This week’s guest lecturer showed a lot of interesting and unusual work that together make up the media of craft. Anya Kivarkis said that one of the things she was most interested in regarding craft is artist’s different methods of production. She talked about three different forms of production; handmade reproductions, reproductions, and production lines. Of these three I found handmade reproductions to be the most interesting. I especially liked Myra Mimlitsch- Gray and how she transformed a teapot. In this piece she changed the use of an antique teapot from something people would normally put on display and look at to something that people would actually use. She did this by putting the teapot in a box and then cutting out holes for the spout and openings. I found this very interesting because a teapot is something that is normally utilitarian rather than visual but by making the teapot “uglier” in a sense it makes people more inclined to use it for its intended purpose. Another piece that Anya showed us that I found interesting was Rachel Whiteread’s “House”. Whiteread filled an abandoned building with concrete and then when it set she tore down the outside of the house. What was left was a cast of the negative space of the house. The thing I found the most interesting about this piece was the reaction the neighborhood had to it. They thought that the cast had a ghostly and eerie feel to it and were so disturbed by it that they wanted her to take it down. I found it intriguing that such a simple act regarding such an everyday object such as a house could have such a strong impact on the people who viewed it.
This week’s multimedia looks at John Feodorov. An installation of his that stood out to me when looking at his website was the installation titled “Ambiguity”. In this piece Feodorov created a giant teddy bear purely out of stuffing with no exterior shell. He then placed de-stuffed smaller teddy bears below the giant one with fragments of stuffing scattered around. The first feeling I got when looking at the piece was kind of a morbid sad feeling from all of the deflated teddy bears. Feodorov said in a little excerpt that he thought the large teddy bear was some sort of spirit or god or ruler that was made from the flattened bears. I don’t really know what he is trying to say but maybe that when people believe or invest so much in a higher power or ruler then they can give themselves up for that higher being. Another thing I found interesting when looking through Feodorov’s work was a quote that was in one of his interviews. He says, “… I think people are creative, people need to be creative, whether it’s making art or making babies. There’s that creative impulse and people find creativity in different ways. Some people’s manifestations get called art.” I completely agree with this statement. I think that it is human nature to be creative and that creativity can show itself in many ways.
One of the things Ty wanted us to think about in our blogs this week was the idea of things being precious. I feel as though both Anya and Feodorov both discuss this idea but in different ways. In the works that Anya showed she talked about how a reproduction of something does not carry the same weight or preciousness that the original does. Making copies almost dilutes the meaning or originality. Feodorov approaches the idea of preciousness differently. I feel that he explores things in society that are so important or precious, such as a teddy bear or the office place, and uses those implications to comment on our culture.
The artwork I chose to share this week takes something that is already made, a suitcase, and reproduces it in a new way that also changes its use. I think this went along with the theme this week of craft.
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