Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Monday, May 20, 2013
The UFO Project: Look! A Finished Object!
I actually finished this in March, and took it to show-and-tell at my quilt guild and got some nice compliments despite the crappy machine quilting, but didn't get around to photographing it until yesterday. My styling needs work; if a piece is bigger than my flatbed scanner I'm totally lost.
Child-sized doggie quilt, primary colors:
I think it's from 2004. It was meant to be a commission for a baby, and we worked together on the colors/layout, but there was some misunderstanding about the costs of materials--I know you can buy a Chinese-made baby quilt at Target for $30, the doggie fabric is still $8/yd--so no money changed hands and I held onto it, all finished except sewing on the binding. I've moved on, but that's why I don't make quilts on request, even for people I like. (I'm still willing to sell/trade art quilts--inquire within!)
There's babies all over the place this year, I will roll a D6 and surprise someone at random.
Child-sized doggie quilt, primary colors:
I think it's from 2004. It was meant to be a commission for a baby, and we worked together on the colors/layout, but there was some misunderstanding about the costs of materials--I know you can buy a Chinese-made baby quilt at Target for $30, the doggie fabric is still $8/yd--so no money changed hands and I held onto it, all finished except sewing on the binding. I've moved on, but that's why I don't make quilts on request, even for people I like. (I'm still willing to sell/trade art quilts--inquire within!)
There's babies all over the place this year, I will roll a D6 and surprise someone at random.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
FUZZ "helping" pin together the layers of a quilt for machine quilting. "Oh, hai. I'm not leaving too much fur...just enough."
This quilt is for a baby expected to arrive in the fall. It's equilateral triangles arranged in stripes, and I chose these colors because the mom likes them. I suspended my "use fabrics I already own" rule for this project, because a new baby deserves better than 15-year-old cheap calicos, right? :)
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Exhibition Review: Ai Weiwei, "According to What?"
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Exhibition Information Here.
One of my art teachers once told a class we should look at art we dislike as long and as closely as art we like, because identifying why we dislike it will teach us much about ourselves. I have hated Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn ever since the first time I saw it reproduced in a magazine*, so I was prepared to spend last Sunday afternoon being annoyed--and I was partially right, seeing the piece life-size on a wall did not make me hate it any less--but I was pleasantly surprised by his non-photo works.
I particularly enjoyed the wooden sculptures, which were assembled by traditional Chinese carpenters and cabinetmakers. The massive centerpiece of the exhibition is Moon Chest, a series of gorgeous cabinets with holes offset slightly so a viewer can see all the phases of the moon. The craftsmanship was excellent, the concept intriguing, and as a bonus, it was fun to watch other patrons (especially children) interact with it. I also liked Map of China, which was created from wood from demolished Qing Dynasty temples and assembled with traditional Chinese techniques: no glue or nails held the pieces together. The beauty created by the anonymous craftsmen was worth the price of admission (...free for me since I'm a member, $12 for you guys).
The black-and-white photos of NYC in the 1980s and early 1990s were dull; they were like looking at snapshots of someone's vacation, if they'd vacationed in Taxi Driver. "Ah, another ugly person, in an ugly setting, with bad lighting and there's a signpost growing out of Bill Clinton's bodyguard's head--you just included that one to show off that you saw Bill Clinton." Perhaps they were more impressive twenty years ago, before every snide NYC hipster could post crappy snapshots of ugly people in ugly settings to Instagram (yes, yes, I post crappy snapshots of garbage to Flickr, but I try to put some design elements and principles into the ones I share).
The final room of the exhibition was devoted to works about the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and the reactions of the Chinese government to his criticism of its actions leading up to and after the event. The works use found objects, lists, and large-scale formats to record and present the history and the response. Names of the Student Earthquake Victims Found by the Citizens' Investigation is just that--students' names in hanzi and birthdates in Arabic numerals--that cover an entire wall, and the list may not be complete five years later. A companion audio recording pronounces the names one by one and lasts over three hours (I did not stay that long). These pieces are both a tribute and an indictment, and even thought they are not the least bit quilt-like, the repetition and connections were very quilterly:
Strength, an installation made of steel rebar salvaged from collapsed schools, covered the whole floor. It is not elegant; it is literally a pile of rusty garbage. It needs the backstory, but if you know the backstory you cannot escape the magnitude of the disaster.
I did not take advantage of the interactive iPads that were scattered around the gallery; I can look at screens at home. I also do not attempt to understand Ai Weiwei's politics beyond "the Chinese government is doing collectivism wrong"; quotes on the walls throughout the exhibition seemed contradictory.
* I see it as mere senseless destruction for attention-seeking. I respect his property rights--he bought it, he can do whatever he wants with it--but I don't like looking at it. OTOH, his slight destruction of Qing Dynasty furniture by taking it apart and having it reassembled it into a sculpture preserves it (the sculptures will not be worn out from use or decay from neglect like chairs or tables).
One of my art teachers once told a class we should look at art we dislike as long and as closely as art we like, because identifying why we dislike it will teach us much about ourselves. I have hated Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn ever since the first time I saw it reproduced in a magazine*, so I was prepared to spend last Sunday afternoon being annoyed--and I was partially right, seeing the piece life-size on a wall did not make me hate it any less--but I was pleasantly surprised by his non-photo works.
I particularly enjoyed the wooden sculptures, which were assembled by traditional Chinese carpenters and cabinetmakers. The massive centerpiece of the exhibition is Moon Chest, a series of gorgeous cabinets with holes offset slightly so a viewer can see all the phases of the moon. The craftsmanship was excellent, the concept intriguing, and as a bonus, it was fun to watch other patrons (especially children) interact with it. I also liked Map of China, which was created from wood from demolished Qing Dynasty temples and assembled with traditional Chinese techniques: no glue or nails held the pieces together. The beauty created by the anonymous craftsmen was worth the price of admission (...free for me since I'm a member, $12 for you guys).
The black-and-white photos of NYC in the 1980s and early 1990s were dull; they were like looking at snapshots of someone's vacation, if they'd vacationed in Taxi Driver. "Ah, another ugly person, in an ugly setting, with bad lighting and there's a signpost growing out of Bill Clinton's bodyguard's head--you just included that one to show off that you saw Bill Clinton." Perhaps they were more impressive twenty years ago, before every snide NYC hipster could post crappy snapshots of ugly people in ugly settings to Instagram (yes, yes, I post crappy snapshots of garbage to Flickr, but I try to put some design elements and principles into the ones I share).
The final room of the exhibition was devoted to works about the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and the reactions of the Chinese government to his criticism of its actions leading up to and after the event. The works use found objects, lists, and large-scale formats to record and present the history and the response. Names of the Student Earthquake Victims Found by the Citizens' Investigation is just that--students' names in hanzi and birthdates in Arabic numerals--that cover an entire wall, and the list may not be complete five years later. A companion audio recording pronounces the names one by one and lasts over three hours (I did not stay that long). These pieces are both a tribute and an indictment, and even thought they are not the least bit quilt-like, the repetition and connections were very quilterly:
Strength, an installation made of steel rebar salvaged from collapsed schools, covered the whole floor. It is not elegant; it is literally a pile of rusty garbage. It needs the backstory, but if you know the backstory you cannot escape the magnitude of the disaster.
I did not take advantage of the interactive iPads that were scattered around the gallery; I can look at screens at home. I also do not attempt to understand Ai Weiwei's politics beyond "the Chinese government is doing collectivism wrong"; quotes on the walls throughout the exhibition seemed contradictory.
* I see it as mere senseless destruction for attention-seeking. I respect his property rights--he bought it, he can do whatever he wants with it--but I don't like looking at it. OTOH, his slight destruction of Qing Dynasty furniture by taking it apart and having it reassembled it into a sculpture preserves it (the sculptures will not be worn out from use or decay from neglect like chairs or tables).
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Totally Random Awesome Song I Actually Heard On The Radio Running Errands Today
I like the old-school rap where they tell a story with clever rhymes instead of just "let me stick it in you" over and over.
1990 feels about as relevant to 2103 as ancient Crete does.
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Backyard Drama
The last week or so has been extremely dull at Radishhof; the Mandatory Overtime Project went into overdrive last week, culminating in a 17-hr shift that lasted until until 3:30 Saturday morning, followed by a stiff drink, followed by going back into work to close out some paperwork after the cats woke me up for breakfast. I'm still pretty messed up ("And that's unusual how?"). But the government got its paperwork. O_O
Meanwhile, there's a cemetery in the trees behind my house. The local weekly ran an article about a group trying to definitively locate an abandoned cemetery where some of the very first settlers to the area were interred. From the position of the lake in the photo, I'm pretty sure the newspaper photographer was standing in my backyard. Apparently the developer of my exurban subdivision removed the headstones so no one would know it was there; a boy in the neighborhood tried to restore the plot as an Eagle Scout project and was denied permission; the headstones were given to the city and mounted at the City Hall about a mile away from the site; and now there's a wood-chip trail through the woods that may or may not go right over the graves.
Given the general crappiness of the construction and landscaping--these are really cheap McMansions from the land rush in the early 2000s--none of this surprises me at all. (I'm renting here for the view, and the relative quiet, and the short commute through corn, bean, and wheat fields and past two horse pastures and a farm that raises rabbits and chickens.) But now I'm mildly creeped out every time the window screens rattle.
Which brings me to yesterday's bird drama:
This robin spent at least an hour yesterday morning flying back and forth between perching on the finch feeder (scaring off the finches...) and perching on the window screen, little claws ripping the heck out of the cheap nylon. Very weird, it was almost like he was trying to get into the house. Possibly a suicide attempt, since there's often a cat in that window...but yesterday they were asleep in sunbeams on the other side of the house; I tried to wake up Smokey to come see the bird but NO! SLEEP!
Very very weird.
Meanwhile, there's a cemetery in the trees behind my house. The local weekly ran an article about a group trying to definitively locate an abandoned cemetery where some of the very first settlers to the area were interred. From the position of the lake in the photo, I'm pretty sure the newspaper photographer was standing in my backyard. Apparently the developer of my exurban subdivision removed the headstones so no one would know it was there; a boy in the neighborhood tried to restore the plot as an Eagle Scout project and was denied permission; the headstones were given to the city and mounted at the City Hall about a mile away from the site; and now there's a wood-chip trail through the woods that may or may not go right over the graves.
Given the general crappiness of the construction and landscaping--these are really cheap McMansions from the land rush in the early 2000s--none of this surprises me at all. (I'm renting here for the view, and the relative quiet, and the short commute through corn, bean, and wheat fields and past two horse pastures and a farm that raises rabbits and chickens.) But now I'm mildly creeped out every time the window screens rattle.
Which brings me to yesterday's bird drama:
This robin spent at least an hour yesterday morning flying back and forth between perching on the finch feeder (scaring off the finches...) and perching on the window screen, little claws ripping the heck out of the cheap nylon. Very weird, it was almost like he was trying to get into the house. Possibly a suicide attempt, since there's often a cat in that window...but yesterday they were asleep in sunbeams on the other side of the house; I tried to wake up Smokey to come see the bird but NO! SLEEP!
Very very weird.
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