TV Trays and Thrift Store Frames

What is the state of Contemporary Art?

Since we have talked all semester about the impact and influence the internet has had on art today, I simply googled that phrase. The third hit that comes up is a link to a Washington Post review by WP critic Blake Gopnik. He is decidedly unhappy with what he saw in three massive European shows.

The first pieces I will talk about are quite different, McCracken on the right and Davila on the left. Gopnik has this to say: Noting the juxtaposition betweem McCracken's work and Davila's, Post critic Blake Gopnik writes, Documenta "curators are equally committed, apparently, to a bevy of extra-sloppy, ugly-is-beautiful, sex-themed allegories."

I think this is a good start in showing where contemporary is today, and what critics are saying about it. Essentially, they are as lost as the up-and-coming artists are. I still stand by my opinion that when it comes to Post Modernism, anything goes. I don't think an artists has any limits - subject matter, material, installation, performance, electronic media - it is ALL SYSTEMS GO!!! If there are any artists today who feel constricted, then they are simply confused by their alternatives. It is because they have no boundaries that they are lost. They are still thinking like college students. They need an assignment with parameters. They are coming out of college and are just standing there with the deer-in-the-headlights look in their eyes going, "Okay, now what do I do?"

I was very happy with the class that I am writing this blog for - the teacher was particularly enthusiastic about Art History from 1960, and also clearly loved to instigate conflict. Her favorite comment: "Fascinating!" I am old enough that I still think of Spock when I hear that word used singularly, but she is far younger than me, so I am pretty sure she does not have the same connection to that word as I do. (A plastic Spock, just for you Rachel!)

Aside from that, we were always encourage to spew about our likes and dislikes - every time we came to class. It was the mediocre work that was the worst - she needed to show us stuff that either elicited an "I love it!" or an "I hate it!" Anything in the middle was boring. If it did not bring out strong emotions from us, she didn't spend any time on it. She went out of her way to find artists and works that were strong emotionally. Isn't that what art is all about - stirring you to emotions? Don't you always remember all of the really awesome art you have seen? But don't you also always remember the really awful stuff? I think they both are burned equally into my brain cells.

The Davila piece shown above reminds of our assignment of appropriated art. One of our class members bought a framed piece of (expletive) from a thrift store, and painted some additional things on top of it. Perfect for the assignment. I have done this exact things in the past with my young boys - bought framed pieces at the thrift store, primed them over, and given them their own "masterpiece" substrates to work on. I have also taken the same approach a few times in art therapy projects.This was a little intimidating at first for my boys, but the senior citizens who worked on this for art therapy loved it. They all had an inner DaVinci going on and were thrilled that it was already framed and ready to go.

I think my boys were more interested in painting out some TV trays and covering them with their new designs. They knew they were going to be a surface to eat on, and we finished them with several coats of clear polycrylic to help protect them. They also use them for play - marbles work great because there is a lip on the edge to keep things from rolling off, army guys work great - small enough to make a whole battlefield, and just writing and drawing. They are so proud of these, and I love the fact that we made art they could use and appreciate every day. The framed paintings we appropriated from the thrift store? Those never got hung. They were never that excited about the finished product. Were they intimidated by the thought that a framed piece of art was not within their abilities? Maybe. They mostly just weren't sure what to paint. The TV trays? No hesitation. They both jumped right in. The only difference I can clearly see is the big frame - it must have been a little too much for them.

The Davila piece looks like an appropriated framed piece. Maybe it was another of the artist's pieces that did not sell, so he added a bunch to it. Maybe it was his practice palette - I've seen some really beautiful palettes that end up being hung for art. Accidental art. That is contemporary.

Then you look at McCracken's minimalist piece from the late 80's and say, "Yeah, that is still relevant today. That is still contemporary art". To me, it clearly took more time and effort than Davila's, but that is not singularly what makes it contemporary art.

After trying so hard this entire semester to define art, to declare if art is alive or dead, to identify art when I see it, and finally to ask what the state of contemporary art is today - I am still not sure I have any definitive answers. I am not sure anyone in our class does, including the intelligent, knowledgeable, and passionate instructor (you can call me a suck-up, but those adjectives are sincere).

What I have learned is this: I am sincere and passionate about the art I create. I am filled with emotion that I am trying to express when I work on the pieces I work on. It is important to me to instill a reaction in the people that view my art. Last of all, I deeply hope that I am creating a memorable image for people to carry for the rest of their lives. I want them to remember my work in ten or twenty or fifty years and say, "Yeah, I remember that. It was kind of cool and it made me think."

The Plight of the Mega-Artist

Oh please. I can't believe that we spent an entire class period on this "plight". Wah wah wah, cry me a river. What? You, as a Super Star, have too much money? Too much fame? Too much recognition? Well if it's enough, then stop doing what you are doing. Go away. Go into hiding. Surely you have enough money that you can afford to be anonymous - if you really want to, that is.

The thing is, I don't think you want the anonymity. I don't think that you really want to go away. I think you are addicted to your fame, deserved or not, and now you truly cannot get enough of it. You are so persecuted. You are so pursued. The press won't leave you alone. Why don't you try this: Try farting every time you are interviewed - tv, radio, internet, or old fashioned newspaper and magazine interviews, just try farting. It would be best to do the SBD's - silent but deadly. My ex-husband was a pro at those. I am sure you can put together just the right combination of food and drink to time the release of your natural gases with an interviewer asking, "So what is next for you, SuperStar? What can you possibly tackle next that will turn to gold?"

I just have to say this to you, SuperStar: lead, follow, or get out of the way. Don't stand at the front of the line and complain, you big, whiny baby. In Wanda's infinite wisdom, "Shut Up and Like It or Get Out" Cafe.

Wanda's - Shut Up and Like It or Get Out Cafe

My friend (Little Lori) sent me a link to this amazing work by Washington artist Nicole Dinardo. This is so commercial and so fun and so technically breathtaking. I realize it could never be considered "high art". You are never going to see this in a gallery, or at least not a traditional gallery.

In a story that appears in the King5.com webpage (Snohomish, Washington), we learn the following information about the artist:

In her Snohomish paint shop, Nicole Dinardo took her hobby of airbrush painting, applied it to one of the hottest selling appliances, and turned it into gold.
They are custom-painted KitchenAid mixers, selling from $450 to $1,400 a piece.
"You're paying for an original piece of art on a really functional item," said Dinardo.
First she made them for family, then for friends.

"This one here I did for a dear friend of mine Mariah," she said, as she showed off a pistachio green mixer painted with birch tree branches, birds and Swarovski crystals. "I know the birch trees signify something that goes back into her family, and the birds, everything on here is personal and emotional to her."
She made a gift for a grandma, with handprints and drawings from her grandchildren. Another one was for a soldier in Afghanistan, who had an animal print mixer made for his sister.
Now Dinardo makes them for celebrities. She showed us a pink on pink one for Katy Perry, a cream colored mixer with flowers she made for Britney Spears, and a yellow patterned mixer with "T's" all over it for Tori Spelling.
A gold and black pattern she was working on is for Beyonce.
"Beyonce's will actually be 22 karat gold (leaf), versus this one that is painted to look like gold," said Dinardo.
And now she's custom-painting 30 mixers for the swag bag at the Oscars. What an endorsement for a single mom, who seven years ago asked to be an apprentice at an auto design company.

"I get lots of networking opportunities that allow me to do work for those people, which is really wonderful."
Dinardo is swamped with orders. She says waiting time for a custom mixer is probably three months away. But she is offering gift certificates for Christmas.

Visit her website, Un Amore. and her Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/customkitchencouture?ref=ts&sk=wall#!/unamorecustomdesigns.

Like I said earlier, this is not "high art", but it is so flawless, it would make Jeff Koons envious. I like the variety of styles and looks that she achieves, but I also like the personalization she is willing to do for people. In her website she does have a few mixers that are listed for sale the were spec pieces for her, but it appears she has a mile long list waiting for her to complete custom orders. I really like the fact that she is combining her clear love for authentic automobile detailing with kitchen appliances. I have seen painted refrigerators and stoves before, but I have not seen customized small appliances before.

You must go to her website and see more than mixers. It is filled with other items she has painted - lots of skateboard decks - some were pink with skulls and bows, an old black tram with blue flames that has been re-chromed, and other appliances. She also has a few pieces of what appear to be wall-art, I mean like canvases (or whatever substrate she uses), flat pieces hung on the wall, like a regular painting. When you look at those pictures (I couldn't copy and paste any of those pics), notice the background of the photos. Some are obviously taken right in or near the shop she paints in, but most are taken in what appears to be a boutiquey gift shop. I wonder if it is her shop, or if she just places her items in other people's shops for consignment. I am guessing the latter because she seems to have a long list of waiting customers.

The last mixer I had was a "vintage piece", similar to the one shown at left. After my friends' mom passed away, I was helping them with the estate yard sale. The mixer was one of the things left at the end of the day so I got it for $2 (they didn't want to take my money, but I insisted). It was black and chrome and reminded me of my mom's kitchen (although we were never rich enough to have a mixer on a stand, she had a smaller hand-held unit. But it was a design of that era, so it was nostalgic for me to use it. It had a bad cord right where it connected to the actual plug end, so I had to make sure it was positioned just right when using it to ensure that electricity would actually run through it. Sometimes I was actually stupid enough to hold the cord, pushing towards the outlet, to make it run. I thought a number of times I needed to replace the cord on that thing, but I kept using it. Until one Thanksgiving Day when I was mixing the mashed potatoes with my awesome, vintage mixer, holding the cord just right, and got the hell shocked out of me. I saw stars. Without any hesitation, and without saying a thing, I picked the entire stand up, with the mixer bowl full of Thanksgiving mashed potatoes, and dropped the entire thing in the trash.

I have always wanted one of these KitchenAid models, and my dreams came true a few years ago. My friends Diane & Ralph were having the grand opening for the spectacular showroom at Ador Kitchens & Baths (http://adoronline.com/Culinary.html). Part of the night's festivities was a drawing for a number of kitchen goodies provided by the Culinary Institute of America. I won the mixer! Unbelievable! I don't win things in drawings or raffles. I don't win lotteries, even small ones. I was very excited, since I had been mixer-less since the Thanksgiving fiasco. My model is a nice gun-metal gray, and is top-of-the line (shown at right). One of my daughters said it was nicer than the one they had at the bakery she worked at. I will probably never be able to afford all of the accessories that can be had, but it came with a few attachments and one of them was a dough hook, so I was very excited. I am still excited about my KitchenAid mixer.

My future, perfect kitchen will be finished diner-style and I will have a large sign in neon running the length of the long wall above the counter that will proclaim, "Wanda's - Shut Up and Like It or Get Out Cafe". Wanda's will be a big, swirly pink script. Most of the other text will be seafoam green in smaller block letters. "Get Out" will be in either white or ruby red, and it will be set on a flasher. I suppose if I had the money to swing the whole diner thing complete with a neon sign, I could afford one of these mixers. I will order it to have the neon sign painted as a distorted reflection on the top of the mixer. In reverse. I should probably just budget for that, since I may be able to afford that LONG before the whole diner thing happens. I like that idea, working on the vision, keeping the image in front of me every day.

Nicole Dinardo is able to utilize her artistic talents in many ways, and the customized mixer thing has taken off for her. Like I said earlier, this is not "high art", but it is amazing and marketable. She is in demand for what she does. It will never be in a museum, but it will earn her a very comfortable and respectable living. So I have to ask myself, is my goal to be a successful, commercial artist, like Miss Dinardo? Or is my goal to produce masterpieces? In my typical over-achieving manner, I intend on doing both. I would like to have fun with my art, creating with humor and talent and thought along the way. In this path of creating, I sincerely hope that I am able to come up with something that has a little bit more of an impact than painted mixers. I would dearly love to create a masterpiece of my own generation, something that speaks on several levels to not just my peers, but to the generations of my children and grandchildren.

Camping with Mark Dion

I loved watching the PBS video in class of Mark Dion. He is very contemporary and very appealing to me. He reminds me that so much of my house and life is filled with art, I should sell tickets at my front door to My Art Museum. Let's take a little tour and see what we can see in My Art Museum.

The first exhibit is titled "Camping with Mark Dion". This is what my husband's work room and all of his campsites look like. Seriously. He is a leather artist, making period correct saddles and holsters. He should have been born 150 years ago. He focuses on the immediate post-Civil War era, but is generally interested in the history of the cowboy in the American West. The items you see in this first photo are laying all over my house. I have those same wooden nail kegs, wooden barrels, old leather doctor satchels, seriously old trunks (they make great coffee tables!), nets, traps - all of it.

The next display in My Art Museum is really funny to me because it reminds of a story that one of my husband's high school classmates told me at the first class reunion I attended with him. My husband walked to and from school with his rifle - it was allowed in those days - he was squirrel hunting both ways. He usually got one or two on the way to school, he would leave his gun in the Principal's office - that was called "gun-control" back then - and then hang the squirrels in his locker. This locker mate was always terrified because he never knew what sort of dead animal would be hanging in his locker when he got to school. I guess it was a fox one time. In any case, he was too afraid to ask my husband to please refrain from this practice on the  way to school. He also couldn't find anyone to trade locker mates with him. So he silently endured it for two years. It would be very likely that you would find this scene in one of my husband's campsites as well.





Next on the tour of My Art Museum is trunks filled with plastic toys. As I said earlier, we have plenty of old trunks, and they make great storage. My two young boys also have plenty of toy guns. I love this display - all the bright colored modern plastic guns inside of an old trunk - this is a great contrast! It makes me smile.

After that we find the coffin croquet set. I like this piece because like the plastic guns, it takes an item associated with fun and games, and turns it a little bit macabre by placing it in a coffin-shaped box. For the extra bit of final humor, we include wheels on the coffin to complete the croquet set. I grew up playing croquet in my backyard, but I know it is a much older lawn game than that. However, in My Art Museum, my croquet set would be stored in a wooden ammunition crate. They are the right length and just the right depth. This piece has humor and it makes me smile!

The next display in My Art Museum is the swizzle sticks and buttons. This is also a delightful piece for my eye - it is organized and obsessive and colorful - and filled completely with cheap, everyday items that may have been found on the ground. Again, this kind of stuff is all over my house - I pull it out of my lint trap from my dryer and sweep it out from underneath my couches. I really didn't know that I should be cleaning it off, saving it, and putting it in shadow boxes. Is it important that they are clean or can I leave the dust bunnies attached? Hmmmm......

The last picture we see in My Art Museum tour is not something inside of my house, but I could create this in my yard with the things inside of my house. I seriously love this display. Placing the books and the pictures on a tree - this is great fun to me and hugely appreciated as art. All kidding aside, this is the kind of art I love - just about anything with books turns my art on. We have bags and hanging shelves that look like old wooden swings and old pictures and books and books and more books. This is simply breathtaking. I would seriously do this in my front yard, but I would have to have a smaller tree. In my yard I have two-hundred-year-old oaks. Their first branch is about fifteen feet off the ground. I could nail the pictures right on the trunk, and I could hang ropes from the lowest branches, but it would be mostly destroyed on the first windy day. I could see this same kind of approach to a tree inside of my house. I would love to set this up on the landing of my main staircase. In one corner would be the main trunk, and then the branches could reach up two stories tall!

My Art Museum is not intended to slam Mark Dion. I think he is a great artist and I really enjoy his pieces. It really does remind me to examine my own environment and see what kind of art I have been living with my whole life. Seeing more of his pieces makes this thought run through my head: You know all of those people who go to a show and say "I could've done that" or "My kid could've done that"? Do those people go home and "do it"? Or encourage their kids to "do it"? After seeing this book tree, I know that I would seriously consider creating this in one corner of my house. This would be a great installation piece for me in my house. It would not be an original idea, it would be appropriated art. It would also not be something I would consider selling. It would be something that I would love. It would be something that I could see and enjoy everyday. It would be something that was humorous and tender and filled with memories. It would be something that would inspire me to create my own art that would hopefully fill the viewers with those same emotions. If my art could do that, it would mean that I could stop charging admission to My Art Museum and start charging to sell my work!

The Fame Game

In our last class we were able to just flip through old magazines - it was great. Our professor had a pretty complete collection of ArtForum and Art News magazines with some dates going back into the 1990's. After spending the few classes before the last one discussing contemporary artists, or art from the 1990's and 2000's - it was kind of cool to see the names of artists we had talked about jump from the pages: Julian Schnabel, Donald Judd, Cindy Sherman, Mickalene Thomas, Walker Evans, Jeff Koons, Claude Monet, Dario Robleto ... wait a second ... Claude Monet?! Uuhhh, he is not a contemporary artist - at least not one of my contemporaries. Or is he?

Did you know that the title of one of Monet's paintings - Impression, Sunrise (1872) - was the inspiration for an art critic to use the term "impressionism"? The critic intended it in a negative way, but the artists claimed it for themselves proudly, and the impressionist movement was born.

Monet was not mentioned in an article, but there was an ad for a gallery show of some of the water lilies which made him famous. It made me really happy to see such an "old school master" in the pages of one of these magazines about contemporary art. Kind of surprised, but really happy.

Think about the implications of that. I see two major points. Number one, Monet is so awesome and so timeless and so without competition in today's art scene, that his stuff is still one of the best things a gallery can show today. Number two, the water lilies are only about a hundred years old, and still considered "contemporary".

There are kids in college today that only think of the world in comparison to their very short life on this planet. Even history majors get a little bit lost when they go past the ends of their noses. Art History majors are labeling any past movement as "old". They tend to not only clump artists together as "everyone from the past", which makes Monet a contemporary of DaVinci, but they think that the only artists that should be considered "contemporary" are the ones that are alive, or worse yet, only the ones they have heard of.

This is a problem of perspective. This is a problem of not having a grasp of the big picture. I can see that one of the main goals of all colleges is to ingrain a sense of purpose in their students. They encourage them to believe that they can make a difference in the world. They charge them with saving the planet. They convince them that they all have superpowers and that they are invincible.

Maybe there should be a required class on campus called "Perspective" so all college students can see how insignificant they really are in the big scheme of things. I'm not trying to be a pessimist, I am trying to be a realist. Are any of those lofty goals attainable? Absolutely. Do I have the next great artist of my generation sitting in my classroom? I certainly hope so. I see the spark of potential in so many of my classmates and I do everything I can to encourage them. It would be magical if I could see them reach fame and fortune and be able to say, "Yeah, Saul was in my Art History class and he always had a lot to say." (Love you Saul!)

We all have the ability to make a difference, whether it be in the art world or in giving a homeless person the coat off of your back. You need to find your spark and use it to start a fire.

Ex Libris Electronica - Jenny Holzer

Ex Libris is a Latin phrase, meaning literally, "from the books". It is often used to indicate ownership of a book, as in "from the books of..." or from the library of... - Wikipedia


Jenny Holzer is an American artist that is most popular for using text in a variety of ways. She has incorporated the art of the message into a wide variety of substrates - paper, marble, LED message readers, and simply projecting text on the exteriors of buildings.

Generally speaking I can say that I really like her stuff. Any artist that uses text and words is going to attract my attention, and to use it in traditional as well as non-traditional ways shows me that the artist is really serious about the words, the letters, and the message. Changing the method of delivery is simply the artist's  experimentation in reaching a wider base of viewers by using a wider variety of materials.

My favorite approach may be the simple marble benches with carved text in them. Maybe because it is such a traditional material. Maybe because it reminds me of history. Perhaps because of the similarity to tombstones. I'm not exactly sure if it is one specific thing that draws me to these pieces.

While I am really pulled into the large projections on the sides of buildings, I have not been privileged enough to see one of these in person, I have only seem images in books or online. I know I am losing the "big wow" factor by not seeing them in their natural environment in their super-large scale. This reminds me of the story of the Corcoran canceling the 1989 Robert Mapplethorpe show due to political pressures. A demonstration to protest the cancellation of this show consisted of projecting slides of Mapplethorpe's work onto the exterior walls of the Corcoran (seen at right). Since this was in 1989 and Holzer was utilizing LED signs in the early and mid-eighties, I can only assume that her groundbreaking work was the impetus for the organizers of the protest against the Corcoran.

As far as color and movement, I will have to say that I prefer Holzer's interior gallery installations probably more than some of her exterior works. It is all about the color and the flashing, scrolling messages - and they are just mesmerizing. Those blues and greens and purples and reds and oranges all buzzing and reflecting on the white gallery walls. Love it. Again, I can only imagine what these would look like in person, but those cool colors combined with hot electricity - just the thought of it gives me goose bumps and makes my hair stand on end. After watching some the clips that I can find on YouTube, I realize that it would not be possible for me to walk through a gallery filled with these pieces because bright lights are a migraine trigger for me. Something that is fascinating about the gallery installations is the illusion that although the hardware ends at the plane of the wall, the viewer has the impression that the message continues to scroll right through the walls; that it continues on the other side. That's just weird.

Jenny Holzer has very successfully used electronic message centers as an art form. After selling these items as signs for many years, it makes me want to approach many of my sign clients and see if I can sell them on multiple installations of single-line units. That is another thing to point out - everything I saw Holzer using were single-line message centers. It would make them easier to arrange and sync, but it makes me wonder of someone is out there doing the same thing with multiple-line message centers, or even the super-large Jumbo-Trons, like the kind of thing you see in sporting arenas. What is really cool about those mega-units is the fact that when you are standing right next to them, you can't see an image or a word at all. It's very similar to the pixelated effect of the prints used on old billboard images. Those were printed at about 20 or 30 dpi - or "dots per inch" for those of you who are too young to know what that means. If you were holding even a square yard of one of those prints, you could not tell what it was. Standing right next to a jumbo-tron would be like being in the middle of a well-lit Christmas tree - it's all just bright flashing lights.