URL Krueger on mon 11 jul 05
I was also at the Seattle-Tacoma airport recently. In a
display of art glass items there was a light blue
"concrete" block made of glass. Somebody had obviously
made a mold from a common 8 X 8 X 16 concrete block like
you might put under a kiln or build a studio wall out of,
and then made a glass casting from it.
I spent a minute or two looking it over wondering if my
interest was just because it was a common item made out of
a totally different material or if there was some intrinsic
Art value to it. I came to no conclusion.
--
Earl K...
Bothell WA, USA
Elizabeth Priddy on tue 12 jul 05
I absolutely LOVE stuff like that. I was first
enthralled with a piece of pottery when I saw
a leather Jacket hanging on a nail and touched
it and it was clay.
I think anytime you take an object and change
its substance, especially in the case of a complete
shift, like heavy clunky concrete to "delicate" glass,
the mind element becomes just as much part of
the work as the artifact.
I think it is called engaging the viewer or active
participation of something like that.
I think you were looking at art because you are
still thinking about it. you don't think about the
common things you see every day. unless you
are a potter and you remember all pots you get
to touch. But the non-craftsman remembers
few details of the objets they handle. So if it was
just a square block and you still are thinking
about it...it must be art.
The conceptual element alone is not my cup of
tea. I think there really needs to be some artifact
for observation and contemplation for art to happen.
E
URL Krueger wrote:
I was also at the Seattle-Tacoma airport recently. In a
display of art glass items there was a light blue
"concrete" block made of glass. Somebody had obviously
made a mold from a common 8 X 8 X 16 concrete block like
you might put under a kiln or build a studio wall out of,
and then made a glass casting from it.
I spent a minute or two looking it over wondering if my
interest was just because it was a common item made out of
a totally different material or if there was some intrinsic
Art value to it. I came to no conclusion.
--
Earl K...
Bothell WA, USA
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Snail Scott on tue 12 jul 05
At 09:42 PM 7/11/2005 -0700, Earl K wrote:
>...In a
>display of art glass items there was a light blue
>"concrete" block made of glass....
>I spent a minute or two looking it over wondering if my
>interest was just because it was a common item made out of
>a totally different material or if there was some intrinsic
>Art value to it...
Yeah, I think it's art. Not brilliant or subtle,
but amusing and interesting enough to warrant a
look. The contrast of a concrete object ('sturdy',
'tough', 'coarse', etc) rendered in glass ('fragile',
'delicate', 'refined' etc, was presumably the point.
The fact that solid glass is pretty strong and tough
is something we may know, intellectually, but at a
gut level, I suspect that even people who know this
would still 'get' the intended irony.
The rendering of the block into another material is,
as you suggested, a big part of the interest, but
the choice of material is relevant. If made of, say,
clay, it would be less interesting, because the
dichotomy of the materials would be reduced. If it
were made of chewing gum, that could be intriguing,
though with a different meaning, and I suspect that
the aesthetic effect would be less appealing. If it
were made of lace, it might carry a similar meaning,
though with a big visual difference, since the
elegant simplicity of the glass would be absent. If
it were made of old socks, the 'weirdness factor'
would be higher, but I don't think it would mean
much except in a Dada way.
If it were among many others, stacked to make a wall,
it would become a building material and not art in
itself, I think, (though the wall might be art) but
the presentation of it singly within a display of
other objects intended for consideration gives us
the maker's intent - that we should look at it and
consider it for its properties as an art object. And
for that, it seems sufficient. A bit of a one-liner,
perhaps, but possibly visually engaging as well as
being a minor brain-teaser? It also seems a bit
poetic.
It's not terribly deep, but it doesn't need to be a
great idea, or even technically skilled, to still
be art. Art can be a lot of different things, some
of which exist mainly in an aesthetic way, with
attractive colors, etc. Some can exist mainly in
content, when the subject creates an emotional
reponse, and some exist mainly as intellectual
works, to think about. Many more people than us
have written tomes on what the definition of 'art'
is, so I'm not about to get that started here,
but the object you described seems to fit in
several ways.
-Snail
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