It won't let me/I can't figure out how to comment on existing posts... So this was meant to add to a post by Maiko about pollen artist Wolfgang Laib...
This is a video of an artist who creates his work with pollen. It resonates with the sensation of solitary experience in so many ways. The sensation of "smallness" is so poignant in Laib's process and work, and the beauty that is revealed only because of its smallness is profound to me...
http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/videos/253/1216 "
This is awesome. Something I often think about is freedom, and specifically freedom in relation to being an artist and what is means to make art just for yourself. what it would mean to be truly free of expectation, critique, praise, and how a type of hermitage might afford this. I think this is possible on a whole spectrum of levels- we were talking about Patti Smith as a type of 'free hermit’- and I think it is what most resonates with me about Laib. There is a British landscape artist, Andy Goldsworthy, who I also get this from. He creates installations or sculptures in nature using only materials and tools found in the site he is working. For him, the destruction of his work by the environment is part of the artwork itself. He has permanent works, but many of his pieces 'live' anywhere between 10 seconds and several hours. Most of the time he is the only one who gets to see them. This is the link to a documentary about his work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-kYugLLHww. Today we were also talking about how you claim your space as your own, but how the changing seasons and environment will continually affect the space beyond your control. His work/process seemed an interesting example of this sort of conversation between dweller and dwelling. Listening to the space, making it your own, then giving it back.
Jesse Dunahoo is another artist whose work and life I feel might fit in here somewhere.. He was born deaf and lost his sight in his early teens. He has a translator help him communicate using a hybrid language of touch, mime, gesture and some ASL. “Living on a farm in the 1930’s- 40’s allowed Mr. Dunahoo an opportunity to manipulate outdoor space and in so doing to created environments which he composed by moving earth and brush often by hand and also by finding and assembling objects/debris which were then placed in an ordered way throughout the manipulated area. Sometimes objects were places in significant places on the ground but most often they were placed in trees and bushes. Jessie used various fences and trees to hang intersecting strings, ropes, wires, etc. – which could be grasped and threaded- in reality following a 3-d road map which he used (uses) in finding his way around outdoor space.” (from http://latitudeartistprofiles.blogspot.com/) He creates these tactile environments/installations from found fabric or materials like plastic bags, twine and old clothing. Some of his works can be seen here: http://freemanproject.wordpress.com/2010/08/20/jessie-dunahoo/ . I then read an awesome story about Harpo Marx, who was not actually mute, who was once sent a harp by his mother. But no one in the town knew how to play the harp and so he had to approximate the tuning. He taught himself how to play and only years later was informed that his tuning had been off. He did learn the “right” way of playing, but his teachers were amazed by how he played and the way he essentially claimed the harp work to for him. I’ve been thinking about both of these things in application to our work in finding new ways of experiencing and occupying space, and the found objects in it, and making it our own. I wonder about... If we were somehow denied example of how to be in space, nothing is known, everything is new, how would we figure out a way of living/moving/being/using that is, by all our accounts,'right.' For example, what would you do with a chair if you had never seen one before? or a lamp? or a book?
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