Can't wait to get your hands on some of those fortune tellers? The last of them are available through following venues:
VIX Emporium (50th/Baltimore Ave)
or
the Watershed Center for Ceramics Fall Auction (with work by other incredible, real and established artists to bid on)
or
by chance: support West Philly's Mariposa Food Coop and get a raffle ticket
or by direct contact (see contact page). But let me tell you, they're slim pickin's, so get the good ones while you can!
In other news, I'm happy to announce a few things: I will be manning Heidi Paul's booth on Thursday Nov 11, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show from 5-8 pm. Come check out her stuff! Hope to see you there!
I am also happy to say that I'm finally, actively making some new work, and I've switched gears completely. Being out of school, I've allowed myself the permission to make the work I've wanted to make, but feared wasn't "art school" enough. What can I say, I suppose the real world could care less to give you the time of day to listen to your concept. I realize that some of my more successful work hinges on concept and gimmick (to which I euphemistically refer to as "accessibility of the object"). I'm not here to say that I've come to embrace the one liner, because (third-person switch) face it Tracy, despite your post-school reality check, you're still a dweller and thinker (trust me, I don't say that to flatter myself. I say it to state a fact of my making-process).
Gimmicks and one-liners aside, perhaps it's easier to say that's an irrelevant conversation. The conversation at hand is in fact, more about the idea of "relevance" itself: What makes an object culturally relevant? Is this a question that is inherent to anything made in craft media? How do we insist that our object is relevant, without overstating its craft-ness?
If you are familiar with any of my work, process, or me as a person, you'll understand that I have a thing with words. Particularly words of binary opposition (positive/negative, male/female etc). I've sort of formed my own vocabulary with the upcoming set of work. I don't see the words as opposed, but directly related. One begets the other: Accessibility/Excessibility. Don't look it up, I just made it up.
Access/Excess.
It seems to have a direct relationship to my current relocation to an urban environment, as well. I am surrounded by means (access) to virtually anything and everything (excess) I want (except for living/studio space). The insatiable want of the city, and the urban mentality perpetuates the hunger and need for more. When you're not in it, the city is the notion that there is just so much more to want, and you are utterly entitled to it-- even if you don't know what "it" is.
We identify ourselves with the things we consume (or refuse to consume), and I am here as a defender of the "relevance" of objects beyond the mindless consumption of ubiquitous factory goods...
There's something to be said about using a familiar form or object and subverting it's context, and I guess I'm trying to say that something here!
I'm challenging myself these days to tackle more specific subjects. The fortune tellers and terrain were a nice introduction to these ideas of familiarity and subversion, but were a bit too vague to state anything beyond technical proficiency.
I admit that I am here struggling with my own identity as both a person and an artist. I am overwhelmed with the paralyzing amount of options for things "to do," without much reason to "do" anything" other than to quell the boredom of loneliness, and anxiety of an urban pace. Eat out, go to a bar, see a concert, buy some things, spend some more money, drink some more coffee, eat some more... by night, drink some more. Do we go to these venues to passively set the stage for serendipity? How hungry are you, really? I want to know what the impetus is for certain habits of consumption. Perhaps it starts with loneliness and evolves henceforth.
What? You want me tell you already what it is I'm making? Psh. What's the fun in that...
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