and postmodern avant garde. ....

Brancusi, The Newborn

Sign of the week

Form, Not Function 3 -- Machine piecing

Despite the wide variety of techniques and approaches seen in "art" quilts today, my favorite is still the  plain, flat, unadorned abstract pieced quilt.  Hey, that's the kind I make, so you would expect me to like that genre.  I think they were better represented in this year's Form, Not Function show than they have been in several previous years.

Although the design of these quilts is highly modern in feel, they often carry hints of their traditional heritage, in their geometric forms, often repeated, and the strong contrast of their solid-color pieces.  Cynics might say quilts like this are Nancy Crow wannabes, and it's true, some of the people who do them have been Nancy's students.  But I think the best of them have developed their own voices and their quilts resemble Nancy's work only in format and their general space on the art spectrum.

I already showed you Judy Kirpich's quilt, one of the big winners at FNF and an occupant of this genre.  Here are some others that I particularly liked.  A couple of others will show up in a later post when I talk about machine quilting, because almost all of these quilts are finished that way.

Doormats #1, Marcia DeCamp, 49 x 67"

A classy use of strip piecing, in a limited color palette -- the simplest of elements, but a sophisticated composition with a lot of movement.

City Edge #1, Gerri Spilka, 54 x 58"

Like the quilt above, the simplest of elements -- "ribs" of varying length coming off central spines -- and a limited color palette, but a well balanced composition.  Note how the  six areas of floating rectangles (ribs but no spines, you might say) make a counterpoint to the overall theme.

Dark Side of the Moon, Melinda Snyder, 59 x 41"


















Two geometric motifs -- a split oval and a skinny cross -- combine for a surprisingly varied composition.  The hand-dyes give lots of depth, especially in the areas of low value contrast.

Deserted, Sarah Pavlik, 44 x 50"

Not exactly abstract, but certainly abstracted -- the recognizable chairs are taken to a mysterious place by the disembodied slats in the background, and highlighted by the little arbitrary areas of color.

Modern quilting -- read it now!

Last week I wrote about an article in the Wall Street Journal on Modern Quilting and said that unfortunately you have to be a WSJ subscriber to get the article online.  Messages on the Quiltart email list have pointed out that you can in fact find it, and I tried to provide those links for you.



UPDATE:  Well, folks, I am flummoxed.  Twice I have found the full article online (on different sites) by going to google and typing in "modern quilters stress simplicity, edgy subjects."  But on both occasions when I have tried to link there in my blog post, the link does not deliver you to the full article, just to the WSJ site with a subscriber access block.

If you really want to read the damn article, try the google search.   Try some of the links that show up on the search page and I hope you can find it.  And then I hope you think it's been worth the trouble.

Thanks, WSJ.  (Unlike the NYTimes, which allows nonsubscribers to read several free articles per month.)

Photo suite 73 -- Don't fence me in (very much)

Art reader's digest

From "Art and Fear," by David Bayles and Ted Orland, 1993:

Given a small kernel of reality and any measure of optimism, nebulous expectations whisper to you that the work will soar, that it will become easy, that it will make itself.  And verily, now and then the sky opens and the work does make itself.  Unreal expectations are easy to come by, both from emotional needs and from the hope or  memory of periods of wonder.  Unfortunately, expectations based on illusion lead almost always to disillusionment.

Conversely, expectations based on the work itself are the most useful tool the artist possesses.  What you need to know about the next piece is contained in the last piece.  The place to learn about your materials is in the last use of your materials.  The place to learn about your execution is in your execution.  The best information about what you love is in your last contact with what you love. Put simply, your work is your guide: a complete, comprehensive, limitless reference book on your work.  There is no other such book, and it is yours alone.  It functions this way for no one else.  Your fingerprints are all over your work, and you alone know how they got there.  Your work tells you about your working methods, your discipline, your strengths and weaknesses, your habitual gestures, your willingness to embrace.

The lessons you are meant to learn are in your work.  To see them, you need only look at the work clearly -- without judgement, without need or fear, without wishes or hopes.  Without emotional expectations.  Ask your work what it needs, not what you need.