Lucas County Art Festival - Bottitudes and Fahrenheit 1220

Had some great conversations at the Lucas County Arts Council Arts Festival this past Saturday. The Death of Books shared booth space with Susan Lee's Bottitudes. Both sides of the booth had people giggling and chuckling, so it was a good day.

I had a fine collection of wire baskets from an old swimming pool locker that I used to stage the robot sculptures. They seemed to work fairly well - at least I was able to raise them off the table and isolate each one individually.

The Bots are made of raku fired clay and then embellished with a variety of metal hardware, jewelry pieces, watch parts, springs, and screws. They are then mounted on pedestals and coated with some really cool, iridescent layers of paint.

Susan Lee's Madonna of Too Much Information was featured front and center - she garnered a lot of attention.

 

I also displayed Fahrenheit 1220 - an aluminum and copper wire book I made to honor the passing of Ray Bradbury in 2012. I have displayed it in other venues, but it didn't seem to get as much traffic and attention as it did on Saturday. It was shown at this festival next to a hard-back copy of Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.
Once people realized that 1220 is the melting point of aluminum, they seemed to "get it".

 

What I learned in displaying this historically pivotal novel, however, is that people still think the book is about censorship and book burning. While books do get burned (in the print and the film version), Bradbury himself is on record more than once telling us that it is a story about the digital pablum that television spews at the viewers and about how our brains are turning into mush because of it.

I am beginning to think that conceptual art is not a good direction for me. Quite frankly I am not sure I enjoy explaining my artistic premise over and over and over again. Should I be satisfied with a body of work if I am the only one who feels that it is expressing what I want the viewer to see? Or what I want them to think? If the visual art I create requires me to print a full page of typed information to explain the concept, 

the history of the creation, and the end result, have I succeeded at all? 

Did Bradbury's book fail because the message he wanted to convey was missed by most of the readers?

The Death of Books at the Des Moines Public Library

A few pieces from this series were seen on display during January and February at the main location for the Des Moines Public Library. The director, Greg Heid, saw them when they were on display at the Des Moines Arts Festival and asked me to be in touch with him. Even though it took me many months to get in touch with him again (I was busy trying to graduate with five majors and then we had the move to Chariton), he was still interested in having them on display.

If you are a regular visitor at the Central Branch of the Des Moines Public Library, you would have seen these both in some glass cases (as shown) and also pulled out and put on feature pillars for two receptions held at the library. 

Director Gregory Heid had this to say: "We received some great comments from the display. They did elicit some good discussions on the future of books. About the only negative comment that we received was someone who said that it was not their, 'cup of tea', but she could understand the artistic and social commentary of the works." If all I ever accomplish with this body of work is to make some people smile, make some people think, and make some people mad - I will consider it a wildly successful artistic journey.