Clockwork

We move like cold machines—
Clicking locks and doors,
Each somehow missing
The other's gaze —not unfriendly,
But accustomed to the movement.

Image pulled from Shorpy.  Poem  by me.

Only in Ikea...

These covers are from the instruction booklets of real Ikea products.



I have a copy of this booklet. It is some lonely designer's haiku to the emptiness of consumer culture.



While looking for the Lack instructions I found this guy. He was with a group of other Jerkers, but I chose him to represent his kind.

After parting ways with the Jerkers, I ran into these fellows. Very polite and sociable in a Scandinavian sort of way.







But seriously folks...

This is from the video Stealing Beauty by Guy Ben-Nar. I love it. You can read about it here if you are fluent in German.



Ikea images yoinked from IKEAFANS. Video via Especially Messily (I think...)

Case and Point.

A few posts ago I stuck up for the young, Halo-enthused master of tape and cardboard. While reading magazines at Barnes & Noble (really, who buys them?) I checked out the latest edition of Hi-Fructose and saw this guy.



Mike Rea makes guns and machines out of wood, in addition to creating scenes that spoof both high art and popular cinema. His craftsmanship looks impeccable, and I'm down with his whole ooovra (that's french for artwork).

But look at these two videos, and tell me I'm wrong. If somebody would just teach the Halo Kid about irony he could hurry up and be an art star.





On second thought, if we leave him alone he'll be an engineer, which is far more profitable.

Image ripped from Mike Rea's Site

Milk and Hammers

Hammers

Chris Milk Hulburt

(2005)

So you want to be a carpenter, do you?
Well it takes more than a hammer, boy, you're gonna need blueprints and a will to build, and...
Straighten your cap! you look like you've been through a war.
Wipe that grin off your mug, you got a sturdy frame?
Sluggish posture just won't cut it.
You're gonna need schooling, and, and, and take notes!
And god if I catch you yawning again you're gonna regret ever asking for my help.

From How to Be a Carpenter by Aesop Rock


Last year I had pleasure of helping with the installation of Nooks: If You Lived Here You'd Be Home by Now. The project was the work of the Canadian art collective Instant Coffee and was sponsored by the Henry Art Gallery. I had a great time working with the folks from Instant Coffee and found them to be fun, interesting people.

Nooks installed at Bumbershoot 2007

During the installation, I glimpsed a piece of paper bearing the slogan "It doesn't have to be good to be meaningful." The phrase caught my eye and stuck in my mind. Throughout the day I turned the phase over in my head as I drove nails with a pneumatic gun. I found the words to be tantalizing, but, try as I might, I couldn't quite swallow the message.

At first glance, the slogan rings entirely true. Meaning is independent of quality. The deepest realizations can be catalyzed by flawed creations or acts of chance-- a scrap of paper, a snippet of conversation, a half-obscured billboard turned suddenly poignant.

Why then should the artist devote great effort to sharpening his skills or polishing his technique? Why not race wholeheartedly after pure meaning? Why not forsake guile and pretense and simply speak from the heart?

Garden

Chris Milk Hulburt

2004-2005

This notion is a driving force behind the Outsider Art movement. A fusion of overlapping and ill-defined movements (Naive Art, Art Brut, Folk Art, Visionary Art, etc), this broad movement aims to sidestep the pitfalls of pretense and head straight down the path of earnest expression. Much of this art is deeply moving, stemming solely from the artists' need to create and communicate. Compared to the haughty intellectualism of Academic Art and the ironic sophistication of Gallery Art, Outsider Art seems honest and heartfelt. In fact, Outsider Art is big business these days, and many mainstream galleries exhibit the work of artists that could be considered Outsiders.

As an example, consider the paintings of Chris Milk Hulburt. Self-taught and entrepreneurial, Hulburt occupies the gray zone between Outsider and Fine Art. His pictures are at once hip, witty, and heartfelt. They are the product of his own idiosyncratic striving, but strike a resounding chord with many discerning viewers.

The overall impression of Hulburt's work is one of playful, sincere simplicity. Yet closer examination reveals a layer of skilled complexity that is not immediately apparent. This is especially true in person, where layers of paint and color interact in surprising and dynamic ways. The artist has taken great care to craft each work to suit his purpose. Beneath the simple exterior lies a sound structure built with painstaking skill-- skill in service to honest vision.

It is in this underlying structure that I find the flaw within the Instant Coffee slogan. No, art does not need to be good to be meaningful. Yet if the artist has a meaning that he wishes to convey, he must be good. He must be good so that he may deliver the chosen meaning intact and undistorted. This requires struggle, practice, and forethought.

I found a perfect example of this point in the Instant Coffee exhibit itself. As the nooks were being constructed, volunteers stapled handmade posters to the surrounding wall. Midway into the process, a tiny crisis erupted. The makers of the posters had not considered the typography of the words, so the words were not behaving as expected.



Oops.

The glitch was pretty minor, and the show went on, but without proper execution the intended meaning was lost.*

In fact, Nooks succeeded precisely because it was good. Apart from the aforementioned glitch, it was well made and well thought out. On that hot afternoon in '07, Instant Coffee created a cool, cozy refuge for sun-stricken festival-goers. I was one of them, and and I was deeply thankful for the respite.

Between the process of construction and the experience of the final product, I enjoyed myself and learned quite a bit. I suppose that I could say that my experience with Instant Coffee was a meaningful one. Interestingly, this is where projects like Nooks do their conceptual jujitsu. The meaning of the piece is to create an environment wherein the viewer can create his own meaning. It is an artistic goal that I find simultaneously kind in its nurturing neutrality, and sheisty in its evasion of the central struggle of art.

As for the slogan? I can take it or leave it, but if it goads one person over their fears and helps them make art then I'm all for it-- even if that art is terrible.

After all, it doesn't have to be good to be meaningful.

Right?



* I witnessed some of the poster-hangers trying to palm the unintended result off as simply a new element of the installation with its own novel meaning. To this, I say Bah. The resulting statement "You wish here were" has its own garbled meaning, which can be made to be profound with some thought. This is unsurprising. The Dada-esque construction of random phrases creates meaning entirely through chance, and our logic-hungry brains struggle mightily to pull meaning out of anything and everything. When done on purpose, chance-based methodologies are a valid part of contemporary art. When done by mistake because of an oversight... well, where I come from we call that a f***-up.


Images are ripped from the Instant Coffee site and Chris Milk Hulburt's site (apologies for the previuos confusion). Check out his upcoming show at Ghostprint Gallery. I snapped the image of the posters with my little cell phone camera during construction.

The Geography of Nowhere

“We created a landscape of scary places, and we became a nation of scary people.”



“The problem with our common American daily environments is not that they are too uniform, but that they are of uniformly miserable quality.”



“It is hard to imagine a culture less concerned than ours with the things that make life worth living.”



Words by James Howard Kunstler via Project for Public Spaces. I believe most of them are from the book The Geography of Nowhere, which is the namesake of this post.

Photos © Michael McDevitt 2008

Bumblebees outwit robotic spiders.

Best headline in a while, but...


...Superboy still gets the girl.

Read the real article at the BBC or learn more about Beeboy at Again With The Comics..
You be the Decider.

Found Abstract: Urban Biodiversity

Tiny pockets of wilderness spring up even on this busy Seattle sidewalk. How many different species could I find in this photo if I had the knowledge and desire? I'm sure that it would be a sufficiently high number to surprise the average pedestrian, who walks over this patch without looking down. In fact, is there any good data for urban biodiversity? My meager search skills turned up only a smattering of material, none of which was particularly insightful.

I took this picture after photographing graffiti removal abstracts. There was an organic similarity that appealed to me-- the erosion of manmade order and the accidental beauty of overlapping shapes.

It's there if you look for it.

Photo: Michael McDevitt 2008

People do strange and wonderful things.

I love the guard at the end.


It's tempting to laugh this kid off, but hold on. Geeky as his project may be, this kid is a genius with tape and cardboard. If he was a 25 year old art star we'd be lining up to high five him. We mock him because he is sincere.



Wow. The take-away lesson here, kids, is that the Man will steal your toys. Every. Single. Time.

(R/C Mario thanks to Ms. Barnacle, Billy the Halo Kid via Art Blog Comments, Soccer via Monkeys For Helping)

Evening Magic

Yesterday, I had a great walk through the city, ending in my studio.   After a few hours of painting, I headed up the hill to catch the bus. There I was treated to this pleasant spectacle. The glass facade of the 4th & Madison Building covers the evening commute with the fruity hues of a ripe papaya. I don't know if it is intentional, but I'm willing to give the architects the benefit of the doubt.

Photo Michael McDevitt