15 posts tagged “art”
But then I realized that if someone were to replace my library with all brand-new books, I would be very sad. The wear on my books - as physical objects - holds their history and makes my relationship with their contents immediate and visceral. Many of my childhood books have bite marks on the spine, because I would hold them in my teeth while climbing up to read in a tree or on the roof. The books I carry when I travel get stained and frayed, and the damage tells a story. And I love secondhand books that have been marked up in pencil, because I can see what was important to the person who read it before me.
Su Blackwell's book-cut sculpture is beautifully crafted. In a way, it's very similar to receiving a marked-up copy of a book from a friend. Their particular interpretation of the text is privileged for your consideration, and you can re-evaluate your response to the work through the lens of their relationship.
It's like turning books into memories, I guess. I think Blackwell's work is stunning, and the little frisson of revulsion I feel at the sight of a damaged book makes it all the more interesting.
Apropos of nothing, here's a picture of a bowl from hi+lo modern. The op art movement had as its subject perception itself, and utilitarian objects with op art designs have always seemed remarkably generous to me. They are beautiful things with no meaning intended and no strings attached.
Now, to be perfectly clear, I think Diment and Prall are both amazing artists, and I find their portfolios both inspiring and intimidating. It's just that I think my friend was missing the point when she said that these other artists were better than Harper. It's cool if she prefers more realistic paintings, but that doesn't make the work she likes better than the work she doesn't like.
When I was in grade school, the "How to Draw" series of books was really popular. In theory, you would start by sketching a bunch of boxes and ovals, add details and end up with a perfectly realistic cat or racecar or horse or dinosaur. In practice, most of us ended up with a beautifully-detailed horse that looked like a sway-backed dachshund.
Just because something looks simple doesn't mean it's trivial or easy to do.
Earlier in the month, my husband and I received a flier for the Cape May Bird Observatory's Spring Weekend, and a poster went up in the ornithology department at work. That was how I connected Charley Harper's name to the wildlife art I had been inspired by for a long time. Seriously, look at this!
There are some prints of his available at theframeworkshop.com, along with a coffee table book. The water strider lithograph just blew me away. I spent a good bit of my childhood trying to catch these bugs - they're speedy little things - and I'm impressed not only by Harper's design sense, but also by his choice of detail. He really looks at the animals he paints.
There is a great selection of his prints from the 1950's at the Treadway Gallery. I think I know what my husband is getting for a present, once he defends his thesis!
Harper's bird art is featured on the packaging of Coffee for the Birds, which sells fair trade, shade grown varietals and blends. That's a great thing to support, in case you were wondering - good for birds and people, too. We used to have a bag of their Guatemalan blend in the office - it is a step up from Starbucks and a world away from the big blue tub of Folgers.
Mike Libby's work at InsectLab is really incredible. He combines the carapaces of dead insects and arachnids with antique watch parts, capacitors and LEDs. Seriously, these are beautiful.
Carson Ellis has a blog - how was I unaware of this?
Yuken Teruya's papercut shadowboxes are made from shopping bags - I think they're sweet and wistful.
And look! Little twigs sprouting from toilet paper tubes!
A pair of shredded wings spreads from the cover of Breton's Nadja, who was both an angel and a tiger, always unlike herself.
Charles Vildrac believed that art and intellect should stand apart from a utilitarian regard for worldly concerns - and now his book is unreadable, a purely aesthetic object.
Memoire sheds a mass of tatters, as messy and multilayered as a lifetime of impressions retained and recalled.
I love books not only for their contents, but also as physical objects. Whether considered as concept or as craft, this is just amazing.
