Archive for the 'sculpture' Category

kathryn clark

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

Kathryn Clark has been working on a series of quilts that map foreclosed properties in communities across the US. The quilts are beautiful and graphic in their simplicity, while also being filled with meaning.


Albuquerque Foreclosure Quilt

Each little hole in the fabric, each block of color represents a lost home, and all the grief and hopelessness that comes with it. I feel like I understand the housing crisis much better by looking at one of these quilts than I do by reading endless articles.


Detroit Foreclosure Quilt

You can see many more of her quilts and read an explanation of the project in Kathryn’s own words on her blog.

play

Monday, August 15th, 2011

I’ve had a batch of old metal sunray-shaped findings stashed away in a drawer for years. Every so often I’d take them out and think how I wanted to make something with them, but instead they’d end up back in the cabinet.

Last week, I gave myself some time off to refill the creative well. I went to the library and chose randomly inspiring books on Andy Goldsworthy, Shaker furniture, Antique Jewelry and William Morris. I scribbled ideas in my sketchbook. I wandered off and washed a couple of windows. I tidied my desk. Eventually I dug through my drawers of materials… and there were the findings, waiting.

So I made something that isn’t strictly anything, and had a wonderful time doing it.

findings sculpture

Now this blanket-curtain-whatever-it-is is hanging on the wall, catching the light in its old metal shimmery way, and delighting me. I want to make a GIANT one if I can hunt down more of these findings. The bagful is all used up.

findings sculpture

findings sculpture

Pete Goldlust

Sunday, June 12th, 2011

The color. The patience. The detail. I love this.

Shawn Lovell

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

I am in love with this bed by Shawn Lovell, who just won a 2008 Niche award.

shawn lovell tree bed

How could you fail to sleep well?

I also covet her gorgeous trellis.

shawn lovell trellis

Of course the whole established perennial garden is part of the dream too. Better find me a plot and get digging.

two too large tables

Saturday, April 19th, 2008

After going to MJSA I walked through Hudson River Park and came across these sculptures.

They’re so playful and practical at the same time. Turns out the piece is called Two Too Large Tables and is by Allan and Ellen Wexler. On their website there are many more inspiring projects.

shibboleth

Monday, November 19th, 2007

I was looking at friend Kevin’s Flickr pics and saw these:

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Photos of Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth at the Tate Modern in London. I love the pictures, and after reading a little about the piece I love the sculpture even more.

Salcedo is addressing a long legacy of racism and colonialism that underlies the modern world. A ‘shibboleth’ is a custom, phrase or use of language that acts as a test of belonging to a particular social group or class. By definition, it is used to exclude those deemed unsuitable to join this group.

‘The history of racism’, Salcedo writes, ‘runs parallel to the history of modernity, and is its untold dark side’. For hundreds of years, Western ideas of progress and prosperity have been underpinned by colonial exploitation and the withdrawal of basic rights from others. Our own time, Salcedo is keen to remind us, remains defined by the existence of a huge socially excluded underclass, in Western as well as post-colonial societies.

In breaking open the floor of the museum, Salcedo is exposing a fracture in modernity itself. Her work encourages us to confront uncomfortable truths about our history and about ourselves with absolute candidness, and without self-deception.

Living in Crown Heights (a neighborhood synonymous nationwide with race riots) makes me extra hungry for anything that speaks to the presence of racism in our world. Being part of a tiny white minority, feeling the weight of my skin and privilege and education, trying not to impose, trying to connect… feels very much like trying to avoid giant cracks in the sidewalk.

knit monsters

Tuesday, September 4th, 2007

This mask was my first assignment when I took a class with Katharine Cobey.

Many of my guests are freaked out by it. I like it.

Packing requires touching everything, visiting a little.
CON: it slows me down. PRO: it entertains me.

figures

Saturday, July 21st, 2007

I saw this image over at Midge’s Mind, part of a series of eerie underwater sculptures by Jason de Caires Taylor. I find it haunting and beautiful.

underwater sculpture

It reminded me of this sculpture called Welcome by Raphael Zollinger, presently on the campus of the Pratt Institute here in Brooklyn.

It really creeps me out that people walk by unconcerned. In the same way that it bothers me to think of a circle of figures waiting forever expectant, unseen on the ocean bed.