So this year is my final and I get to do the fun Final Major Project.  This is exciting due to the fact that I get to a) do whatever the hell takes my little fancy and b) have approximately 3 months in which to do this.  Yikes.  This means that I can be full-on and ‘go deep’ with regards to my project – get ready for some heavy philosophical theories my friends.  Well, be aware when I finally manage to decipher the work of Pierre Bourdieu….little bastard and your extravagant literature.  It is nice when that sentence I’ve been labouring over for hours actually makes sense.  Now, that’s exciting.

So right now (with regards to artists) I’ve been looking at these bad boys:

Trish Morrissey

Martina Mullaney

Miranda July:

Richard Billingham:

Louise Bourgeois:

So yes, basically I am going to be exploring identity with regards to my Mother.  I am going to be creating a set of images and short film that will essentially create an overall self-portrait at 15;  a time when photographs were not taken in my family.  I still have some clarification to get to…but that’s the idea in progress.

x

I think in all my 4 years, almost 5 years  imagine that, in 3rd level studying Fine Arts, I have never been so influenced and i guess wowed and engaged with the French Artist Louise Bourgeois.

Born in Paris  (1911  to present ) her practice is mainly sculpture…having stumbled upon Louise Bourgeois thanks to my Design Tutor (Jean Bradley) way back in 2005, I was in awe of her work, its scale, material, and subject matter.

Having a retrospective in 2008 i was so so so lucky to see her exhibition two times. One in Paris at  Centre Pompidou again in New York City  at the Guggenheim

Over 3 decades of work scultpure, painting, print, installations, her work is all about her childhood,her upbringing and mostly about her Father and how he had an affair, which she witnessed as a child, Bourgeois manages to escalate and fill her work today with unrequited love, anger, loss and comfort and sorrow

Works that stick to me to this day include “the destruction of the father” 1974,  “Spider” 1999, and  ”seven in bed” 2001.

Here is an interesting clip from a BBC documentary featuring Famous British artists Tracey Emin, Stella Vine and Antony Gormley discuss the art works of Louise Bourgeois, interviewed by Alan Yentob for BBC in 2007.

(all pictures taken by me)

“elle@centrepompidou” peut apparaître comme un manifeste : la présentation de ses 500 collections au féminin dans un espace de 8000㎡, pour la première fois au monde, une mise en valeur et en perspective de ces grandes figures d’artistes oubliées.

En 1989, les Guerilla Girls ont lancé la question: ” Est-ce que les femmes doivent être nues pour entrer au Metropolitan Museum ?” puisqu’elles se sont rendu compte qu’au Metropolitan Museum of Art de New York , moins de 5% des artistes dans la section d’art moderne étaient des femmes, mais que par contre 85 % des nus étaient des femmes. Aujourd’hui, leurs affiches sont devenues une partie de l’exposition et on remarque pas loin d’ici, un autre repère artistique capital : le Louvre, qui possède 35000 oeuvres mais aucune émanant d’un artiste féminin. La conservatrice Camille Morineau a indiqué qu’avant, personne n’avait réfléchi à la raison de cette absence d’œuvres de femmes au Louvre, et maintenant ils ont commencé à discuter de ce thème.

Ni féminin ni féministe, le principe de l’exposition est de montrer et de rendre hommage à des artistes : photographes, architectes, vidéastes, cinéastes, performeuses, designers…sont regroupé en 7 chapitres : “pionnières”, “feu à volonté”, “corps slogan”, “eccentric abstraction”, “une chambre à soi” et “le mot à l’œuvre”.

On commence par le 5ème étage, où sont disposées les oeuvres des avant- gardes de 1920-1960. Suzanne Valadon, Frida Kahlo, Sonia Delaunay, Dora Maar, Joan Mitchell occupent la même place que Picasso, Mark Rothko et Marcel Duchamp, avec lesquels on peut faire une rétroaction historique du Symbolisme, Cubisme, Expressionnisme, Expressionnisme abstrait, Dadaïsme, Futurisme, Surréalisme, Minimalisme et Installations.

Au 4ème étage, on passe du côté “contemporain” à “actuel”, les traces des artiste masculins ont complètement disparu et les oeuvres de Sophie Calle, Pipilotti Rist, Annette Messager, Louise Bourgeois répandent des éclats éblouissants.

Un détail intéressant : les cartels ont changé, du style minimaliste on peut lire maintenant des extraits des explications des artistes et des commentaires des philosophes. Les objets exposés sont alternatifs et renouvelables. Cela nous donne une impression fraîche et accessible.

Lei TIAN, étudiante chinoise, 3° année communication

Plus de renseignements sur le site du Centre Pompidou.

A few weeks ago my friends at Staccato Association (Miramont de Guyenne, France) asked me if I would create something visual on the walls of a room they were renovating in their building. The brief was that creatively, I had a carte blanche but it was going to be a bedroom for the touring musicians that have a gig booked through the association and need a place to crash after their show.

The building is an old Gendarmarie, so I decided to work with the walls which are deliciously grungy (chipped and broken with sections of the walls coloured in an old dusty yellow painted a looooooooong time ago). I love that aesthetic, it reminds me of the years I spent living in a warehouse (Hibernian House) in Sydney.

I started thinking about the street art of Berlin, Louise Bourgeois‘ installations/spaces, Joy Hester’s ink drawings and the designer David Carson. I made a series of drawings in ink and enlarged them all on a photocopier then used the walls and ceiling as the canvas space. Some images I’ve left black and white, while others I have coloured minimally. I’ve also integrated wool into the installation as you’ll see, so there ended up being a nice mixed media, three-dimensional aspect which contrasts with the flatter images. As a finishing touch, I incorporated some images of insects and birds from old biology books.

I really wanted to create an inspiring, dream-like atmosphere for the musicians who will stay there. When you are touring, I’ve found that it can be a weird passage of time. Each place you stop there are new stories to find, people to meet and experinces waiting to happen. If my artwork enriches the experience for the musicians to come, then I think I would have reached my goal. In any case, I’m pretty happy with the outcome because it’s now a space that I really like and enjoy being in. I’m also thinking that some of these images I created could be the new direction for my next series of t-shirts on the ‘Machine is my Heart‘ label.

And so with Gabin’s help (Machine est mon coeur), we finished the artwork a few days ago and I’ve decided to call it ‘Room of clouds (dream of Berlin)/Chambre des nuages (rêve de Berlin)’. Inspired by the times I have spent in Berlin…and of course during this month it will be the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, so it feels like a nice time to celebrate the spirit of a city I love very much.

Poster proposal for the Japanese World Expo ’70 in Ōsaka, designed by Kamekura Yusaku, 1967.

The base of Okamoto Tarō’s iconic “Tower of the Sun,” in the Festival Plaza of the 1970 Osaka Expo by Tange Kenzo. Photo from Minami Nakawada, ed., Expo ‘70: Kyōkagu: Ōsaka bankoku hakurankai no subete (Daiyamondosha, 2005).

°

Okamoto Taro’s Tower of the Sun, part of the main theme pavilion at Expo ’70, greeted the world when Japan displayed its economic recovery from the ashes of defeat in the Asia-Pacific War.

VISIT: THE OKAMOTO TARŌ MUSEUM, KAWASAKI, JAPAN

An image of Amaterasu (literally: “[that which] illuminates Heaven”) emerging from Ama-no-Iwato, the “heavenly rock cave.”

“Progress and Harmony for Mankind” was the theme Japan chose for its expo, the first in Asia.

Its main icon was none other than the imperial progenitress in the guise of “The Tower of the Sun,” a massive sculpture by famed artist Okamoto Tarō.

Amaterasu Omikami, the putative ancestor of the imperial lineage that attempted to unite the world via the ideology of hakkō ichiu — “eight corners of the earth in harmony under one roof” (Japanese Manifest Destiny) — in World War II, welcomed visitors to Expo 70.

This is one of my favourite scultpures. I made a pilgrimage to the Expo Commemeration Park in Osaka a few years back. A monorail (the future!) took us to the site of what once was. When I fist caught sight of Okamato’s masterpiece, still standing nearly 40 years later, I was truly thrilled.

So, I was thrilled again when my eyes caught sight of the model above in the gift shop of the Mori Art Museum, high in space, Louise Bourgeois’s ginormous spider Maman, 53 floors below on the posh Roppongi Hills plaza.

There was some strange connection between this huge thing downstairs and this tiny plastic (very nice plastic, mind you) replica of another enormous sculpture in Osaka. I grabbed it and now my very own little Tower of the Sun has a proud spot of place in my living space.

Myths and their associated symbols surround us.

Parisian contemporary artist Louise Bourgeois.  What a piece of work she is? 

Photo of Louise: Maplethorpe Gallery

Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, The Mistress and The Tangerine. Dir. Marion Caljori and Amei Wallach. Perf. Louise Bourgeois. Zeigeist Films, 2008. DVD.

I included this film not because I like Louise Bourgeois and it is interesting to learn about her work (which is also true) but because the film itself is a good example of the complexities involved in revealing details about your personal life in relation to your art.  This is something I think about alot.  With her, it is interesting that one time she said one thing about her father and his mistress and now that is the standard story her work is viewed through, whether or not that is what she intended.  The clip above is an excerpt from the film.  The official trailer, which has been disabled from embeddding, gives a better idea of the roles the documentary cast Bourgeois in.

Elaborazione da D la Repubblica delle Donne, di Francesco Chiacchio

In una videointervista la scultrice Louise Bourgeois mostra sul tavolo davanti a sé due sculture bianche, una rappresenta il Maschile e una il Femminile. Entrambe sono composte di una testa e di un corpo nella posizione della sfinge, ma le forme sono stilizzate in modo diverso.

“Lui” è squadrato e ben saldo dov’è,  se gli dai una spintarella rimane lì fermo, mentre “lei” ha il corpo smussato, quasi cilindrico, appena la tocchi oscilla e rischia di rotolare via e cadere dal tavolo. Louise parla in questo modo del fatto che le donne sono troppo spesso soggette al giudizio degli altri, mancanti di fiducia nelle proprie possibilità, sempre pronte a dubitare di sé stesse.

Questa vulnerabilità (sulle cui origini sarebbe utile indagare) potrebbe spiegare perché abbiano tanta presa sulle donne gli irrealistici modelli di bellezza proposti dalle riviste femmili, che diventano spesso arbitri inappellabili di come dover essere – pena altrimenti l’invisibilità, l’emarginazione sociale,  l’estinzione etc. etc.

Il fatto è che le pagine patinate di queste riviste sono belle e sofisticate, sfogliandole  appaghiamo l’occhio e soprattutto il naturale bisogno di sognare. Così scivoliamo nella tela del ragno, senza accorgerci del sottile malessere che si insinua sottoforma di vocina “specchio delle mie brame”…

Perdersi nelle riviste di moda può essere un vero piacere, un po’ come  nelle fiabe illustrate di quando eravamo bambine. Basta mantenere, di allora,  la fantasia  ma non l’insicurezza,  e alle vocine tapparsi le orecchie come Ulisse.

Umeå blev kulturhuvudstad 2014. Trots Rosornas krig som jag tidigare berättat om. Jag tror att det blir bra, Umeå är en bra stad på kultur. Hur bra förstår man egentligen först när man flyttat. I Umeå finns en mycket fin och högklassig jazzfestival. Mitt starkaste minne är Ella Fitzgerald på 1980-talet. Ella Fitzgerald! Jag fick hälsa på henne backstage, ett av mina käraste minnen.
Det finns (fanns? jag har inte så bra koll längre) en kammarmusikfestival och en Folkmusikfestival med allt från samisk jojk till afrikansk dans till världsmusik. (Alla festivaler pågår i dagar, inget sånt där larv med att trycka in allt i samma hus på en kväll.) Det finns en Filmfestival och så finns det Norrlandsoperan och Bildmuseet och Skulpturparken och en rad teatergrupper. Det händer mycket. Numera finns också ett riktigt bokkafé, Pilgatan. Där konstnären Gunilla Samberg, berättade att hon fått ett par skor av Louise Bourgeois.
Här finns lite tips på Umeåförfattare. Lokala reaktioner: VK, VF.
Uppdatering: Fler som gillar: Boktokig, Booky Darling, Kulturbloggen. Jan Gradvall förutsåg detta redan i november 2008. Någon påpekar att Frida Hyvönen och Deportees är från Umeå. Hela Straight Edge-rörelsen med Dennis Lyxzén & Co startade i Umeå. Mats & Morgan som spelade med Frank Zappa är från Umeå. Dock inte Sahara Hotnights, Robertsfors ligger några mil norr om stan.
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Läs även andra bloggares åsikter om Umeå, Kulturhuvudstad 2014, Ella Fitzgerald, Umeå Jazzfestival, Umeå filmfestival, Bokkafé Pilgatan, Umedalen Skulptur, Norrlandsoperan

Als er één kunstwerk is dat mij de laatste jaren heeft kunnen beroeren, dan zal het wel Maman geweest zijn.

De kolossale spin van Louise Bourgeois is op zich een knap werk, maar krijgt toch een extra dimensie door de plaats waar het staat of stond, namelijk boven het graf van James Ensor. Het graf krijgt een vorm van bescherming en Ensor krijgt het eerbetoon dat hij verdient. Zijn kunst (geest) wordt beschermd door nieuwe kunst en blijft op die manier voortleven. Zelf gebruikte hij eveneens vaak spinnen in zijn werk, dus dat is ook mooi meegenomen. Het plaatje krijgt een bizar sprookjesachtig karakter, iets wat we in de werken van Ensor vaak tegenkomen. Het werk werd er geplaatst in het kader van Beaufort 2006.
Maar die locatie is nu juist het probleem. De oplettende kijker kan in dit filmpje over Japan (met de titel ‘This is Japan’) bemerken dat diezelfde spin in een van de foto’s voorkomt. Is de spin verplaatst naar Japan? En hoe verplaats je zoiets naar Japan?

Wikipedia moet raad bieden. En volgens de online encyclopedie (die trouwens niet altijd even accuraat blijkt te zijn) zou de spin moeten staan in Ottawa (Canada) aan de ingang van de National Gallery of Canada. Ook wel vreemd, gezien het hier gaat om een Amerikaanse kunstenares.

Maar goed, dan blijven we nog zitten met de vraag waar het werk zich momenteel bevindt? Wie vertelt het ons?

Who is the third who walks always beside you?

When I count, there are only you and I together

But when I look ahead up the white road

There is always another one walking beside you

Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded

I do not know whether a man or a woman

– But who is that on the other side of you?

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

late evenings at the office with the dogs and a drawer full of protein bars.  I don’t think a protein bar should be all that appealing to a dog, but the minute I open one up, I get a shaggy chin on my knee and a very imploring look.  the huge one, on the other hand, does not bother to beg; he’s tall enough to get anything off your desk he wants, if you leave it unguarded for a moment. the shreddy one is really only interested in the wrapper, which she will very efficiently shred into a thousand pieces.

times like these, when I feel most like climbing the walls,  I try to get the dogs to chase a ball, but none of them seem to have ever learned the proper procedure.  the huge one can’t be bothered at all.  the shaggy one will run after the ball, but won’t give it back.  the shreddy one won’t even hand the ball over in the first place, which tends to cut the game rather short.

the boss came around the corner and suddenly said, “have you heard of the third man?’  but she didn’t mean the orson welles movie.  the book is called “The Third Man Factor,” and she gave me the article about it from the wall street journal.  it appears that often times, people in dire survival situations, on the slopes of mount everest or at the north pole, will sense the presence of another person beside them. it is so commonly reported in so many disparate situations that they don’t know what to make of it: neurological artifact, like the white tunnel and the light of the near-death experience?  some result of our innate human need to have helpers, companions, fellow-travelers, even if we have to conjure them up?

all the time she was talking I was trying to remember something, and then said “t.s. eliot.  the waste land.”  and of course that’s the very thing that was being referenced in the quote above – shackleton, on foot with two others in the antarctic, with long odds of survival.  they survived; and later all admitted to one another that they all had a persistent sense of a fourth person being with them, all the time.

I will sound all kinds of unbalanced if I admit this, but having spent so much time on my own, I’ve often felt that other invisible person there.

now, the invisible person of the “third man factor,” the one that accompanies the lost explorers in survival situations, is supposed to be a comforting and supportive presence. so that, neatly, it would fit your favorite religious or spiritual model for the being that will come to walk beside you; what a friend we have in jesus, your boddhisatva, your patron saint.

but I think I’m beginning to see the third person as a sinister presence, or at least a potentially dangerous distraction.  I was talking recently to a friend, someone very important to me, trying to explain myself, trying to describe some of my worst weaknesses.  and I said at one point: “I want to relate to YOU, not some mental construct” – gesturing with my hand as if at an invisible person sitting next to him.

that mental construct, as I so un-poetically put it,  can be so perfect.  that invisible person knows everything, gets everything, understands everything.  idealistic people can create a fabulous version and apply it to almost anyone – a future hope, a stranger represented by a few lines of text on the internet, even a flesh and blood person who is in fact present in the room.  such a nice pink, misty cloud we can create, which could obscure the view of the actual person quite easily.

I’ve posted before about this sculptural fountain by Louise Bourgeois, at the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle.  the figures are a father and son, and every hour a bell rings and the waters rise around one figure at the moment they recede around the other.  the father and the son can never actually see each other.

as many times, and as sternly, I vow to let go of my illusions, my mental constructs, my obscuring filters  -  I wonder each time how to reconcile this with the idealism and optimism that have pulled me out of the darkest times in my life and set me on a new career path.  how to reconcile this with vision, which I now know must be accompanied with incredible stubbornness and persistence in order to get a project realized.  this is the long journey of the designer, the artist, the architect; from the napkin sketch to the built project, from the Big Idea to the punchlist.  there is, or ought to be, some kind of versatile balancing act between staunch adherence to vision (or the much mushier phrase I saw today in a contract, “design intent”) and being flexible, adaptable, realistic, to get the project over all its various hurdles and actually get it built.

of course, I know the answer already.  relationships are relationships; people are as you find them, not to be designed or constructed like  a building or a place or an artwork.  we do get caught up in our inner vision and entranced by our own jargon and our pretty renderings; if we were better at relating to the people we work with and the people our work is supposed to serve, we would have a better reputation and undoubtably better projects, instead of constantly facing the twin enemies of nimby and banana.

it’s still not so easy, though, to know how much yielding and compromise is too much.  an artist I know said of a public project that was facing some controversy:  “I’m not giving them what they want.  I’m giving them what they NEED!”  and you know, I think she’s actually right.  so much of the time nobody knows what they need until they’ve got it.

in the service of some frequently-obscured vision and some not-always-clear ultimate objective, I spend late nights at the office with the dogs.  they’re not my dogs; I don’t have pets.  I like animals; I pet the office dogs and they seem friendly and they seem to like me.  but I know they aren’t actually my friends, and they don’t really care about me, not the way I would like someone to care about me.  they’re not capable.  the third man on the mountainside, he isn’t really there.  it will not be the best use of my time to try and talk to him.

]]> http://threadforthought.net/2009/08/04/craftiness-in-coraline-domestic-sewing-traditions/ Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:19:17 +0000 Tove Hermanson http://threadforthought.net/2009/08/04/craftiness-in-coraline-domestic-sewing-traditions/

Last week I watched the movie Coraline (2009), directed by the stop-motion animator master Henry Selick who achieved recognition for his collaboration with Tim Burton in The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). I was kind of blown away by his latest effort; it succeeded on many levels, but for the sake of this blog I’ll limit my enthusiasm to the crafty parts.

The loving attention to hand crafts — and needlework in particular — starts immediately with the opening credits which are done in a font that mimics embroidery, complete with visible stitches and deliberate loose threads dangling off the names:

The next 1 ½ minutes of credits include careful closeups  of a doll being undone, unraveled, un-stuffed, taken apart stitch by stitch, and then reassembled (note the creator’s hands are composed of needles themselves):

There’s a lovely shot of a button drawer being pulled out and poured over,

a needle poking through rough cloth (you can see every fibre in 3-D!) and sewing the selected button on,

reusing the limp burlap chassis to meticulously create another doll with variations that make it resemble Coraline, down to her raincoat:

REPETITION. REPETITION.

Just as puppet masters created Coraline puppets in multiples with slight clothing, expression, hair and rumpled variations to make the movie, duplication and cloning are visual motifs within the movie. Coraline’s mother picks out a mass-produced gray school uniform among a rack of identical uniforms,

all the neighbors have collections of identical animals: the burlesque sisters with their Scottie dogs (3 living, many more stuffed on shelves),

and the Amazing Bobinski with his circus mice:

And when Coraline’s parents go missing, she touchingly tucks herself into bed with crudely handmade dolls of them, formed out of pillows with dad’s glasses and mom’s neck brace (a doll making dolls of other dolls):

Looking at the plot, we see this theme of multiplicity is a satisfyingly consistent one: the neighbor kid Wybee’s grandma has a(n evil) twin sister; the entire concept of the Other Mother and Other World with nearly identical houses, and gardens and neighbors echo and compliment each other within the framework of the story. These devices create an eerie mirrored alternate world like those in a Borges story, but also relate to the duplicate film sets (which were actually constructed by set builders, not created digitally), dolls, clothes, etc., behind-the-scenes. The evil twin / menacing other world is not exactly original subject matter for suspense-horror films which often tap into fears of duplicitousness and two-facedness, but I particularly love how the duplication appears in front of the camera and behind it in Coraline.

CRAFTINESS

Crafty, homemade objects are featured prominently. Coraline’s Other Mother cooks homemade meals, creates hand-sewn outfits for her, etc. Coraline (and the viewer, by extension) recognizes these as signs of affection. Interpreted as labors of feminine love at first, they are revealed to be sinister, employed as a trap. When the Other Mother reveals her true physical form as a terrifying spider with needle hands (the same needle hands that seemed to lovingly craft the doll in the film’s opening sequence), it calls to mind the sculptures of Louise Bourgeois. In her “Cell” series, Bourgeois created mini houses out of found objects like discarded doors and grating and filled them with objects related to feminine domestic stereotypes like sewing supplies, clothes, etc.:

Louise Bourgeois, interior of "Cell VII" (1998). Note the eerie hanging undergarments and miniature house.

Another Bourgeois recurring visual motif is spiders, representing her own mother and universal stereotypes of mothers (one is actually entitle “Maman“) and exploring their creepiness and yet comfortable familiarity and harmlessness:

Louise Bourseois, "Spider" (1997). Note the cage / house enveloped by the enormous arachnid, and scraps of fabric clinging to the sides contribute to the mother / domicile theme.

Compare Bourgeois’ large but protective Spider to Coraline’s Other Mother as a distinctly evil spider who deploys a web not to catch pesky insects but to entrap Coraline herself:

In the final scene of Coraline, domestic bliss is achieved by unifying her family and the previously indifferent neighbors in the act of planting tulips, a pared-down version of domesticity, handiness, and community. They’re not perfect — Coraline’s mother complains about the dirt, Bobinski pulls out tulips bulbs to replace them with beets, and the end result is not the stunning spectacle of the Other World’s garden — but it is a more realistic picture of imperfect homeyness.

Now allow me to lay some incredible fun facts on you about the meticulous crafty creation of this film:

• To construct 1 puppet, 10 individuals had to work 3-4 months.
• About 45 of Coraline’s pajamas were screen painted with printed patterns where every dot had to line up along the seams of every frock in precisely the same place for consistency.
• For the character of Coraline, there were 28 different puppets of varying sizes; the main Coraline puppet stands 9.5 inches high.
• All fabric was hand woven or hand knit to achieve the correct scale.
• The only leather the production could find that was thin enough to make the doll shoes and Mr. Bobinsky’s boots came from antique Victorian gloves.
• Buttons and zippers were also handmade for the film to suit the scale.
• Costumers used pins, surgical tools and tweezers to construct the garments.
• Each of Coraline’s star sweaters took 6 weeks to 6 months to design and knit on knitting needles like toothpicks. (On the website in Coraline’s room there is a film short on miniature knits. It will blow your mind a little.)

HISTORY OF SEWING IN THE HOME

Coraline tapped into the familiarity we have with women performing acts like cooking, cleaning, and sewing: the audience presumably watches the film with knowing amusement as Coraline’s father makes a dinner which resembles the gelatinous, sludgy meals from Better Off Dead (1985). We learn that Coraline’s mother is a good cook but has prioritized professional work and has relegated the dinner chore to the inept (though good-intentioned) father. The Other Mother then lures Coraline with elaborate, beautifully presented meals and a homemade sweater ensemble.

There is a rich history binding women to sewing. “A woman who does not know how to sew is as deficient in her education as a man who cannot write,” Eliza Farrar wrote in The Young Lady’s Friend (1838). Creating, altering and mending the family’s clothing and household textiles were domestic duties that kept most 18th and 19th-century women tethered to their sewing baskets; until the late 19th century nearly all clothing was made in the home. According to Godey’s Lady’s Book, it took about 14 hours to make a man’s dress shirt and at least 10 for a simple dress. A middle-class housewife spent several days a month making and mending her family’s clothes even with the help of a hired seamstress.

Sewing wasn’t all drudgery, though. Needlework served utilitarian purposes in the home, but also allowed women to communicate and assert their individual identities, beliefs, and aspirations with creativity and skill. The anticipation of weddings and births fueled creative energy and inspired impressive handiwork which was often functional — but not always — as in samplers which showcased a woman’s cross-stitching dexterity by forming alphabets in varying typefaces, geometric borders, and picture scenes. Linens, blankets and other handmade textiles made up the bulk of a girl’s hope chest (a.k.a. “marriage chest”), preparing her for her household duties as a wife and serving as advance proof of her sewing skill and worth as a woman and future matriarch.

Early 19th century sewing sampler stitched by Elizabeth Lyle when a young girl. The text in the center reads,"Elizabeth Lyle worked this in the eleventh year of my age. In the morning think what you have to do. And at night ask yourself what you have done."

Sewing circles were commonly formed by women, comprised of neighbors and relatives who would gather at a house and work on their sewing chores together. Women would sometimes swap portions of their own work with their friends who were particularly adept at a specific tasks. This happily merged what could be lonely drudgery with pleasurable socializing and political discussion (though the latter is rarely acknowledged).

"Sewing Circle" by Louis Henry Charles Moeller (1855 - 1930)

Sadly, sewing was often taken for granted as a skill — seamstresses were perceived as unimaginative lackeys who just followed instructions that any person might perform, and not as visionaries who could conceptualize how to take two-dimensional materials and connect them to form three-dimensional structures that envelope a body and yet can be gotten into easily, who possessed the skill to adapt techniques to various textures and weights, to say nothing of the artistic choices of color, style, and fit. Appreciation aside, there was a drastic interruption of this centuries-old tradition in the mid 19th century.

It wasn’t until the House of Worth (founded in 1858) when a man took the reigns of dressmaking, removed it from the home and created a pampered, decadent purchasing experience, that sewing took on any cachet or respect as a profession (see my earlier post on The Tea Gown in Fashion and Art for more on the House of Worth). The Industrial Revolution heralded the invention of the sewing machine (patented by Elias Howe in 1845), cheap labor and the growing factory system, standardization of sizes, and outcropping of distribution methods like apparel and department stores, all of which contributed to an increase in demand of ready-to-wear  garments. This was the beginning of consumers’ expectations for hyper-accelerated turnaround of new styles, necessitating ever-briefer time between designers’ visions, prototype creations, and mass market availability. It could be argued that the sewing machine eased women of much of the time consuming burden of clothing their families, but a contrary view is that the sewing machine snatched a labor of love, pride, and skill from women, not to mention the social community bonding. And though it’s distasteful to many modern women to think of being trapped in their houses all day, it was a small leap from the workrooms of House of Worth to the factories and notoriously dangerous conditions of garment factories (like the infamous Triangle Factory), exploiting the poor. Though sweatshops certainly exist in America today, many more are in developing countries with desperate-and-therefore-cheap labor forces, doubly exploited by consumer-hungry countries abroad and their own government systems which do not protect them with worker’s rights addressing age minimums, hour maximums, safety standards, etc.

Jacob Riis, Necktie workshop in Division Street tenement (1889)

In terms of household implications, the sewing machine was only the first of many labor-saving devices for the home (partially by altering sewing from a home activity to a factory one); washing machines, dryers, dishwashers and vacuum cleaners all made housekeeping easier and cut down the work time required. An important consequence of all this labor saving has been the diminished woman’s role as household manager. This gradual loss of status helped undermine the satisfaction many women formerly found in the homemaking role and encouraged them to seek more demanding employment in other places, as we see Coraline’s mother has chosen her profession over domestic work. In most industrialized countries these days, sewing, needlework, knitting, crocheting, quilting, etc. have been relegated to niche markets (still mostly women) who have self-consciously resurrected the skills for hobby, not generally necessity. This is why we all understand how Coraline is taken in by her Other Mother’s handmade overtures.

I loved Coraline not only because it was a good, creepy story, but because its meticulous production methods showcased the hand-made theme present in the narrative, a far cry from the digitally created worlds of almost all current animation (which can absolutely be well done too). I like, too, how the simple black button icon of Coraline is a symbol of sewing and domestic familiarity twisted beautifully into a tool of sinister manipulation.

Further Reading:

• “The Culture of Sewing: Gender, Consumption and Home Dressmaking” by Barbara Burman
• “History of Sewing” online study guide
• “Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times” by Elizabeth Wayland Barber
• “The Making of Coraline” in Extra Features on Coraline DVD
• “How the Other Half Lives” Jacob Riis photographs of exploited poor Lower East Siders, NY

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"Spider", Steel.

Katherine Jennings
Spider

8 a.m.-7:30 p.m.

Overland Park Arboretum and Botanical Gardens
8909 W. 179th St.
Overland Park, KS
913.685.3604

Hours: 8 a.m.-7:30 p.m., April 10-Sept. 30, 8 a.m.-5 p.m., Oct. 1-April 9, open daily except Christmas
Runs through: Oct. 1

Gallery site: http://www.opkansas.org/_Vis/Arboretum/index.cfm

It’s a beautiful summer day. Take a walk  in the park. (Yes, you can go after work if you insist on being responsible. The Overland Park Arboretum and Botanical Gardens are open until 7:30 p.m.)

Just watch out for spiders — well, one in particular.

Katherine Jennings’ Spider is pretty hard to miss, though. The larger-than-life steel sculpture stands (on eight legs) in the Arboretum’s Sculpture Garden, between Margaret’s Pond and Alie’s Glade.

Spider is one of two works by Johnson County Community College sculpture students in this year’s show. The honor was well-given.

The sculpture, despite its size, seems almost delicate because of its open construction. Jennings took a thin, strong — spidery, if you will — visual tack, using bent steel rods to assemble her metal arachnid. The rods meet at the legs’ joints, then bend out again, providing the illusion of inner musculature while preserving the lightness of the piece.

That approach is, perhaps, more necessary in the Kansas City area than elsewhere. Had Jennings gone “heavier” with the piece, it would have been too similar to Louise Bourgeois’ Spider (and its smaller offspring) at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.

The common thread — of silk, perhaps — is the tiny frisson that all but the most committed arachnophiles get around spiders. They’re the stuff of literary (M.R. James‘ The Ash-Tree) and cinematic (Tarantula, Arachnophobia, Eight Legged Freaks) creepy-crawliness. When the original King Kong was made in the 1930s, a scene of sailors falling into a canyon and being attacked by giant spiders was deemed too disturbing and was cut from the final print.

That which frightens also fascinates, though. We can’t look … but we can’t look away. And while Jennings’ sculpture is stylized and nonthreatening on the surface, there’s enough that’s “real” in it to preserve that unsettling attraction.

At the same time, it leads viewers to consider the beauty and grace of living spiders … and, perhaps, to keep watch for them — not with an eye toward avoidance, but one of appreciation.

“Bad Habits,” on display at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery through Oct. 4, is a far-reaching show and the first since the gallery’s recent re-commitment to highlighting works in its permanent collection.

While I’m not convinced that each piece in the exhibition is naughty enough to fit the theme, it does include a hodgepodge of works from some of the most important artists of the past few decades, showcasing the gallery’s Noah’s Ark approach to art collecting. Loosely organized around the premise of bad habits — taking its name from a series of prints by Lisa Yuskavage — the galleries house such art world heavyweights as Janine Antoni, Matthew Barney, Louise Bourgeois, Cecily Brown, Gilbert & George, Glenn Ligon, Tony Oursler and Jeff Wall.

Read the rest at Buffalo News:

R. Mapplethorpe, Louise Bourgeois in 1982 with Fillette

Guardo e riguardo questo ritratto di Louise Bourgeois e mi chiedo: “Cos’è che mi affascina di lei? Cosa mi soggioga, oltre naturalmente, alla perfezione formale dell’immagine?  Il sorriso intelligente? Lo sguardo complice? L’aria di chi l’ha fatta franca ancora una volta, e forse per sempre?”  Sicuramente un po’ di tutto questo, credo, ma c’è dell’altro, qualcosa di inafferrabile per il momento, di indicibile…Passano i giorni, passano i mesi, e ogni tanto ritorno a questa foto. Lei è sempre lì che mi sorride nel suo impeccabile bianco e nero, enigmatica come una Gioconda.

 Poi, del tutto inaspettato, affiora il ricordo di un sogno.

Incorniciata nel bianco di una scatola, un parallelepipedo alto e stretto scanalato all’interno da una successione di scalini, sono assorta in un compito delicato: salire le scale, senza curarmi di dove mettere i piedi. Il pensiero, concentrato come un appunto scritto su un foglietto spillato al bavero di una giacca, è teso verso l’oggetto che ho tra le mani, si condensa tutto lì, su quel vaso panciuto di vetro trasparente, che contiene acqua e un solo rigido fiore. Il vaso è un po’ inclinato, lo stringo al seno; il fiore, una calla, è un po’ inclinato, nella sua solitudine si appoggia al bordo. Io guardo fiduciosa la superficie liquida e so che è orizzontale come i gradini. Così, procedo, con passo di figura che sale. E il sogno non si dipana, non ha né prima né dopo, è una minuta scheggia incastrata in un tempo presente.

Louise  non ama rispondere alle domande. Quando Robert Mapplethorpe  la convoca per un ritratto, è dubbiosa; ha paura. Uscendo di casa, prende con sé due cose: la pelliccia di scimmia e una sua vecchia scultura del 1968, Fillette. Indossa la pelliccia e infila la scultura sotto braccio, come ogni brava massaia francese farebbe con la borsetta, o meglio, con una fragrante baguette. Ma la  Fillette in questione è un enorme fallo, turgido, rugoso, con le vene in rilievo.

Lei lo brandisce inforcandolo orizzontale sotto l’ascella, tra tutto quel pelo, e tenendone delicatamente la punta con le dita, come una freccia che indichi una direzione lontana, ben oltre il limite bidimensionale dell’immagine. Sorride di intima soddisfazione: in un solo gesto è materna e selvaggia, immobile e già in movimento, francese e americana, ambigua ed esplicita, come in un sogno.

Monday night began with a stellar performance of Romantic music for cello and piano featuring a gorgeously permutating version of terminally underrated Belgian composer Cesar Franck’s Sonata in A Major. It was as if his ghost was in the room. After the show, it was time to head up to Small Beast at the Delancey, the weekly edgy music salon (now with free barbecue!)  that’s recently migrated from Thursdays to Mondays for at least the time being as the weather heats up (let’s face it, this respite we’ve been enjoying is about to end). Franck’s ghost came along for the ride, maybe bringing Chopin along (it’s unknown if the two composers knew each other – Chopin was at the height of his popularity just as Franck was graduating from the conservatory, but both were wallflowers so it’s unlikely). Seated at the Small Beast (the 88-key spinet piano) doing his own Romantic thing was Botanica frontman Paul Wallfisch, who since he books Small Beast has received an enormous amount of ink here. Suffice it to say that his own individual blend of classical and gypsy influences, along with the rock and the honkytonk and the gospel, is something you ought to see if you like any of those styles. This time was characteristic: some new Botanica material (one a dead ringer for vintage Procol Harum), some noir cabaret and a soul song.

Marni Rice was next. The accordionist/chanteuse is a quintessentially New York artist, a throwback to a more dangerous, vastly more interesting, pre-condo era, around the time Bernie Madoff was president of  the NASDAQ exchange (presumably because his Ponzi scheme was so successful). She opened solo with one of Edith Piaf’s first recordings, Mon Pernod, a haphazard barroom narrative from 1926 that she’d transcribed from an old record. With a twilight feel on her accordion, Rice switched between a slightly menacing, noir cabaret delivery and a soulful alto, backed by former Pere Ubu bassist Michelle Temple (who also doubled on guitar) and Wallfisch on piano on one song. Another evocative narrative, Rice explained, she’d written after returning from Paris to her old stomping grounds near the old Second Ave. sidewalk sale, a reliable source of bargains run by a rotating cast of junkies and derelicts around 6th and 7th Sts. in the 80s and early 90s. “I’ll be all right…til winter comes,” one of them casually tells his sidewalk pal.

The duo also swung their way through the noir cabaret of Dripping with Blue, a spot-on rainy NYC street tableau and Priere, an original that gave Rice a chance to relate a hilarious anecdote about playing one of Louise Bourgeois’ salons, Bourgeois giving her an earful about how the stuff she grew up listening to in Paris was “so much more elevated” than the old barroom songs in Rice’s catalog…but did Rice know this one, and that one, and could she play it? They closed with Red Light, “about insomnia and spending too much time on the subway,” and a fuzz bass-driven punk rock song. When the luxury condos all turn into crackhouses and the old days come back, we’ll undoubtedly still have Marni Rice around to usher them in a second time.

Next on the bill: the Snow, rocker Pierre de Gaillande’s main band these days when he’s not doing his amazing Georges Brassens Translation Project, Melomane having gone on hiatus for the time being. This was a full-band show, drum kit down on the floor in front of the bar. Cesar Franck’s ghost was still in full effect, the Parisian vibe more evident than ever in Gaillande’s writing – in a lot of ways it makes sense that he’d be the one to introduce Brassens to English-speaking audiences because the two writers share a cleverness, a punk rock fearlessness but also a meticulous sense of craft. Frontwoman/keyboardist Hilary Downes, as usual, got to take center stage and keep the crowd entertained, but it was the songwriting that carried the night: the noir garage swing of Reptile, the subtly shifting, understatedly haunting Undertow, a swirling version of True Dirt (title track to the band’s excellent debut cd), a soul duet and the hilarious Russians, an aptly snide look at what happens when a corrupt communist regime goes even more corruptly capitalist.

Hindsight being 20/20, it would easily have been possible to stick around and see what Christof Widholm of Morex Optimo was doing with his latest project Pharmacy & Gardens. However, in the interest of staying on top of the scene to the extent that there is a scene and there’s a top to be found there, the game plan was to get over to Union Pool in time to see how Rev. Vince Anderson’s first night there was going. Answer: another mobscene, even more delirously populated than closing night at Black Betty a week ago. Union Pool is a lot bigger than Black Betty, and the crowd filled it, a swirl of bodies in refreshingly diverse shades swaying and bouncing to the pulse of the band. They were celebrating baritone sax player Moist Paula’s birthday, so there was a full horn section up with Anderson and the Moist One and the guitar and rhythm section and they were positively cooking, one of the jams going on for at least 25 minutes. While it’s a safe bet that most of the crowd had no concern about how late the party went – this was Williamsburg, after all – the house was still full well past two in the morning. And it was clear that Cesar had come along along for the ride – though you won’t hear any Franck in Anderson’s fiery electric piano cascades or Billy Preston-inflected organ, it’s safe to say that not only does Anderson know Franck’s work, but it’s quite possible he’s played it on a church organ at some point. At least the vibe was the same – Anderson’s gospel is the gospel of the heart, where emotion rules, where the rules are cast to the wind and the good guys always win. At least they did Monday night.

Louise Bourgeois

Cell XVII (Portrait) 2000

Louise Bourgeois was born in Paris in 1911. She studied art at various schools there, including the Ecole du Louvre, Académie des Beaux-Arts, Académie Julian, and Atelier Fernand Léger. In 1938, she emigrated to the United States and continued her studies at the Art Students League in New York. Though her beginnings were as an engraver and painter, by the 1940s she had turned her attention to sculptural work, for which she is now recognized as a twentieth-century leader. Greatly influenced by the influx of European Surrealist artists who immigrated to the United States after World War II, Bourgeois’s early sculpture was composed of groupings of abstract and organic shapes, often carved from wood. By the 1960s she began to execute her work in rubber, bronze, and stone, and the pieces themselves became larger, more referential to what has become the dominant theme of her work—her childhood. She has famously stated “My childhood has never lost its magic, it has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama.” Deeply symbolic, her work uses her relationship with her parents and the role sexuality played in her early family life as a vocabulary in which to understand and remake that history. The anthropomorphic shapes her pieces take—the female and male bodies are continually referenced and remade—are charged with sexuality and innocence and the interplay between the two. Bourgeois’s work is in the collections of most major museums around the world. She lives in New York.

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/bourgeois/index.html