Art, Philosophies, and End-of-Lent Bits
Thursday I had class outside, doodah, doodah. Thursday I had class outside, dadedodahday. And I only got mildly distracted! Thursday night was the Benefit for Haiti concert and the Tenebrae service. At the first, I learned that one of the deans is a rather stellar jazz piano player, and can do the classy introduction of a chanteuse while still playing. At the second, I was reminded of how much I absolutely love candlelight. Thursday night I also realized that a comparison of the Gospels had come up during LaB, and I don't think I've ever sat down and read through all of them, as to have close enough reference to make comparisons. So I decided that before Easter, I would read all 4. (No, this wouldn't work unless I read as fast as I do. Got through Matthew and Mark and part of Luke Thursday night, rest of Luke and hopefully some of John tonight.)
Today I got to go to a tiny bit of NCECA (Nat'l Council on Education in the Ceramic Arts), which was happening in Philly Thurs, Fri, Sat. Syd told us that she'd drive us up, get us tickets, and wander around with us -- but she figured out Thursday night that student 1-day passes were something along the lines of $140 apiece, so decided that we'd sneak in to hear the Swat professor's talk (and by 'sneak' I mean asked the front desk if we could please go to just this one talk, and they agreed) and see the shows in the Convention center and then wander around Philly to see more shows.
We did get to hear Brian's talk (Brian Meunier) and though I'd heard a version of it when his show was at Swat last year, I was still impressed. He gets so excited when he talks - he loves to tell people about his process, where his ideas come from, how he cobbles together where he's been (Mexico, Japan) and things that he thinks are amusing (funny animals: vulture chicks, swimming elephants, sexy bellies of antelopes and loving wasps). In doing so, he ends up giving a talk that jumps around a lot - from idea to piece to 3 more ideas to another piece. He loves inventions that were postulated in Victorian England that would never have worked, and loves playing with the idea of the subconscious communicating with the conscious. He uses the metaphor of bubbles - and idea will start on the ocean floor (as it were) and bubble up, taking shape until they become almost preverbal. Verbalizing art steps away from the mystery of the process, so he does abstract a lot of things - but he stays right in the area where art it at the lowest edge of comprehensible. He has stories - the bunny surrounded by a tour group of Swatties, that was carried off by a red-tailed hawk in front of them; the time he climbed an Aztec temple as worshippers surrounded it and parakeets and toucans flew overhead, one landing on his foot, at the precise moment of dawn; the excitement when he saw Audobon prints and the Anasyvos Kouros.
There were 3 shows in the convention center: an art expo, a K-12 exhibition, and a cup sale. The art expo was mindblowing. These were potters who supported themselves by doing this. Whether that meant, to them, creating 5-foot-metallic-looking vases or the tiniest, perfect little human figurines, it seemed to span the entire continuum in terms of size. Colors flew wildly over some of them, snuck on others as an afterthought, enhanced forms whereever it existed. (Pictures on FB of what I wanted - to make, to have, etc) The K-12 exhibition was gorgeous. I really wanted to know who picked the pieces/how they were chosen, because they ranged from pieces that made me want to cry over the perfections, to little elementary students's work, charmingly imperfect. Some of the work I couldn't match. Some of it was a little laughable for the grade level. And some, I looked at the tag and was properly astounded. The cup sale wasn't anything particularly impressive - I saw a puzzle mug, and a couple of cute cups that had mouse ears and noses on the handles, and I thought it was interesting how they ranged from what looked like bone china, to hearty, rugged mugs that had a cracked-glaze/different-firing look to them.
We got lunch at Reading Terminal Market - my first time there, and it was insane - and took it back over to the convention center to eat. Had a philosophical-art conversation with Syd, both about her show that was up (that we had yet to see) and our own artwork, and how there was a continuum of teaching art - between Syd's professors, who came in, looked cool, and went to get coffee, where the students had to figure it out for themselves, and the super-structured teaching of art, where everything had to be planned out ahead of time, sketched from multiple perspectives, and then had to be made according to the sketch. We talked about how the last, in itself, can be stifling, especially if the idea, the clay, or the mood you're in wants to go in a different direction. And it's always good to follow that direction and see what happens.
After lunch, we went exhibit hunting - we went to William & Thomas Daley's collaborative show. (Clay-Sarah's dad and grandfather). William Daley's pots ('vesicas') are huge and gorgeous - the angles and depth somehow move beyond a 'pot' into something deeper. I like them, though I don't think that I'll ever make things that are similar. Thomas Daley is an architect; he designed a building using the ideas in his father's pots. I think I managed to get a pic before my camera batteries died.
We went to the Moore College of Art & Design, where we saw both the NCECA show "Earth Matters" and the Moore show "Photografika". The first was wonderfully well done - ranged from the pop-arty porcelain Icarus to the lit-from-within porcelain pair of lungs with birds nesting in/around them. A lot of the show was white, but it worked. The second was a little creepy - I loved the idea of carving on worn-down tires to make a printing surface, but the room covered in insects was a little weird (floor, walls, embroidered tablecloth, screen-printed dishes).
The last show we got to go to was Syd's (Syd Carpenter). It was an impressive body of work - based off of maps of Southern US plantation maps, and abstracted, but still relevant. We got to see both ends of being well-known - the awed fan connecting the dots between the magazines with her picture on the front cover and the person standing in the room - and the arts director from somewhere far away ordering around Syd and all of us to get Syd's picture right where she wanted it. (Ugh. "No, move a little to the right. Take your hands out from behind your back. Mmm, cross your arms." Etc. Gah.) We met up with 2 more swatties - one from '66 who fit into the 'Syd's fangirls' category, and one from '09 who told us about her job in the city, and the Fleisher Art Memorial - where, evidently, if you chip in about $50 for a membership, you can take all the art classes you want for free. !!! oooh, and the class list looks yummy.
And then LuAnn and I got Ben & Jerry's and came home on the train. Good, good, day.
Today I got to go to a tiny bit of NCECA (Nat'l Council on Education in the Ceramic Arts), which was happening in Philly Thurs, Fri, Sat. Syd told us that she'd drive us up, get us tickets, and wander around with us -- but she figured out Thursday night that student 1-day passes were something along the lines of $140 apiece, so decided that we'd sneak in to hear the Swat professor's talk (and by 'sneak' I mean asked the front desk if we could please go to just this one talk, and they agreed) and see the shows in the Convention center and then wander around Philly to see more shows.
We did get to hear Brian's talk (Brian Meunier) and though I'd heard a version of it when his show was at Swat last year, I was still impressed. He gets so excited when he talks - he loves to tell people about his process, where his ideas come from, how he cobbles together where he's been (Mexico, Japan) and things that he thinks are amusing (funny animals: vulture chicks, swimming elephants, sexy bellies of antelopes and loving wasps). In doing so, he ends up giving a talk that jumps around a lot - from idea to piece to 3 more ideas to another piece. He loves inventions that were postulated in Victorian England that would never have worked, and loves playing with the idea of the subconscious communicating with the conscious. He uses the metaphor of bubbles - and idea will start on the ocean floor (as it were) and bubble up, taking shape until they become almost preverbal. Verbalizing art steps away from the mystery of the process, so he does abstract a lot of things - but he stays right in the area where art it at the lowest edge of comprehensible. He has stories - the bunny surrounded by a tour group of Swatties, that was carried off by a red-tailed hawk in front of them; the time he climbed an Aztec temple as worshippers surrounded it and parakeets and toucans flew overhead, one landing on his foot, at the precise moment of dawn; the excitement when he saw Audobon prints and the Anasyvos Kouros.
There were 3 shows in the convention center: an art expo, a K-12 exhibition, and a cup sale. The art expo was mindblowing. These were potters who supported themselves by doing this. Whether that meant, to them, creating 5-foot-metallic-looking vases or the tiniest, perfect little human figurines, it seemed to span the entire continuum in terms of size. Colors flew wildly over some of them, snuck on others as an afterthought, enhanced forms whereever it existed. (Pictures on FB of what I wanted - to make, to have, etc) The K-12 exhibition was gorgeous. I really wanted to know who picked the pieces/how they were chosen, because they ranged from pieces that made me want to cry over the perfections, to little elementary students's work, charmingly imperfect. Some of the work I couldn't match. Some of it was a little laughable for the grade level. And some, I looked at the tag and was properly astounded. The cup sale wasn't anything particularly impressive - I saw a puzzle mug, and a couple of cute cups that had mouse ears and noses on the handles, and I thought it was interesting how they ranged from what looked like bone china, to hearty, rugged mugs that had a cracked-glaze/different-firing look to them.
We got lunch at Reading Terminal Market - my first time there, and it was insane - and took it back over to the convention center to eat. Had a philosophical-art conversation with Syd, both about her show that was up (that we had yet to see) and our own artwork, and how there was a continuum of teaching art - between Syd's professors, who came in, looked cool, and went to get coffee, where the students had to figure it out for themselves, and the super-structured teaching of art, where everything had to be planned out ahead of time, sketched from multiple perspectives, and then had to be made according to the sketch. We talked about how the last, in itself, can be stifling, especially if the idea, the clay, or the mood you're in wants to go in a different direction. And it's always good to follow that direction and see what happens.
After lunch, we went exhibit hunting - we went to William & Thomas Daley's collaborative show. (Clay-Sarah's dad and grandfather). William Daley's pots ('vesicas') are huge and gorgeous - the angles and depth somehow move beyond a 'pot' into something deeper. I like them, though I don't think that I'll ever make things that are similar. Thomas Daley is an architect; he designed a building using the ideas in his father's pots. I think I managed to get a pic before my camera batteries died.
We went to the Moore College of Art & Design, where we saw both the NCECA show "Earth Matters" and the Moore show "Photografika". The first was wonderfully well done - ranged from the pop-arty porcelain Icarus to the lit-from-within porcelain pair of lungs with birds nesting in/around them. A lot of the show was white, but it worked. The second was a little creepy - I loved the idea of carving on worn-down tires to make a printing surface, but the room covered in insects was a little weird (floor, walls, embroidered tablecloth, screen-printed dishes).
The last show we got to go to was Syd's (Syd Carpenter). It was an impressive body of work - based off of maps of Southern US plantation maps, and abstracted, but still relevant. We got to see both ends of being well-known - the awed fan connecting the dots between the magazines with her picture on the front cover and the person standing in the room - and the arts director from somewhere far away ordering around Syd and all of us to get Syd's picture right where she wanted it. (Ugh. "No, move a little to the right. Take your hands out from behind your back. Mmm, cross your arms." Etc. Gah.) We met up with 2 more swatties - one from '66 who fit into the 'Syd's fangirls' category, and one from '09 who told us about her job in the city, and the Fleisher Art Memorial - where, evidently, if you chip in about $50 for a membership, you can take all the art classes you want for free. !!! oooh, and the class list looks yummy.
And then LuAnn and I got Ben & Jerry's and came home on the train. Good, good, day.