Now that the CCA spring semester is well underway its time to hit the road.
I’ve got a busy few weeks ahead visiting Madison WI, Portland OR, Nevada City CA and finally Asheville NC. At each of the out-of-state venues I’ll be running whittling workshops and giving a public talk about my work.
Please drop by and say hi if you are in the vicinity!
Here are the lecture dates and details
Madison – February 1st
Portland – February 8th
Asheville – March 1st
Filed under Travel
I’ve been thinking a bit about the notions of ORIGINALITY and APPROPRIATION.
As you know if you’ve read my manifesto, I often use music as a model for thinking about art and design. I appreciate the relevance of the term ‘practice’ to both and I’ve always been enamored of the collaborative aspect of music making. The question of originality in music is also a very interesting one. I started thinking about this when considering the notion of ‘covers’ in music – especially popular music (from folk through rock to rap). The cover is a tribute, a test of one’s own ability and sometimes a kind of one-upmanship. A way to acknowledge your forebears and to strut your own stuff at the same time.
But in the fine arts this could be considered simply copying. Its been impossible to carve a version of Michelangelo’s David as part of an art practice for over a 100 years? For most of the 20th Century the avante-garde position has been to reject and deny the work of our forbears – not incorporate it. But since the 1970′s appropriation and sampling have become part of post-modern practice. I’m sure there’s some excellent analysis of the connections between originality, covers, sampling and appropriation with respect to music – I need Don Miller Jr.’s input here!
Perhaps in the worlds of craft and design the notion of ‘cover’ has been there all along. Lately I’ve been teaching one of my favorite classes at CCa – The History and Theory of 20th Century Furniture. It’s interesting the way some ideas keep reappearing and being reinterpreted in the recent history of furniture design. For example, studio furniture designers and makers post WW2 have had this thing about designing and making music stands – perhaps this reflects the parallels between music and craftsmanship.
Through looking at so many designers in the History and Theory class I’ve noticed another strange trope or design ‘meme’. So many 20thC furniture designers have embraced the vernacular be designing their own ‘cover’ of the three-legged milking stool. Here are some nice examples -
Aalto's Stool 60 - an 'original take' from the 30's
Charlotte Perriand came back again and again to this form in the 50's and 60's after abandoning chrome and bent steel.
Tage Frid's 'cover' from the 70's
Tom Dixon's 'Offcut' from 2009
Richard Hutten's one man improv - Stool Pants from the 90's
All this was floating around in my noggin’ when I listened to a great Radiolab show last week – the piece entitled ‘Patient Zero’. It was about tracing the source of things to their ORIGIN – they looked at the AIDS virus, Typhoid Mary, the High Five, and the Cowboy Hat. The last piece featured Jonnie Hughes who has written a new book entitled “On the Origin of Teepees: the Evolution of Ideas (and Ourselves).” Get the pun!
In it the author expands on Dawkins’ concept of the ‘meme’. Dawkins believed that a meme was perpetuated by it being copied, duplicated and appropriated. Hughes hypothesizes another mechanism for the survival and, more radically, EVOLUTION of ideas through environmental, social and historical factors. In the example of the cowboy hat he proves that no-one invented it – despite Stetson’s reputation for having done so. Actually, it evolved to satisfy a very particular set of human needs determined by cultural and environmental factors – powered by the selection pressure of the cowboy’s choice. The cowboy hat wasn’t invented it evolved on the prairie – like buffalo!
So now I’m wondering if ‘originality’ is in any way a valid or useful concept in such a rich field of cultural appropriation and ‘memetic evolution’. I’ve always found it a very problematic concept and a futile goal. The scientific model as aphorized by Newton in 1676 has always held more appeal – “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” We can only make an (original? evolving?) contribution to a field by recognizing and working with all that has gone before.
I think it’s time I designed a three legged stool – though I know its not original!!!
My colleague Peter L’Abbe has been researching Camera Obsucra recently and inspired me to visit the Giant Camera last time I was down at Ocean Beach! It had been years since I was last inside it and it was even cooler than I remember.
The Giant Camera perched on the cliffs at the northern end of Ocean Beach
It’s the last remnant of the various amazing entertainments that were found at this end of the beach back in the day. The Sutro Baths (burned down in 1966) and Playland (closed after a series of unsolved macabre murders – just kidding) were the big pieces in this now long gone picture.
Sutro Baths
Now the only amusement left is the Giant Camera. Standing alone on the cliff edge it has a bittersweet nostalgia about it. As if it too is waiting patiently for the end to come – watching the sun set on a bygone era – sniff, sniff.
Giant Camera and Seal Rocks
Roll up! Roll up!
Lots of helpful signage.
...dating from antiquity...
You pay your $3 and go in through the narrow squeaky doors to the darkened room. Eventually the MC comes in from the ticket booth, opens the all-seeing oculus and the world outside is magically projected on to the 5′ diameter dish in the center of the room.
The deep dish diorama
Its remarkably bright and the detail is incredible. As the upper tower rotates the full 360° panorama unrolls across the screen. You have to walk around with it otherwise the world starts to slip and slide.
Its a great experience! The curvature of the screen, the rotation, the constant sliding of the image, the incredible clarity. I want one in my house!
It looks like we are about to slide off the end of the world.
Filed under Architecture, Bayarea Gems, Museology
But all this Philly fun aside. I was here to work!
I had been invited to attend one of the open days in conjunction with a collaborative exhibition project between the Bartram Gardens (the US’s oldest botanical gardens) and the Center for Art in Wood. I knew very little about John Bartram and this legacy before I left Bayarea but I’m a always intrigued by a tale of internationalism and the dawning discipline of science during the Enlightenment.
I was excited to finally get there along with a gaggle of folk who I really respect (Albert LeCoff, Matt Hebert, Merryll Saylan, Mark Sfirri, Don Miller Jr., Jack Larimore, Leah Woods) and some others who I’ll get to know soon I hope. We met and talked and then went on a rambling, meandering stroll through Bartram’s garden down to the shores of the Schyulkill River.
The restored barn and house were very surprising to me having spent little time on the East Coast. So humble and hard hewn, but with touches of common luxury showing in some of the careful (if haphazard) details. I’m such a sucker for the vernacular!
Luscious lintels
Mysterious arcane symbols of fertility and idleness carved by the hand of John Bartram - we choose to believe.
The magnificent but humble house of the Bartram family.
I have to admire the heroic rough hewn columns of local stone, the window trims and the carved motto – affirming Bartram’s revolutionary and enlightened stance against the orthodoxy of the Quaker faith.
"It is God Alone, Almyty Lord, the Holy One, by me Ador'd"
But we were here to do a bit of botanizing and hypothesizing. The gardens themselves are exquisite. Gone of course, are Bartram’s own crops, livestock and orchards – he was a working farmer after all. But still here are some of the trees that he or his son’s John Jr. and William Bartram planted
John Bartram purchased 102 acres here in 1728 and started to farm, build and explore. He wisely or fortuitously found a parcel of land at the junction of different geological groups that enjoyed diverse microclimates. Through his building of terraced stone walls and buildings he created sun-drenched hollows protected from the winter chills to enable him to grow an increasingly broad range of plants. These he found locally, or transplanted from further afield following a series of increasingly adventurous and ambitious expeditions and then finally through a fertile exchange with fellow botanists and horticulturalists in England. The whole wonderful tale of his commercial, scientific, camaraderie and friendship with Peter Collinson in England is told in sumptuous detail by Andrea Wulf in her tale ‘The Brother Gardeners – Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession,” which also deals in detail with my old friend and life companion Sir Joseph Banks. Read it!
But let’s walk first!
The oldest living Gingko biloba in the US. Thought to be one of the original three bought to the US from China via England. One of which was given to William Bartram to nurture - which he clearly did!
Carnivorous plants first bought to the attention of Western botany by John Bartram
And the cage they're kept in - they ARE carnivorous after all!
Callicarpa americana - seducing English gardeners into a feeding frenzy almost as rabid as that of the Dutch with their tulips.
Later we went on a small tour of the house itself. Very relaxing and easy going – a comfortable life here is easy to imagine! A rambling and idiosyncratic interior, with a great Y-shaped staircase branching two two separate 2nd floor landings. I’ve only seen another like it in the Wharton Esherick house in Paoli, Pennsylvania. You can get a glimpse of that staircase here!
Bartram wuz 'ere!
The highlight of the inside tour was to catch a glimpse, in the gathering evening dark, of a small medicine chest used by James Howell Bartram (John Jr.’s son). most likely it was built for grandfather John Bartram, by John’s brother James (a local cabinetmaker). Nice piece! Got me thinking in earnest about what I might make for this exhibition. More on that later!
Bartram's Medicine Chest
Filed under Architecture, Museology, Travel
Oops, jumped too far forward. I haven’t finished talking about the trip to Philly.
Continuing the tour of strange museums of Philadelphia we come to the Eastern States Penitentiary.
I first heard of this space when Alan Wexler gave his first lecture at CCA. He was chosen to create a project for Prison Sentences: The Prison as Site/The Prison as Subject in 1995 at the Eastern State Penitentiary – where he created a huge range of the artifacts for use in the space (books, paintbrushes, pigments,etc.) by dismantling and re-assembling things that were provided for his maintenance (paper cups and plates, napkins, etc.). I remember it seeming like a strange mix of Gilligan’s Island, Angkor Wat and every POW movie I’ve ever seen.
Enlightenment gothic!
The textures that have been retained, fostered, restored are amazing! It’s almost like coral in places.
Stairway to heaven?
And close up its Rauschenberg meets Kiefer (maybe).
Peeling...
Seeping...
Crumbling...
You can’t NOT think about what human suffering sweat and talk has percolated through these walls to leave such stains.
Say goodbye for two years of solitary...
Some of the long abandoned cells have a grandeur about them. This one still has remnants of the urban rainforest that blossomed on this site after it was abandoned in the 70's
Some of the cells have become locations for site specific artworks.
Karen Schmidt's - Cozy. A hand-knit cell-warmer.
Local entomologist Greg Cowper's tribute to a prisoner who displayed his collection of 18 species of butterflies and moths (some quite rare) gathered at the ESP to Dr Henry Skinner in 1889.
Cowper works in the same role at the same institution as Skinner did 200 years ago. He has now collected more than 500 specimens of more than 150 species of insects and invertebrates at ESP which are now displayed in one of the cells.
There's been a long history of art at ESP as you can see from this extraordinary documentation of two inmate's precocious performance art from the 50's.
The ‘official’ caption reads “The meaning of their project has long been forgotten”. I think I’ve found the perfect epitaph!
Filed under Architecture, Museology, Travel
I had a great visit to San Diego State University last weekend. I got to spend time with Matt Hebert who did his MFA at CCA through the Furniture Program a ways back and is now an Assistant Professor at SDSU where he works with the incredible Prof. Wendy Maruyama – who used to teach at CCA!
I also got to spend time with some of the graduate and undergrad students there. We got some serious whittling done together and Matt and I worked on a series of digitally manifested versions of one of my aWay station whittlings. Manual and automated whittling and various translations thereof.
Matt sent me this sweet little video that he compiled capturing some of our activities.
Filed under aWay station, In the Studio, Whittling
Michael suggested we vista the Wagner Museum – ostensibly an un-reformed Victorian natural history collection ranging from rocks to man in neat systematic order. How could I resist?
The Wagner Free Insitute of Science - What a warm welcome!
William Wagner 1796-1885 - 90 years! Quite a specimen himself!
Strangely enough there is very little on their website – too far in the future for the Wagner? Only a nice daguerreotype of founder Wagner, the briefest bio in the universe “ William Wagner (1796-1885) was a Philadelphia merchant, philanthropist, and amateur scientist” and the following brief review from 1870 – “The Wagner houses a large nucleus for illustration, and where the student can perfect himself in the studies made readily available by the Institution. The collections are the most extensive in the country, and of a superior order, embracing a serried rank of more than half a million of specimens. Every person interested in the natural sciences could further benefit from the enrichment this rich and beautiful collection of specimens offer.”
Stepping back in time - I forgot my morning coat!
The first floor corridors are lined with original Audobon prints!
The skunk was my favorite, but they wouldn't let me take him home.
And then on the second floor there is row after row of beautiful cabinet work with hand-floated glass and tens of thousands of geological and zoological specimens. Damn I just realized I must have missed the ENTIRE plant kingdom! There’s another trip right there.
Prof. Miller deep in thought.
All of the specimens are exquisitely labelled with fine ink copperplate lettering on aging yellowing paper.
"The Creator has an inordinate fondness for beetles" J.B.S. Haldane and bees
Echidna - I'd never seen a monotreme skeleton before.
Arrrrggghhhh! Barnacles!
The smallest egg in the museum
There's even a nice little section on practical taxonomy - cute, eh?
Some seem to resent the treatment!
Some just loose it completely!!
This last critter reminds me now of the ESP which I visited on my last day. The Eastern States Penitentiary – the first Penitentiary (place of penitence) in North America. More on this incredible archive of suffering in a future post.
