At a distance

In grey winter days - what art is there unless you seek it out? It is times of “art is where you find it” but sometimes you need to dig deep. A friend describes hanging his surfboard on the wall as art, I find favourite paintings on book covers ( including Agnes Wood’s “The Committee”) and beauty in nappies flapping on the line. Other friends use the weather to stay inside and craft and make art industriously. The children make play dough art which I then have to dig out of the carpet….

In the big world, grumbling continues about the NZ Venice Biennale presence and CNZ, and the Montana books which all seems so distant while I struggle to write or finish anything I start to read (the library fines are building up). So this is writers block huh…?

Winter maybe is a time for quiet contemplation, but I can do without the existential angst!. So something to contemplate.

Rain - Hone Tuwhare

An exercise in randomness

I have had the most odd day. All sorts of random (good) things have been happening. So to carry on the theme, here are some (more) random art bits

From one of Over the net’s Basel reports:

Buyer: Can I sit on it?
Dealer: That’s a $1 million euro Roni Horn glass work that weighs three tonnes
Buyer: Sure, but can I sit on it?
Dealer: If you wanted to.

Which brings me to THIS (but can you sit on it?) and the knitted part leads to:

Guerilla Knitting -  The ultimate “Tank Top”

Some Wellington style street knitting can be found here.

Tonight I am even random reading. I have just counted the books in various piles that are “to read” or “partly read” around the house (37) so I need to make a start - random choice has started me on Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” which was sitting in a pile of poetry books so there you go. This book makes a huge amount of sense (even to us in here in New Zealand).

Which reminds me - 2 MUST READ books I can always reccommend are “Poisonwood Bible” by Barbara Kingsolver and “Kalimantann” by CS Godshalk and of course (sneaking in a 3rd) “I Heard the Owl Call my Name” by Margaret Craven. And I’ve just noticed a disturbing theme here….

A small life

Today a friend came round and we watched some of the Lovely Rita ‘extras’ - Betty’s Blouse and the piece on the Angus House and Dane Mitchell’s ‘Thresholds’ work. Mitchell’s work was not really ’up our alley’ even though the subject matter held potential. I looked up some of his other stuff and found “In past works he has collaborated with mediums and psychics to explore the phantom inhabitants of art galleries and museums. In his meddling with the unknown, Mitchell has commissioned witches to curse Starkwhite Gallery, Auckland; created a portal to the spirit world in the Auckland Art Gallery; and summoned the spirit of famous New Zealand painter Rita Angus, interviewing her via a medium.” Hmmmmm - while the idea of cursing Starkwhite has promise, is it really art?? :-) I guess it is, as I read Mitchell has just been awarded a one-year residency at the international DAAD artists-in-Berlin programme.

My friend and I were saying that we felt our interest in Bette’s Blouse is female reaction though, as perhaps was that lovely huge curtain of Anna Miles’ installation The style of address, (1994). Wystan Curnow says “My mother fashioned this jacket out of two identical aprons she bought at Woolworths.” Maybe because we are both have an interest in ‘homely arts’? It just intrigues me that someone like Rita Angus, a woman but not other/homemaker/50s housewife blah blah blah - in fact possibly the antithesis - painted in such detail and with such care this wonderful portrait of Betty with the centre piece being this rather flamboyant homemade blouse. Such a dichotomy (maybe not the correct word?)

Portrait of Betty Curnow (1942) Rita Angus

It got me thinking about the maleness and femaleness of some art and how we identify with some things/images (more on this in another post methinks).

I was reading a blog recently which said the author was living a small life just now and I think that’s a very good description of mine too. The internet (and this blog) is a window to the world for me and some days there just isn’t much ‘art in my life’. And so I was thinking how it might be nice to join one of those ‘blogger get-togethers’ in Wellington sometime, but none of them are really ‘a fit’ for me (you know - too old, too young, too hip, etc etc) Well I guess I might bump into people at the City Gallery this weekend - must organise that T-shirt….

Lastly - how do NZ Blog ratings actually work and why do they only rate political and news sites? Not that I care too much about ratings, as I note that some of the highest ratings site can be rather tiresome rather than informative and that’s not what this blog is about anyway. Mind you, I’ve apparently stepped on few toes already - not intentionally but probably via ignorance and clumsiness.

Creepy

Daylight savings is over and I am happy! However I am tied up with other writing so another “interesting things I have come across” entry - Just be thankful you aren’t reading my beginners poetry blog*!

Both are a little “cool but creepy”, the first very much so

Morton Bartlett “The Sweethearts of Mr. Bartlett” (hat tip Helen)
“Bartlett was born in 1903, orphaned at eight, attended Harvard for two years and lived alone in Cambridge working at a variety of design and graphics jobs. The title for this show comes from an article published on Morton Bartlett in Yankee Magazine in April 1962- the only information every published on him and really the only exposure which Bartlett’s passion ever received during his lifetime. The author describes how Bartlett began working with clay in 1936, and began to sculpt “dolls”, anatomically perfect sculptures of children at about ½ life size. For the next 25 years, slowly and with obsessive attention to detail and verisimilitude , he sculpted around one figure a year. He then clothed these figures in clothing, sweaters, shoes all made by him, and finally photographed them in tableaux, seen individually and in groups. ” This is just disturbing. Reminds me of Yvonne Todd though.

And this from Andrea (super woman)

“This is her (Tanya7301 from flickr) Crochet babies … a crocheted baby is crocheting a baby watched by crocheted babies … It appeals to me the way the babies are white, without colour so you concentrate on their form and their movement even though they are stationary. They have a feel of small plaster sculptures, round, solid and monolithic but you know they are moving, you have a sense of the forward progression and even the momentum of the new crochet baby being created or born. It’s a little creepy, a little scary it reminds me of that Dr Who episode where the Angel statues came to life but became stone when you looked at them. You get the feeling if you turn away and then turn back to look at them they will have some how creeped closer to the central sitting baby, the hive mother! “

This woman also has some amazing pieces on the subject of homeless people.

See even craft-art can be political, perhaps fitting into the category of what a friend calls craftivism. By the way, stay tuned for Art and Politics II.

*No, there really isn’t one.