Intentional Observation: Mennonites in flip-flops 1 July 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Color, Handmade, Intentional observation, Northwest Arkansas, Siloam Springs.add a comment
“A little bit of dissonance is really required to have something
that will hold our attention for a longer period of time.”
- Pete Pinnell
Two things in the past few months prompted me to ponder the idea of contrast.
First off, I’ve taken note this year of the mennonites (at least that’s what we assume they are) shopping at our local Walmart. I’ve long had a fascination with Amish (and old order Mennonite, thus) cultures, probably in large part because of what seems to be their slower paced, more relationship and community based lifestyles. Another part of my interest almost certainly stems from the culture’s seeming affirmation of working with your hands.
There are two observations I’ve made with respect to contrast in observing the local mennonites. First of all, the men dress in such a way that you can’t pick them out of a crowd: Boots, jeans and t-shirts, but you know they are mennonite because of the lady on their arm in a very modest handmade dress, with a bonnet or cap in her hair.
Secondly, the women’s more conservative dress is often at odds with their footwear. I’ve seen them wearing tennis shoes for years now, but it was only a few months ago I saw some of them wearing flip-flops for the first time. This wonderfully jarring discrepancy scrawled a grin on my face that lasted all the way into the parking lot. The bright, nearly neon flip-flops next to pale blue, floral handmade dresses worked for me, and apparently work for mennonites too.
I wanted to take a picture with my cameraphone, but abstained from bothering the young ladies. Instead I searched through Flickr and found the fantastic image above, taken by Jizzon, showing a group of mennonite women, some in bright colored flip-flops (click on the image to go to the Flickr page where you can enlarge it). The clothing contrast in Jizzon’s photograph isn’t as stark as it usually is in the Siloam Springs’ Walmart. The girls in his capture are wearing much brighter handmade dresses than I’ve ever seen the group in Northwest Arkansas don.
If you’re craving even more paradox, look at this image of two mennonites in dresses and bonnets on a jet ski.
Secondly, after looking through an album posted by a photographer friend, Aus10, on Facebook I commented as follows:
Interesting to me how so much portraiture (including wedding photography) in the past five years or so has been about creating contrast — or so it seems to me as an observer. The well-groomed subjects are placed in rough and rustic environments: Against decrepit buildings with peeling paint, along derelict railway tracks covered in weeds etc. Seems to me this is a new trend for the media, and one that I like (unlike this everybody jump up in the air phenomenon). Is my observation correct in your professional opinion? And can you talk about why you think this is the case, if you think my assessment is correct?
The photographer’s reply was more or less to say that the high school seniors, in the case of the album I responded to, see their friends’ photos or advertisements for Urban Outfitters and want the same thing. Regardless of these teen’s, um, less than intellectual desire for this aesthetic, I must reiterate that I think it works and works well.
My own senior picture was from one of those gimmicky old-time photo rooms (which is what I wanted it to be, although mom had me submit a color image from a $10 Sears sitting for the actual yearbook.) However, I would have liked something akin to this popular contrasty style if I would have thought it was worth it for my parents to spend $400 (I’m sure it’s much more nowadays) for proper senior photographs.
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.
The value of working with your hands 25 June 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Handmade, Modern culture.3 comments
(external link) Stephen Colbert interviews Matthew Crawford. Crawford, a philosopher and a mechanic, holds a PHD in political philosophy and recently wrote a book titled Shop class as soulcraft.
Along similar lines, I shared an article with my wife earlier in the week titled The Manly Art of Knitting. From that post:
My wife, LeAnna and I have been thinking a lot lately about work. We’ve been wondering if perhaps we’ve been mis-educated to believe that avoidance of manual labor is the pinnacle of education and evolution — that to prove that we’ve arrived in the world, we should work with our heads and not our hands. What we’re wondering is whether that system has steered us wrong, disconnecting us not even so much from our heritage, but from some essential part of who we are as people. That as people, we were made to create. That on some level people were meant to work for their food. And that, similarly, part of our care not just for ourselves but for each other involves a physical act of creating.
Of course we were made to create! “In the beginning, God created . . . so God created man in His own image . . . “
Clay crafting videos 20 May 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Art, Ceramics, Handmade, Sculpture.add a comment
A couple of videos just for fun. I’ve mentioned Eva Funderburgh on the blog before; I’m quite fascinated with her little beasts and hope to own one some day. After encountering a somewhat expected technical issue in my own ceramic sculptures, I went back and watched one of Eva’s time-lapse videos. I just learned of Ayumi Horie last week thanks to Twitter. Her dry throwing technique is something I definitely want to try — if I ever actually get back into throwing.
Time lapse showing Eva Funderburgh hand-building one of her beasts
Dry throwing technique of potter Ayumi Horie
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.
You don’t have to be wealthy to be a patron 17 March 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Art, Business of art, Creative catalyst, Etsy.4 comments
Yesterday I watched a video over at Diary of an Arts Pastor. In the spot, David Taylor talks specifically about his vision for artistic renewal in Austin, Texas. I’m not exactly sure what I think of the video, but it did convey some worthwhile ideas. One idea that I latched onto is one I’d already been thinking about this year:
This is probably coming out of my burgeoning desire to be a catalyst (a desire that’s been burgeoning, as it were, for the past ten years). It was helped along by the ceramic art my wife gave me for Christmas.
I haven’t fleshed this idea out yet, that you don’t have to be rich to be a patron of the arts, but there seem to be some basic places a person could start. Add new art to your budget, for instance. Give art as gifts, as my wife did. Befriend artists and become part of their street team; word-of-mouth is the best marketing.
If you don’t think you have money in your budget to buy art you haven’t visited the right venues lately. Look at Etsy (yes, there are imaginative and well-crafted plastic arts on this website amidst the ubiquitous jewelry and handbag collections) or other online galleries. Seek out aspiring artists who don’t charge as much for their pieces, which is the best kind of artistic investment anyway. Barter works as well. Maybe you’re a web programmer; trade website design for a painting or sculpture.
Any other ideas?
How a bad economy influences art & design 19 February 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Aesthetics, Affluenza, Beauty, Business of art, Design, Fiber, Handmade, Modern culture.3 comments
In this case, design refers specifically to fashion, though I’m thinking in broader terms. NPR’s Ari Shapiro interviewed Sally Singer, Vogue magazine’s fashion news and features director in a Morning Edition spot this morning.
I have a love-hate relationship with fashion — both practical fashion and runway fashion. Runway fashion is easy for the masses to deride. A lot of it appears to lack almost every practical consideration, and us rabble in the middle classes can’t remotely afford it. It rightly births satire such as Ugly Betty. However, artistically and aesthetically fashion design is worthwhile.
“In tough times, why not express yourself by how you dress — whether you’re doing it from what’s in your closet, what’s in a vintage store [or] what you made yourself?” Singer asks. What a person chooses to wear — or live in, drive in, read or listen to if we expand the discussion — communicates, whether we like it or not. Our wardrobe can say that we value our appearance, or that we don’t. It often identifies us with a certain subculture. For better or worse, it sets us apart as lower, middle or upper class.
from the fashion industry reflecting depression era chic.
And, perhaps, fashion serves as an indicator of an economy. Singer talks a little about “depression era chic” in the interview. A New York Post article elaborates on this idea:
The duds say it all — and it’s depressing.
Taking a cue from the grim economy, this fall’s fashions at Banana Republic, Gap and H&M are featuring a distinctly Depression-era trend of cloche hats, pencil skirts, conductor caps and baggy, vintage-style dresses.
I wouldn’t have expected this kind of a trend from the fashion industry (had I been thinking about it). In other artistic segments, possibly: Painting has historically reflected social hardships; film and photography possess similar track records as I recall. While any observant twenty year old is old enough to realize that styles recur, this years’ shift in clothing design is more intentional than what generally appears to be a more simple ebb and flow to this common observer.
That said, props to the fashion industry for taking a culturally relevant direction. I’m not sure, off-hand, if it’s the right direction; one might worry that mimicking the styles of the depression might result in even more dire attitudes. The flip-side — to create elaborate clothing that defies a cultural climate — could instead instill hope.
Then again, it might also create some kind of complex in us, causing us to believe things are better than they are whereby we spend more than we actually have to spend. This is what Singer seems to refer to as morality. Towards the end of the interview, she states that “Not shopping is not a moral act right now.”
There’s actually no indication of whether she expects us to actually spend more than we have, but in the context of American consumerism the inference is believable. And such reckless spending is more-or-less what landed us in this so-called economic mess in the first place.
Photo from the Retro Radar.
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.
The real and the imitation 30 January 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Architecture, Basis for designing well, Disposable culture, Environmental stewardship, Handmade, Siloam Springs.4 comments
Today’s post — The Truth About Materials — over at A Public Sketchbook is largely a follow up to my Autumn post Entropy, patina and the built environment. From the Sketchbook’s entry:
The predominance of vision has effected the way we think about materials. As more and more communities employ “stampcrete” and if they can’t afford that, “stamphalt” in public spaces, the erosion of values is painfully obvious. The attitude of ”as long as that stuff looks like brick, it’s OK ” is exactly what got the ponzi scheme victims into trouble. Actually all the use of fake materials is sort of like a ponzi scheme–you simply put the day of reckoning off until the whole thing fails and at great expense you end up doing what you should have done the first time around. Materials carry memory, and the replacement of materials with facsimiles destroys memory, with it the hard won truths and values of our society. As an example I’ve posted two images of bricks one of painted stamped asphalt and the other of 19th century brick pavers.
The inadvertent marks of the makers, of the hands that handled the wet clay can be seen in the lower image, the memory of the lives that made these bricks. The moss growing between each brick reveals an unanticipated symbiosis of inert and living matter. the bricks, slightly uneven gently accommodate the pushing of tree roots below without cracking or failing. The stamphalt has none of this capacity to hold time and life–no capacity for memory and for that matter, imagination. The fact that it is unsustainable and unrecyclable is no coincidence. Whenever we remove the dimension of time and the capacity to remember from materials, we fall prey to appearances and hidden costs, not only economic and environmental but cultural and societal.
Christmas pots 8 January 2009
Posted by pcNielsen in Art, Ceramics, Etsy, Handmade.6 comments
I was thrilled to receive as Christmas gifts from my wife two pots which she purchased from Etsy sellers. Both are porcelain works by female artists whose work I’ve been admiring for a couple of years now.
This first one is a sweet pea pot by Kim Westad. It measures about 3.5 inches across. Westad works from her studio in the Bronx. “My goal is to design and produce unique, quality pieces that people will be happy to use and have in their homes,” she states on her website. Interestingly, she started as a graphic design major, but that plan was derailed with the first pottery class she took after graduating with a BFA from the University of Connecticut. Her shop here.
This second piece, a bud vase, is the work of Stepanka Horalkova. Horalkova was born in the Czech Republic and immigrated to the United States in 1995. She’s a self-taught artist and also works out of New York City. I like that she hand builds with porcelain, something that I don’t see very often. The vase is about 3.5″ x 3″. Her shop here.
