Polly Ullrich quote: “Jewelry as an art form is …”

Jewelry as an art form is “open”: it works most clearly as a node of activities, not as a singular object. Jewelry circumnavigates through the world as it is worn and displayed; it transmits corporality by pushing the maker, the wearer and the viewer into noticing their bodies entwined in a physical experience of space. Jewelry’s activities provide a prototype of the world as a place of diffusion and multiplicity, grounded by the physical senses. In Jewelry, the business of both “being” and “doing” converge. (31)

 

Ullrich, Polly. “The Hand as Subject and Site.” Metalsmith. Vol.31, No.5, 2011. pgs 28-37.

33. “Tempus Fugit, Time Flies” edited by Jan Schall.

Today, the Artist in Residence in Ceramics at OCAC, Amanda Salov, will give a talk about her work, past and present at 12:45pm in the Centrum Studio as part as our Monday Lectures Series.

According to her artist statement, Salov is interested in the “Tangible, beautiful events [that] pass when we are not aware.  As an artist I focus […] on these fleeting moments” (from here). By doing so, her works create a tension between the ethereal and the sense of permanence (derived by the physicality of the works themselves and the process of making that went into their creation).

This tension is intentional. By asking the viewer to experience this tension, the artist argues that it allows the viewer to reflect on the human condition and encourages them to be more sensitive to the transitory nature of existence—and, in turn, ultimately more compassionate and empathic people (here).

More about Amanda Salov’s work and the lunch time talk about be found here.

Continuing with the themes of time and temporality, this week’s library pick is Tempus Fugit, Time Flies edited by Jan Schall. This work organizes its compendium of essays around three parts:

Part One, Twentieth –Century time, which examines how “in the span of just on hundred years, our culture has radically and creatively reinvented time, as our technologies have compressed it to the point of collapse” (14);

Part Two, World Times, which expands on the discussion of time and space, and how a sense of relative time might arise from more “diverse concepts of time” (15); and

Part Three, Conservation Time, which locates time “within the conservator’s studio” (16) and how time can simultaneously threaten art objects as well as imbue them with new meanings.

Some notable articles include: (there are many more!)

• “Time and art in twentieth-century culture” by Stephen Kern
• “Creative time : Bergson and European modernism” Mark Antliff
• “Modern times : twenthieth-century American modernists and notions of time” byErika Doss “Time and conceptual art” by Alexander
• “Other times/other histories” by Dana Friis
• “Andy Warhol’s Baseball : ephemeral time and the frozen moment” by Jan Schall
• “Siva Nataraja : cosmic, cyclical time inIndia” by Doris Srinivasan
• “Silver Horn’s Ledger Book : episodic time among the Kiowa” by Candace S. Greene
• “Patina of time : technical record of treatment : Japanese Striding Lion” by Kathleen M. Garland.

If you’re interested in Tempus Fugit, Time Flies or other works about Time or Time-based art, come down to the library after the Amanda Salov’s lecture at 12:45pm today!

Elisa Kay quote on John Latham: “there are many divergent ways …”

“[T]here are many divergent ways in which one could introduce [John] Latham’s work or try to sum up his achievements. When the artist attempted to do this himself, he would invariably start in 1954 with the spray gun, but you would end up somewhere different every time. Despite the incredible diversity in his work, there’s an extraordinary and highly unusual constancy to it, which springs from the ubiquity of his theoretical ideas. Constancy, but not necessarily clarity; the very same artists who have cited Latham as an important influence have often, in the very same breath, declared their lack of understanding of the ideas that underpinned his practice” (67).

Kay, Elisa. “John Latham.” Flash Art. Vol. XLIV, No. 280, October 2011, p64-67.

32. “Art, technology, consciousness : mind@large” edited by Roy Ascott.

OCAC will be welcoming Julie Beeler and Brad Johnson of Second Story for today’s Monday Visiting Artist Lecture in the Centrum Studio at 12:45. Second Story’s studio is located in the historic Mississippi neighborhood in Portland, Oregon. Since 1994, they have been committed to examining the way people interact with various media and the way technology can inform the way people learn: Their “knowledgeable teams blend new technologies, compelling design, and proven storytelling techniques to bring information intuitively to people’s fingertips within elegant interfaces.” (from here). Check out their website! They have an extensive and inspiring portfolio of projects that provide a better sense of what they’re up to (plus they’re awesome!): http://secondstory.com/portfolio

For the library pick this week, we selected Art, Technology, Consciousness : mind@large because many of the essays included in the book are related to many of the same interests shared by the work of Second Story.  A few of the essays that are especially intriguing with respect to how interactive media and spaces can inform narrative and conceptions of consciousness (or vice versa) include:

• “Making Emotional Spaces in the Secret Project: building emotional interactive spaces” by Richard Povall.
• “Interactive Media and the Construction of Dramatic Narrative: becoming and identity in contemporary American drama” by Rhona Justice-Malloy.
•  “Edge-Life: technoetic structures and moist media” by Roy Ascott.
• “Towards a Third Culture | Being in Between” by Victoria Vesna.
• “The Posthuman Conception of Consciousness: a 10-point guide” by Robert Pepperell
•  “The Spectator Project: a multi-user narrative in ‘Mediaspace’” by Mike Phillips  [et al.].
• “Places of mind: implications of narrative space for the architecture of information environments” by Peter Anders.

These, of course, are only a sampling of what the book has to offer. The articles were presented at the Third International CAiiA-STAR Research Conference at the University of Wales College. The work of CAiiA-STAR “embodies artistic and theoretical research in new media and telematics, including aspects of artificial life, telepresence, immersive VR, robotics, technoetics, non linear narrative, ubiquitous computing, performance, computer music, and intelligent architecture, involving a wide range of technological systems, interfaces, and material structures” (1). More information about the work of CAiiA-STAR can be found here (under its new moniker, Planetary Collegium).

Things to do in Portland: (11/18/11) “75 Gifts for 75 years” and Buying Gifts at the “Cheap but Good” Books Art Sale!

If you haven’t already had a chance to visit the Museum of Contemporary Craft’s current exhibition, “75 Gifts for 75 years,” now is the time.  The exhibition honors the generous donations of collectors throughout thePacific Northwest and elsewhere who have donated works to the museum that have been added to their permanent collection.  These works help serve to document craft and contextualize it within the art world and world at large since 1937. Go and get inspired to make, to create, and to debate!

Address:724 N.W. Davis St.,Portland,OR97209

Hours: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue-Sat, open until 8 p.m. First Thursday;

Phone: 503-223-2654

URL: www.museumofcontemporarycraft.org

This Sunday the Book Arts Department at the Oregon College of Art and Craft will be hosting its annual fall “Cheap – But – Good” Book Arts Sale!!! The Sale runs from 10am – 3pm, Sunday, November 20th.

Student, instructor and alumni-made items starting at $1.00 (possibly even cheaper!) include: letterpress-printed cards, handmade booklets, journals, business card holders, broadsides, posters, artist books, decorated paper, paper samplers, book cloth remnants and more. Proceeds benefit the Student Workshop Fund.

Don’t miss this! It’s a great way to find those special, handmade holiday gifts for that somebody special!

Address:8245 SW Barnes Ave.,Portland,OR97225

Hours: 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday, November 20th.

Phone: 503-297-5544

URL: http://ocac.edu/#/events/calendar/2011-nov20-ocac-book-arts-department-sale/

Library Love – C-clamps, garden rakes, and jigsaws, oh my!

 It’s your day off, not raining and you hear the clarion call of the ever-present to-do list: fix thingy that makes the toilet flush, build a bookcase for stacks living on the floor, repair wonky stairs… it goes on and on.

Money to buy the implements needed to construct/destruct/obstruct is in short supply.  Maybe there is a tool library in your area like the Northeast Portland Tool Library, in Portland, Oregon.  Build community.  Borrow.  Donate (more tools or time).  Learn how-to-use power tools.  Get involved.  It’s what libraries are all about.

Judy Arginteanu quotes Doug Meyer: “He also welcomes …”

He [Doug Meyer] also welcomes the patina old metal has. “I’m working with material that might have been used for maybe 40, 50 years, and it bears the distress of what it’s gone through. That’s nothing you can make happen–it’s something you have to let happen” (019).

Arginteanu, Judy. “Product Placement : Necessity, Mother of Cool Furniture.” American Craft. October/November 2011. pgs 018 – 019.

31. “Art: 21 : art in the twenty-first century. 4” edited by Susan Sollins

This week the Oregon College of Art and Craft’s lecture series, Connection: Intersecting Tradition and Innovation, is hosting a lecture by Alfredo Jaar at the Blue Sky Gallery tonight from 7:00 – 8:30pm. More information about Jaar’s lecture, “It Is Difficult,” can be found here. Don’t miss this talk!

For this week’s library pick, we have selected “Art: 21 : art in the twenty-first century. 4” edited by Susan Sollins. It happens to be the companion book to PBS’ series on contemporary visual art and artists in the United States today. We also have the season 4 DVD that goes along with this book available (excerpts of the DVD can be viewed on the Art:21 website – including an excerpt with Alfredo Jaar).

Alfredo Jaar’s work “explores the public’s desensitization to images and the limitations of art to represent events such as genocides, epidemics, and famines” (219). One installation, The Silence of Dduwayezu, covered in the book (and DVD) addresses the holocaust inRwanda. It consists of 1 million slides, a light table, and magnifiers that allow viewers to get a “centimeter away from the eyes of Nduwayezu, who witnessed what we didn’t want to see.” Nduwayezu witnessed his parents being murdered by machetes. His response was silence. He “couldn’t speak” for four weeks, and, so what Jaar attempts to do with this piece is to “represent that and speak about his silence—because his silence refers to the silence of the world community that let this happen” (33). This piece does not allow the viewer to look away from the tragedy.  

In the excerpt from the Art:21 DVD with Alfredo Jaar,  the artist has a lot of interesting things to say about art and its ability to represent lived experience. To Jaar, a “huge gap between reality and its possible representations” exists “and that gap is impossible to close”. Jaar argues that it is the role of the artist to “try different strategies of representation” in order to analyze, to reflect on, to raise awareness about, and to respond to events that society has become desensitized to or doesn’t want to think about (from video excerpt linked to above).

Other artists represented in this book include: Jenny Holzer, Alfredo Jaar, An-My Lê, Nancy Spero, Robert Adams, Mark Dion, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Mark Bradford, Robert Ryman, Catherine Sullivan, Pierre Huyghe, Judy Pfaff, Lari Pittman, and Laurie Simmons.

This weekend in Portland (11/11/11): the Great Outdoors and Po’Shines’ even greater Chitlin Feed!

Explore the great outdoors this weekend! Why not? The U.S. Forest Service has announced that it will waive the day-use fees associated with many recreation sites or amenities on national forests nationwide in honor of Veterans’ Day for the entire weekend (Veterans’ Day Weekend – November 11-13). For more information, check out all of Oregon’s National Parks here: http://usparks.about.com/od/travelitineraries/l/blOregon-National-Parks.htm

The image on the right is of the John Day Fossil Beds. It’s an amazing place and a great excuse to escape another rainy Portland weekend!

Then on your way back from your adventures, you can treat yourself by stopping by Po’Shines Cafe De La Soul to enjoy their 3rd annual Chitlin Feed Festival!

Po’Shines is located at 8139 N Denver Ave in the heart of the Kenton Neighborhood in North Portland (the fifth quadrant of the city). It offers the FINEST soul food in Portland. Don’t miss this!

Chitterlings (or Chitlins), by the way, are fried pork intestines (but don’t let that worry you – they’re GOOD). But, if Chitlins aren’t your thing, Po’Shines offers a fantastic array of other delights that will not disappoint. Check out their Lunch & Dinner menu here.

Whatever you do, enjoy yourself and have a great weekend!

Not convinced? What are you doing this weekend?

Jeffrey Weiss quote (on Cy Twombly’s sculptures) : “Separating the man…”

“Separating the man from his mythic or historical stature can be difficult. And it is, after all, the role of myth and historical narrative in his work—the apparent recuperation of those things—with which writers on this artist so often struggle. What seems to matter more to young artists is that he lived his art. Addressing the work, I try to maintain critical distance, but I find myself inevitably moved. Accounting for that, rather than resisting it, may be necessary. The work’s material identity is inseparable from the privacy of its motivations. It wants to traffic in myth and history, but intimacy is its sublime undoing.”

Weiss, Jeffrey. “Private Practice.” Artforum International 50.3 (2011): p216.