Comments | nasu_dengaku: Interesting artist who "excavates" layers of construction paper

nasu_dengaku

Interesting artist who "excavates" layers of construction paper

Aug 31, 2010 12:58

I recently found out about Jen Stark while browsing for some unrelated material. Jen creates fascinating landscapes out of construction paper that are evocative of both natural geology and man-made excavations.

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art

Comments 4

plymouth August 31 2010, 20:53:56 UTC

Strangely, she hand-cuts all the paper. Someone needs to buy her access to a laser cutter so she can create her art 10x more quickly.

I disagree with this assertion. Sometimes the process is part of the point. Like, I wouldn't want someone telling me I should get a knitting machine so that my hand-knit projects don't take so long :)

nasu_dengaku August 31 2010, 23:12:46 UTC

I admit that I do have a bias against repetitive manual tasks -- when doing the laser cut wood spirals, I hated the manual assembly process but loved the conceptual side of creating the spirals.

There may be something about the paper-cutting process that she enjoys, or perhaps she can design better when she cuts by hand. However, once she builds one copy of any given sculpture, it would be very easy to scan the route of the cut so that numerous identical copies can be automatically cut and (manually) assembled. Since I like her work, I want as many people as possible to enjoy it, and more people can enjoy it when there are more copies available.

nasu_dengaku August 31 2010, 23:41:48 UTC

Also, this may make me controversial in the art world, but when I'm looking at a piece of art, the method of how it was made usually doesn't affect my interpretation of the art. The main exception to this is art that has a strong performance element to it, where the act of creating the art *is* the art. Even in those cases, it's more interesting to be there as it's happening instead of just seeing the finished product.

Matthew Barney is one example... it would probably be fun to help him make his art, but the physical end products of his art aren't very interesting. Seeing his show at MoMa felt like arriving at the house of a person who had just finished hosting a really cool party but hadn't cleaned up their house yet.

plymouth September 1 2010, 00:54:54 UTC

I really was talking about the process of creating the art from the perspective of the artist. I really enjoy the experience of doing by hand things that are frequently now done by machine. I enjoy the creation of small dissimilarities between the pieces. I enjoy the feeling of uniqueness each object has. I enjoy the feeling of "I made that!" which is not eliminated by asking a machine to do it for me, but is changed. I enjoy getting my hands scraped and painted and cut and worn and dirty. I enjoy the feeling of success at being able to master a challenging technique ( ... )