Pete Pinnell on fine art that functions 26 June 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Art, Art education, Art for art's sake, Art vs Craft, Ceramics, Craft, Handmade.1 comment so far
Pete Pinnell was one of my professors at the University of Nebraska, one of three very strong individuals in a fantastic ceramics program. The following video (external link) is a stellar talk about fine art and function.
Pete is a very good speaker and draws a number of simple but very powerful metaphors as he discusses cups, drinking vessels, in this video. Below I’ve paraphrased some of the portions that really caught my attention:
Art acknowledges and actually talks about life, but there is one great taboo still in the art world, and that is that art still does not take part in life. Art thinks about life, but it does so from the role of the critic, from the observer, from the outsider. I like to joke that art will peek in our windows and rummage through our closets but it won’t sit down at the dinner table with us.
The fine arts world has chosen to forgo touch, but it’s a very powerful means of human expression.
Does having to deal with function limit creativity?
A little bit of dissonance is really required to have something that will hold our attention for a longer period of time.
For the most part I think he hits the nail squarely on the head, but I’d love to hear other’s responses to this 30 minute talk.
Potter Eva Zeisel on TED: The playful search for beauty 21 April 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Aesthetics, Art, Beauty, Ceramics, Craft.add a comment
Ninety-four year old potter Eva Zeisel talks about her life and work in the following TED talk titled The Playful Search for Beauty. This is so worth watching. Just to whet your appetite (it’s an 18 minute video), this quote:
Novelty is a concept of commerce, not an aesthetic concept.
Mad potter in Arkansas 8 April 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Abstract art, Art, Art vs Craft, Artist profile, Ceramics, Craft, Found objects, Handmade, Sculpture.1 comment so far
A month or so ago I dug a hole in my front yard for a new mailbox post. The dirt looked a lot like clay, so I saved a few hunks and fired them in the kiln.
They came out a bit soft and quite crumbly, not surprising, but they more or less turned into Arkansas rocks. They look very similar to the stones found on a lot that’s just been graded for construction.
George Ohr, the Mad Potter of Biloxi, dug a lot of his clay locally in Mississippi. My father told me recently that Ohr sometimes took dirt out of the middle of the road. He’s one of a few historical characters I’d like to meet (another off the top of my head being G.K. Chesterton). The bisqued, scroddled Orh pot below shows off some of his raw materials.
Image from Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art.
An artist’s job 16 February 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Art, Artist as genius, Business of art, Craft.3 comments
A slew of articles on how the economic downturn is effecting the business of art are popping up in publications all over the internet. I’ve ignored almost all of them, but for some reason I partook this morning of an article from the New York Times titled The Boom is Over. Long Live the Art!. From the article:
Every year art schools across the country spit out thousands of groomed-for-success graduates, whose job it is to supply galleries and auction houses with desirable retail. They are backed up by cadres of public relations specialists — otherwise known as critics, curators, editors, publishers and career theorists — who provide timely updates on what desirable means.
I didn’t know it was my job as an [aspiring] artist to supply galleries and auction houses with art. Hm.
“Quality,” primarily defined as formal skill, is back in vogue, part and parcel of a conservative, some would say retrogressive, painting and drawing revival.
I can agree that there is a certain contingent (properly lampooned in the film Art School Confidential) who consider quality and skill retrogressive. Such people, in my opinion, have no sense of history, and probably suffer from the modern artist-as-genius syndrome.
For a while we heard a lot about the radicalism of Beauty; lately about the subversive politics of aestheticized Ambiguity. Whatever, it is all market fodder.
How much attention should an artist pay to the art market? On one hand, it’s a good thing to be in the know from a business perspective. On the other, doesn’t an artist do his or her best work when drawing from their own training, talent and inspiration — not so influenced by what’s popular?
It’s day-job time again in America, and that’s O.K. Artists have always had them — van Gogh the preacher, Pollock the busboy, Henry Darger the janitor — and will again. The trick is to try to make them an energy source, not a chore.
I’m hard-pressed to believe so many recent graduates possessed such a fairy-tale image of the art world that they figured on jumping right into a profitable art-making career. Then again, my own art schooling seems to have been much more realistic than many others. Exaggeration or not, I suppose schools such as the one depicted in Art School Confidential do exist.
Interview with Etsy founder 2 February 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Business of art, Ceramics, Craft, Etsy, Handmade, Painting, Realism, Sculpture.add a comment
Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, and tech blogger Robert Scoble interview Etsy founder Robert Kalin.
Some interesting tidbits from the interview, 97% of Etsy’s user base is female, thus the largest segment of sales comes from jewelery. Etsy did almost $100 million in sales in 2009. An average sale on the site includes two items and totals $15.
See these new shops for some nice works:
Megan Chaney Studios for ceramic sculpture.
Old World Swine for still lifes and landscapes.
Gifting: Handmade on Etsy 10 November 2008
Posted by pcNielsen in Art, Business of art, Ceramics, Christmas list, Craft, Etsy, Handmade, Painting, Printmaking, Woodcut.add a comment
Etsy specializes in offering handmade wares including everything from clothing to pottery to painting. It’s a great place to find thoughtful, one-of-a-kind gifts. My wife and I both keep a store there; hers is the Elegant Scarf. A link to mine can be found in the sidebar. Following are a few of my favorite sellers and one of my favorite items from their store. Click on the images to get to their store.
Kim Westad : Ceramist
Sweet pea in orange :: $35
mLee fine art (woodcuts)
African queen :: $45
Stepanka (porcelain sculpture)
Small porcelain bud vase :: $35
newbyart (encaustic)
The great awakening :: $120
The plastic arts in a small town 3 November 2008
Posted by pcNielsen in Art, Business of art, Craft, Live car free, Siloam Springs.7 comments
This is an idea that I wrote up in an email to Sarah Hempel. Sarah — a sculptor — is selling her house and moving to a small town in Western Pennsylvania.
For a while now I’ve been intrigued at how to make the arts work, or how to survive as an artist, in a rural community. There are pros and cons to both the big city and the small ville for artists. Cities have galleries and networks. Smaller towns are usually much affordable.
My parents live in a town of 45,000, not too small but not large enough (especially given its locale) to expect anything significant from the arts, at least not on the plains. The idea is to buy a building downtown (one is for sale two doors down from my dad’s shop for 80k) that we would live in upstairs and run an art and craft studio out of downstairs, my wife crocheting/knitting/spinning and me woodworking and sculpting in clay. The hope would be that we’d be able to make some money from sales of our wares, supplemented by teaching crafts to local home-schooled or private school students — and probably holding regular classes in the studio for any bloke off the street.
This probably isn’t an entirely novel idea. In fact, friends of ours in the small town we live in now (of about 14,000 residents) had a very similar idea. The problem in Siloam Springs is that real estate is a lot higher and the buildings downtown generally in a lot worse shape to begin with. One that’s in very nice shape, having previously been a framing gallery and doctor’s office, is on the market for something like $250,000 as I recall. It doesn’t have a second floor for living space, and none of us have capital to get going anyway.
The whole thing is only feasible if we can live in the same building as the studio. We can’t afford mortgage/rent on a house and mortgage/rent on a public building for a studio. And I’m skeptical that, even in the best of scenarios, this idea would provide a very livable wage, unless my sculptures really take off or my wife’s scarves are picked up by Nordstrom’s. Thus, were we to go this route, I’d have to be willing to find a reasonable day job or get some good paying part-time design work.
The city of 45,000 has many more opportunities for part-time jobs than our little Siloam Springs, which is something to note as well. Were decent paying part-time jobs more available here we might not be thinking of moving at all.
Does the idea hold water?
Bohemian rip off 27 October 2008
Posted by pcNielsen in Affluenza, Business of art, Craft, Disposable culture, Fiber, Handmade, Sustainable living.add a comment
After a crazy weekend (following two very busy weeks, which followed a week of illness, which followed a week traveling . . . ) I’m looking forward to a week of cooling off, hopefully being able to take a comp day Friday and show some friends a few ceramic techniques in the studio. Then one more week till a ten day trip to Nebraska visiting two supporting churches. That should be, in comparison to the last month, a leisurely jaunt.
I’m scrapping a brief post together here from our shopping trip this weekend. I captured this cameraphone photo of a scarf at Kohls.
I’m sure most every other department store is selling one just like it this season. This style caught my eye, though, because my wife is an avid knitter/crocheter. This looks like a lot of the ideas she comes across as a way to use up scraps of yarn. You’ve got short pieces of yarn laying around from past projects, but none are enough by themselves to create a new project from. So you patch something like this together.
I’m amused that this scrapped together idea borrowed from handicraft is being marketed en masse. Why pay $30 for the scarf in a style that’s made to look like it’s something unique when you can ask your grandmother (or wife) to whip one up that’s truly original?
Something like this would take my wife about three hours to crochet, maybe a little more considering the fringe. I suppose there are people out there who don’t know any knitters or crocheters or sewers. I suppose there are people out there who wouldn’t even think of wearing something that they didn’t purchase from a store; they wouldn’t know where to start.
Both scenarios are pretty depressing to me.
Genius Grants 2008: Weaving straws and grass 24 September 2008
Posted by pcNielsen in Abstract art, Art, Art vs Craft, Artist as genius, Craft, Fiber, Found objects, Installations, Sculpture.add a comment
I suppose I should mention this year’s genius grants, awarded this week, since this blog contains a category called Artist-as-genius. Regular readers know that I hold a certain disdain for the term. I haven’t entirely fleshed that disdain out properly, but a very good example of where it came from can be seen in the somewhat raunchy film Art School Confidential.
Looking at the list of winners yesterday afternoon I was a bit surprised. They’re all over the place. The stage-lighting designer, music critic and architectural preservationist were pleasant surprises.
Two artists will be taking home the $500,000 purse, a sculptor and a fiber artist.
The fiber artist is another surprise. Mary Jackson is a basket weaver. How wonderful that such a traditional and humble craft is included in this list, a list that might commonly include the rocket scientists we so like to mock.
In contrast to that is Tara Donovan. I mentioned Donovan with some skepticism in this January post. Donovan’s work is sometimes mass-produced and makes use of common household objects.
I like the above work by Donovan, titled Haze. It’s made from drinking straws. I wonder what Mary Jackson could do with drinking straws. Weave them, I imagine, as she does with grass. An interesting connection between two very different artisans.
Part II of II: Are apprenticeships realistic in 2008? 15 September 2008
Posted by pcNielsen in Art, Art education, Craft, Modern culture.4 comments
By now you’re wondering what installment one of this short series had to do with apprenticeships.
I’ve mentioned the idea of apprenticeships for artists a few times before, but haven’t really fleshed out my thoughts on the idea yet.
I regularly wonder why and how apprenticeships more or less died off. It seems to me that such an opportunity to study for a given period of time under one or more master craftsmen would offer an educational experience on par with that of a university. Don’t get me wrong, I loved college (though I was ready to be done with UNL when I graduated). I miss it and want to go back; hence all the talk here on the blog about an MFA. But what I liked most about college happened outside of the classroom.
Sure, you’ll say, it’s that way for a lot of people. But I didn’t drink and philander like the people you might be thinking of, and it was still a blast.
Moving on.
The one aspect a lot of university programs falter on is the practical. They’re great when it comes to exploring theoretical concepts, but getting down and dirty with the nitty gritty details of how things come into being usually lacks. For instance, as an architecture student, none of the courses in the program actually taught us how to go out and put up a building. None of my graphic design classes, after I changed majors, taught me how that poster I threw together actually goes to and comes off of a press. (I was fortunate enough to work in the pressroom on campus, though, and learned this on my own.) And, despite all the good things I have to say about the University of Nebraska’s ceramics department, I wasn’t taught a lot of the technical aspects of ceramics.
This despite taking a semester-long course called “Technical Ceramics” (which was more specifically a glaze-making class). Not once was I show how to fire a kiln. Granted, I didn’t take every class in the ceramics emphasis, but I took most.
I get the sense that someone in an old-fashioned apprenticeship will not miss out on learning some of these more basic aspects of a craft. An apprentice starts out as the grunt, and learns as he goes along. This, of course, may leave a person weak in the creative and theory departments compared to their college-bound counterparts, depending on the ability of the employer to teach.
But they’ll probably know how to fire a kiln without blowing up all of its contents.
A final note, college is becoming — indeed already is — prohibitively expensive for many people. Some of these people might be incredible assets to parts of culture, but they might not be able to influence those said parts without a proper education. Will we begin to see viable alternatives to universities as a means to higher education in the near future as the cost of college continues to rise so much more than inflation? Or will the proliferation of a debt-strapped culture win the day as we carry more and more student loans into our adult lives?
