Saraswati's Realm*

The Case for Books

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 05:21:18 GMT

Darnton, Robert. 2009. The Case for books: Past, present, and future. New York: Public Affairs.

"An electronic book about the history of books in the age of Enlightenment! I can't resist. I'll take the leap." 64

"Books also refuse to be contained within the confines of a single discipline when treated as objects of study. Neither history nor literature nor economics nor sociology nor bibliography can do justice to all aspects of the life of a book. By its very nature, tehrefore, teh history of books must be international in scale and interdisciplinary in method. By its very nature, therefore, the history of books must be international in scale and interdisciplinary in method. But it need not lack conceptual coherence, because books belong to circuits of communication that operate in consistent patterns, however complex they may be. By unearthing those circuits, historians can show that books do not merely recount history; they make it." p 206.

Teaching Art in Context: Case Studies for Preservice Education

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 04:47:32 GMT

Klein, Sheri, Ed. 2003. Teaching art in context: Case studies for preservice art education. Reston, VA: National Art Education Association.

Introduction
Sheri Klein

Theoretical Framework:
1. Teaching art is contextual and situation-based
2. Teaching art involves making decisions that have moral and political dimensions
3. teaching art requires having a variety of problem solving strategies
4. teaching art requires on-going reflection and the examination of beliefs, attitudes and biases about art and art teaching
5. teaching art requires knowledge of pluralistic approaches to curriculum and pedagogy

BUY THIS BOOK!

Engaging Learners Through Artmaking

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 04:32:47 GMT

Douglas,Katherine M. and Jaquith, Diane B. 2009. Engaging learners through artmaking: Choice-based art education in the classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.

This isn't bad - might be worth ordering, but doesn't really do anything new.

The Story in the Picture

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 04:29:35 GMT

Mulcahey, Christine. 2009. The Story in the picture: Inquiry and artmaking with young children. New York: Teachers College Press.

I actually think I might purchase this for my Fall 2010 class for art for classroom teachers. :-D

History as Art, Art as History

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:00:58 GMT

Desia, Dipti, Hamlin, Jessica, and Mattson, Rachel, Eds. (2010). History as art, art as history: Contemoprary art and social studies education. New York: Routledge.

Introduction - desi, hamlin, mattson

"can the work of contemporary artists help us re=imagine the ways that we teach history and imagine the past?"

*fred wilson - changes nothing in the museum but juxtapositions

desia - textile artist turned art educator, hamlin - art 21 inc, mattson - historian working with schools and teaching at SUNY new palz.

*metaphor of showing the seams of the process and stiching

"The second key idea we explore through this book is the embodied nature of historical inquiry. Art educators commonly tell their students that viewing a work of art is not just an intellectual or academic exercise, but also a physical and emotional process." 9

"When we look at images or works of art, we often intuitively recall a range of related meories, ideas, events - even other images from different apects of our lives, consious and subsciousnes associaiotns with other media. For all the sophistication in thier analyses, historians and history teachers rarely discuss this aspect of the intellectual process, and they almost never highlight hte emotioanl or embodied quality of historical storytelling." 9

"The cultural theoriest Irit Rogoff (2005) reminds us that today 'wrks of art no longer simply present exisiting knowledge"; they also offer open-ended narratives and invite further research." 12

"The task of a history teacher, after all, is not simply to teach skills and facts or to prepeare students for standaridzed tests, but also to help students develop intellectual habits of mind that will anable them to relfect upon their lives and their world in which they live, as well as to face down the big challenges that they will encounter as dault residents of a democracy. In order to do this, students need to leanr to think historically." 18

frame historical questions, find and critically read primary sources, and begin to engage broder dabates about the meaning of the past and histories.

*Joshua Brown's Make Your Own History - fill in the balloons

Curriculum as a creative process: interview with artist-educator Thi Bui
Desai

"continusoudly weaving connects between the past and present through popuular culture, she helps her studentse mpathize with the people they study from the past." 35

Introducing Jung - graphic novel about Jung

copy the lessonplanning

not bad, but not great!

Dead Meat

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:27:07 GMT

Sue Cole
New York: Four Walls, Eight Windows.
1995

"The following slaughterhouse journals are the result of six years of work, traveling around the country to various meatpacking plants." v

A Short, Meat-Oriented History of the World From Eden to the Mattole
Alexander Cockburn

"Art met meat early on." 27 - cites cave drawings of the Paleolithc ear

progresses from document, to drawing, to social commentary on meat industry.

How messed up that I seriously could eat a hamburger right now - even though I think this is really wrong.

Choosing Craft: The Artist's Viewpoint

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:15:52 GMT

Ed by Vicki Hlper and Diane Douglas
The University of North Carolina Press
Chapel Hill, NC
2009

"assemblage of artists' words describing thier lives, work, ideas, and values as they relate to the history and practice of craft in the United States." ix

Miriam Schapiro says "Par tof my ehtos is to test sentimentality. I want to know how far I can go with it because it's so taboo in terms of high art. I've chosen to use fabric and the decorative arts as tangible symbols for my connection to domesticity and to express my belief that art resides in domesticity. For me, the fabric of my art and the fabric of my life neatly equate with each other." 19

Crafting Gender: Women and Folk Art in Latin America and the Caribbean

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:03:14 GMT

Ed by Eli Bartra
2003
Duke University Press. Durham and London

Introduction. Eli Bartra

"Women and folk art share a common fate in Latin America and the Caribbean: though ubiquitous, both are almost as invisible as they are disrespected by those that study this region." 2

Engendering Clay: Las Ceramistas of Mata Ortiz

"One doesn't have to search far and wide to find the ceramistas (female potters) of Mata Ortiz." 98

"Why does Mata Ortiz pottery look pre-Columbian and postmodern at the same time? - peculiar

"the history of singing pieces proves especially relevant to the history of women in art, and particulalry folk art. Anonymous works are frequently attributed to men." 108

women potters demean themselvs as paintesr whereas this is seen as the most innovative and artistic aspect of the pots themselves

A Few More Notes from the Crossing Point

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:48:28 GMT

Use for MC paper and craft paper:

Thoughts on Writing and Handcraft

"All forms are language, and communication flows between all of them, nonverbal and verbal alike." 15

"These beads and those bowls are the words. It is no wonder that it is so difficult to tanslate them into other words; no wonder they are so expressive, so compelling, so self-declared. The living language of the crafts - this is quite different from a view of language as an intellectual or esthetic dsicpline, verbal in nature. Speech is common to men, and so are objects and sensations and perceptions. We are all both silent and sounding. Crafrts are a languauge, langue is a crft. They are not two worlds: they are ONE."
AND
"The materials we use appeal to us because of some inner sense they carry. Colors, textures, shapes; gloss and shadow, weight, sound - rhythm of movement in time and space - these speak to our hearts. If they didn't, we wouldn't *care* about them. And we do care. We do care. We are warmed and noursihed, chilled and disquieted - we are affected. There is an innerness implicit in all sensory and motor experience. We can come into life from the inside and flow in this stream which binds together." 17

"To have the touch. To be touched. A sure touch. A warm touch. A sensitive touch - shy, delicate, tender to the touch. All of it - let all of it in." 24

"This doesn't mean that our troubles are over if we surround ourselves with hand-made objects, or if we devote ourselves exclusively to handwork. the craft object, like any other, can become a status symbol. And we can be seduced into isolation by the life of imagination and making, as easily as by any other." 24

*MC acknowledges that some folks do not believe art should be used in a therapy situation. But she disagrees.

The Crossing Point: Nine Easter Letters on the Art of Education

"I want to talk to you about
art education and the art of education (RED)
about
the relationship of art to education as a whole (RED all below)
education of the whole person
to extend the feeling for art to include
all the arts:"
42

"doesn't art education have to do with the way you
plant flowers or pick flowers or give them to people or recieve them
and not just he way you see them or paint them or look at paintings
of them or read poems about them and go all moony

doesn't art education have something to do with knowing that autumn

is really a form of spring, when the plants sow their seeds, and winter
is part of it too, everything is hatching underground and getting
ready for the ascent into the visible world, and itsn't it too about
remembering what we know very well, namely, that things are going
a long time before they're visible, and a long time after

there is somethign important in art education about light and shadow" 44

"BUT ARTISTS KNOW, ART EDUCATORS KNOW,
BEACUSE THEY TEND TO LOOK AROUND AND SEE HOW THINGS REALLY
ARE AND WHAT THEY REALLY LOOK LIKE, INSTEAD OF WORRYING
SO MUCH. Mostly, it seems to me, artists and art educators
KNOW IT IS VERY HARD TO DO SO BECAUSE IT IS ALWAYS CHANGING
SHAPE AS THE LIGHT MOVES. Art educators know that pictures
are subtle, like life, full of PLAY - it is very hard to
make verbal formulas about them fortunately." 45

"WHOLENESS
what is wholeness? ah a good question . . . (this and above in red)
it isn't half persons (underlined in red with line below)
it isn't half truths
IT IS A GOOD QUESTION the question is the quest." (second part in red.)

Some Thoughts about Art and Wholeness in Learning

"My values as a teacher and artist are my values as a person: 136

"One part of wholeness is initiative, a trust in oneself as source. " 137

"The spirit of learning has become so bodiless that teachers tend to mistrust epxiernece that acknowledges body as source. Poor ol' body has been made the enemy rather than the firdnd of inner development." 144

Art and Faith in Mexico:

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:03:55 GMT

Nineteenth-Century Retablo Tradition. Ed by Elixabeth Netto Calil Zarurr and Charles Muir Lovell.
U of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.
2001.

*U of New Mexico State has largest colleciton of 19-20th century Mexican tin retablos.

retablo - behind the altar
retablo ex-voto - paintings on tin with votive offerings

*blue background for heaven, sky, color of truth afer clouds are dispelled

*Mexican art functions as an independent national school within European tradition - like Norway

**Solange Alberro suggests that the retablo results in a sort of other, unmediated space of worship and spirituality outside of the church control.

Kitchenspace

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 22:11:55 GMT

Christie, Maria Elisa. 2008. Kitchenspace: Women, fiestas, and everyday life in central mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press.

*Spanish single mother in Mexico.
*experience and document fiestas
"I define kitchenspace as the place where food is prepared, whether indoors or outdoors - usually a combination of the two. Kitchenspace is a privileged and gendered site of social and cultural reproduction, where society's relationship with nature is inscribned in the patterns of everyday life and ritual celebrations." 1
cocina
*women drew maps of their kitchens - heart of the home, fiesta kitchen as alternate kitchen outdoor transformed as community space.
quinceaneras
*mediateing betwen nostaligia for home and home as a site of women's oppression
*women not accustomed to presenting themselves as experts were asked to speak
"Many women embroider napkins and baskets in which to serve tortillas at the next celebration or save eggshells to fill with fonfetti for children on the Day of the child (April 1), the next birthday party, or a Posada." 64
"Three different arches are decorated with corn and bean semillas (seeds) and mark each turn. The first, at the entrance into the callejon is beautifully decorated wtih flowers made of painted seeds. Camilo, one of Sneora Rosa's sons, tells me that the seeds are used to ask the Ninopa for a plentiful harvest. Another arch of seeds bearing an idealized image of the Ninopa amidst canals and trajineras marks the fork down teh narrow alley at the end of the first and wider part of the callejon." 80

maps of kitchens, altars, clay pots, rituals and practices.

Knot Tying

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:49:44 GMT

Schwabe, Calvin W. 1984. Knot Tying, Bridge Building, Chance Taking - The Art of Discovery. University of Ca.

curious chapbook...

doctor who sees in anatomy the ankh: "The only theories, among a number, of the ankh's origin to enjoy any significant support among Egyptologists were those that it was originally a knotted sandal strap or a girdle knot - but first evidence for these knot associations was late and no connections were proposed between knots and *life*. . . My first substantial reward came when, after abotu a month's of language study, I made another purely chance discovery that shot a big load of adrenaline through my system, namely that the Egyptian word for knot was the same as the word for vertebra." 8

"on the edges of that fragment of tapestry which is vetrinary medicine, where I weave away happily, are many loose threads which chance has juxtaposed with those of other nearby fragments. More and more I am awre of how these t hreads are just waiting to be knotted toegether. And, if enough knots can be tied in theses areas, chasms or open spaces of ignorance can be bridged, as by a rope suspension bridge that originates as a single line tossed across a gulf. " 10

The Knot: Prologue

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:19:58 GMT

1968 An Arte Povera A Critical Art, An Iconoclastic Art, Knot Art 1985
The Italian Complexity,
By Germano Celant

"the image of the knot has very different meanigns. It is linked to the notion of complexity and involvemtn, of condensing and twisting. It can be the fantastic place where the comprehensible becomes incomprehenisvle. There are various reasons why I am applyign the image of the knot to a group of artists. Perhaps, i wanted to affirm a creative power of the imagination taht has been tying and untying them for over twenty years - a 'grand tale' based on autonomous and independent travels. perhaps, I hit upon this fiture of a knot because all ropes converge in a single point to establish the art that when untied reveals the essential experience ocf the knowledge of reality. furthermore, teh knot tends to be the sign of ramification that rejects linear unfolding. it is an uncontrolled grwoth caused by coutless thrusts and strokes in all directions. An internal superimposition of levels, develpoing in teh plural as it gets wider and higher.
Perhaps I chose the wrod 'knot' because of its ancient symbolism. For Egyptian priests, the knot was an emblem of immortality and protection, untyinga nd reconstructing itself incessenatly - seducative because of its ability to get lost in an endless process.
In its tangle of threads - mateirl, historical, political, and anthropological, and psychological - the knot implies a contiuity and continuity of langues and parlances. it is an orgy of coors and words, of technology and philsophy, alchemy and chemistry,f orms and transparties. This may be the Gordian Knto of a European art whose problems and invisible routes have not yet been disentangled or recognized - an enigama between past and present, between traditional and contemporary, which can penetrate only by stepping in and reading in an irreguarl, fragmentary way.
When we think of the knot, we are instantly aware of the extraordinary multiplication, instability, and variaiton of its identity, in which continuity becomes discontinous. the knot arouses doubts about partial perceptions and about eth existence of an 'untied' lie or resolved and coherent world. the knot obstinately keeps doubling and tripling the routes and exits, the interpretations and perspectives. Yet the dislocation of looking and perceiving does not produce incoherence; instead, it permits an ulterior but determinable vision."

arte povera - poor art

*Pino Pascali - installation. The Trap. The Bridge. The solitaire. The Silworms. nest. Aesops Quilts.

Dancing Alone in Mexico plus a few others

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:48:56 GMT

Butler, Ron. 2000. Dancing Alone in Mexico: From the Border to Baja and Beyond. Tuscon: The University of Arizona Press.

catalogue of Mexico by an American man whose wife divorces him and moves to Mexico.

"Guanajuato is a marvelous old Spanish colonial city in the heart of central Mexico - marvelous in its sense of history, its brooding Moorish architecture, its precarious grace. It hangs on the slopes of a deep rugged canyon, as if ready to tumble at any moment into a pile of tireless rubble.
Gone in such an unfortunate event would be the University of Guanajuato, one of Mexico's finest schools of theatre and music. Gone would be the glittering, ornate Teatro Juarez with its stately columns and rococo interior, upon whose teage have appeared Loenoard Berstein, the Bolshoi Ballet, and Enrico Caruso. Gone would bte the Don Quixiote Museum and the handsome two-story home of Calle Positos where artist Diego Rivera was born on December 8, 1886." 60

*Mummies of Guanajuato film - cult status.

Standish, Peter. 2009. The States of Mexico: A Reference Guide to History and Culture. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

*legacy of ceramic work, of "coffee colored clay decorated with pastel colors, or of a creamier colored shiny chlay, some of it brightly painted. The antrhopormophic pottery that survies suggests that these people wore such things as belts, sandals, jewelr, and headdresses." 142

Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla - independence movemebtn from Spain. teacher that set up craft and literacy workshops.

artists: Francisco Eduardo Tresguerras, Hermenegildo Bustos, Diego Rivera,

poets?: Agustin Lanuza, Efren Hernandez, Efrain Huerta,
Pedro Garcia,

Maria Grever - Maria Asuncion de la Portilla y Torres - 800 bolero songs.

The Natalie Wood COllection of Pre-Columboa Ceramics from Cupicuaro, Guanajuato Mexico at UCLA. Monograph - Studies by Murial Porter Weaver. Ed. Jay D,. Frierman. UCLA - Museum and Lab of Ethnic arts and technology. 1969

*tombs found in mid-1920s, Chupicuaro in Rio Lerma valley. volcanoes, hilly, rainfall, fertile. flourishing cultures.
*burnishing, polychrome - black and red, etc.
*figurines tell us about people

MC Richards

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 02:33:02 GMT

Towards Wholeness: Rudolph Steiner Education in America

"The Waldorf educational impulse is based upon a way of precieving, which senses that all things share in consciousness and meaningful form. " 10

"At Black Mountain College, the arts were central to currciulucm, not matter what one's major fields. Community was central as well. The emphasis was threefold: intellectual, artistic, and social. We did our own administration and the physical work of maintenence. We operated a farm. . . The curriculum was created by teachers and students together. There I began to work as a potter and to sow seeds of an interdisciplinary cast." 20

*Waldorf Schools were once called "education without anxiety" 28

"For most Americans who study to be Waldorf teachres, this is a new approach to childhood education: for teachres to regard themselves as artists. It is not in the conetional sense, i.e., making workds of high aesthetic value, but of seeing how form and color and rhythm are part of the wholeness of expeirnece, and how feeling is basic ot learning." 58

"'Knitting develops out of a continous thread. A continuous thread! Loopign and ducking in and out and around and through, a continuous thread, like learning to tell a story or write a senstence or listen."96

"The ahdnwork teacher rarely confronts the children with teh bald statement, 'ow I am going to teach you to knit. That would be risky as well as unimagtinative. howeve,r she might come t0o class carrying a golden box filled with golden threads. She might tell the children there was soemthing int eh box for each of them, thus buildng anticipation and encouraging their fantasies. They might 'go on a journey' to the back of the room, where she would oopen teh box and take out a thread of gold wool. She might then take one of the children on her lap to start the process, moving her hands and hte child's hands in teh gesture of making a loop, a bow, a slip kot, a chain." 97

"The word 'pedagogy' contains whtin it the image sof 'child' and of 'guide' Pedagogy is meant to be a crossing point of child and teacher. It is our inner child who is our grwoing tip, our creaitivyt," 160

Literacy Throught the Book Arts

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:19:48 GMT

Johnson, Paul. (1993). Literacy through the book arts. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

"And once you see the book as sculpture or mini-architecture, it can do things for you that you would not think possible." 2

"The fact of the matter is that a book can be anything you want it to be, and that is part of its mystery. What I say to myself when confronted by a child's self-made book is, what has this child learned about the book concept? And how has the book concept been changed by this child's work?" 3

"Printe words, illustrations, diagrams, maps, photographs, adn charts - forming c colelctive symbology we call the book form - bounce in and out of our social and professional lives with such rapidity that we hardly notice them. But somehow that flat, sandwich-like package is a mystery; it is the most public and private of all objects, for we communciate to the world throu it and cmmit our deepest and most intimate feeligns to its protection. It has the power to change people beyond measure, and some have even laid down their lives for it." 8

*book history - when did you first encounter books.
*vertical vs horizontal
*hanging vs laid out on table, vs unrolled bit by bit

"But the book is where we discover most about ourselves." 10

"I don't think I've ever met anyoen who doesn't, in their romantic daydreams, want to write a book. It is commonplace to say that we all have a book inside us." 12

"Neither English, art, nor, for that matter, any other subject int eh school curriculum system will take responsibiltiy for housing teh book arts." 16

We tend to say 'If you finish your story in time you can illustrate it.' And then do no more than distribute crayons and add a few weak words of encouragement. 22

roll of vegetable fiber - papyrus. "In the ready-made book of any number of pages, with or without doors and pop-ups, it is impossible for the book artist to say on page two, 'I am finished.' It has no meaning. The book simply will not allow itself to be left blank. A half-finished book is not a book at all. It is only part of a book." 35

Why Knot? Towards a Theory of Art and Mathematics

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:53:08 GMT

Kuchler, Susanne. Why knot? Towards a theory of art and mathematics. In Eds Pinney, C. and Thomas, N. Beyond aesthetics: Art and the technologies of enchantment. New York: Oxford. 57--77.

"Knot-theory models the behaviour of systems that have the capacity for self-organization, for generativity and autonomy - of systems, that is - whose behaviour cannot be explained by simple and identifiable laws and of which image-systems outside of the Renaissance are as much an example as the weather. Knots are. . . prone to become artworks for reasons which are pointed out by mathematics." 59

"knot as a unique artefact . . . 'both embodies mathemtical principles and has a tendency to evoke a range of emotional personal sorts of thoughts." Strohecker qtd in 63

"It was teh evocative capacity of the knot which in science proved vital for an understanding of the nature of concrete thinking and its importance in the learning of mathematics. Mathematics found itself thinking of teh know as this kind of object that is likely to touch people's lives in onnecting with personal and 'affective' aspects of thought and thus as forming the springboard for associations that are both abstact and c oncrete in their mnemic capacity. Like Proust's famous Madeleine cake, the knot had begun to exemplify the ability to remember by chance something previously experienced and connect it into strings of associations without which thought itself would not be possible." 63

"The Knot Lab, situated in an American inner city elemetnary school, was created as a place where chidlren were encouraged to have dialogues and debates about different ways to think about knots (and eventually other issues in life, too). Strohecker's research showed how chidlren engaged in 'dialogues' with themseplves as they developed a form of critical thinking in whcih they would launch an interpretation of a knot and then retract or modify it as they continued their exploration. In this capacity of the knot, made visible as apparently inextricably entangled pattern covering the surface of things (from mazes to Celtic script), to become the object of affect-driven thought for long may have led to its exclusion from science. Yet it is precisely its embeddedness in the mndane and relational texture of the everyday which appears to suggest the pertinence of an ethnography of the knot." 64

*Alexander the Gret and fabled Gordian knot - bark around an ox cart

"Yet it is this quality of teh knot, its embdeddedness int eh everday, its tendency to suggest the fluid mechanics of persons and things, that renders the knot into a unique object for anthropology." 64

"The knot is the knowledge, a knowledge of the linking of things, material and mental, that may as well exist apart. It is this feature of teh knot which allows it to be linked to sorcery across the Pacific." 71

Body Knots

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 02:57:34 GMT

2000. Schatz. Howard. Rizzoli: New York

cool, but not really that relevant to what I'm doing

500 Ceramic Sculptures

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 05:19:07 GMT

Flied Eggs. Sumi Maesthima. 2003

Hannibal High Chair. Wendy Walgate. 2007. animals in a high chair

Katy Rush. Nourish 2007. animals feed from a woman's breasts

FOR LATER: Kate MacDowell. Daphne

FOR LATER: Richard Shaw. Pastel Cabin on a Paintbrush. 2007.

Kate McDowell: Cuckoo. 2007.

Chang Hyun Bang: Wednesday Morning 3Am. 2007.

Wendy Walgate. I Had a Little Pony. 2007.

Red-Tip Rabbit. Rob Tarbell. 2007.

Julianne Harvey. The Pit. 2006.

BOOKMAKING:

Margrieta Jeltema. Folded Love Letters. 2007
Holly Hanessian. As If. 2006.
Fabien Clerc. Skateboards. 2004
Shalene Valenzuela. Goody Two-Shoes: DIchatoics. 2007
Jennifer Mettlen Nolan. Viewmaster: Growing up in Utah. 2006.
Richard Shaw. Martha Shaw. Opening of the East and West. 2007
Nancy Kubale. Look. 2007
Jeanne Opgenhaffen. With Simple Words. 2007.
Cyrus Wai-Kuen Tang. Untitled 2003.
Wendy Walgate. I had a little pony. 2007.
Forrest Snyder. A Lot of Work. 2004.
Casey McDonough. Network Study: Myspace/Facebook. 2007.

More Than Meat Joy

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 04:54:20 GMT

McPherson, Bruce, Ed. 1997. More Than Meat Joy: Selected Writings. New York: Documentext.

"About Claes Oldenburg's Store . . . Slapping, patting, knewading, twisting, chopping gave dough and cloth, fresh and metal, sugar and leather spontaneous, surprised cast. Cakes and pies, brides and flags, shoes and socks, suits and blouses astounded thmselves emerging from an ordeal by paint." 15
March 1961

Food, Poetry, and the Aesthetics of Consumption

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 14:48:15 GMT

Delville, Michel. Food, poetry, and the aesthetics of consumption: Eating the avant-garde. New York: Routledge.

"From Plato's dismissal of food as a distrction from thought to Kant's relegation of the palate to the bottom of the hierarchy of the sense, the sense of taste has consistently been devalued by Western aesthetics." 1

"the manipulation and consumption of food - the primary act by which the child begins to relate to something outside himself, to the non-ego - develops both as a destabiliszing and a liberating element in a process which nuances and complicates the realtionship between diet and discourse." 9

*Duchamps' sugar cubes and readymaes

"Mullen's S*PeRm**K*?T alerts us to the disappearance of both the butcher and the cook in pre-package meat, which results in teh elision of the slaughtering process that turns flesh into meat. But instead of focusing on teh themes o reification and the fate of the factory workers, Mullen's poetry explores the ways in which packaging turns meat into a consumable festish, uncreognizable as what it is, transforming animal flesh into clean commodity." 62
*Clay has also become a comodity, with its former processes of mining and digging unrecognized by many of its users.

*foods association with scatalogical qualities and death - black foods. Something share by clay as containing organic matter and being burned and blackened from time to time. Also art itself either mimics the form of food (as in the case of Oldenberg's sculptures) or contains actual food (Broodthaer's actual mussels in assemblage) - whereas clay is neither a food object, nor a non-food object. It can mimic the form, and may contain some elements of food.

*use Kate Malone's fruits as a reference - meat of the fruit, connection to flesh

The Material Culture Reader

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 04:12:41 GMT

Ed by Victor Buchli

Binding in the Pacific: Between Loops and Knots
Susan Kuchler

KNOTS - "The appeal of the knot as a model for self-organizing, non-linear systems reverberated over the last twenty years not just in science, but also in teh humanities. . . it is this ubiquitious presence of the knot in contemporary academic thought, which, I would argue, shaped the resonsnces evoked by recent analyses of the figural in Pacific art." 65

New Ireland - wu-ap word means connected knots

A Theory of Craft

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 03:54:25 GMT

Risatti.

"Clearly, materials and technique go to the very heart of craf." 16

jewelry's connection to the body as connection to craft.

"Objects such as chairs and beds support the human body; blankets and clothes cover the body; and baskets and vessels of all types carry and store food and water for the body. These, the basic functions of craft objects, all spring from the same purpose, that of fullfilling the body's physiological needs. In one important way or another, by containing, covering, and supporting, craft objects help in our struggle for survial in an otherwiswe indifferent, if not hostile world. Prurpose in craft is singularly driven by this; it is craft's overriding reason for being made."

"the fullfillment of practical functions essential in the struggle for survial must be understood as *the* historical dimension of craft. Nothing less than the colossal weight of histroical necessity itself is brought to bear on teh field of craft by its applied fucntion. Traces of craft's struggle still survive in the craft objects we use in our daily life. . . Every time we use blankets to keep warm, however elaborate they may become, we are reenacting an actual, not imaginary response to bodilu needs that is probably as ancient as our species. Considering this, it is hardly surprising that craft objects and the functions they fillfill play an essential role in most of the world's cultural rituals. Yet we have in ternalized thses rituals to such an extent that their meaning seems to have disappeared from consius notice" 58

***Use Alice Miller's massaging back and sculpture note!

The Pocket Paper Engineer

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:10:33 GMT

*Copy from, buy this book!

valley, mountain fold

triangle fold outs

*align hinges

*cut only perimeter flat edges of a cross shape

Keith Smith - Exposed Spine Sewings - Non-Adhesive Binding

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 22:54:22 GMT

Keith Smith - Caterpillar - cool image

See Heidi Kyle - neat books

Keith Smith - Book Number 56 - The Handbound Book - IT'S A KNOT!

Lisa LaLonde - They Say 1990

Adele Outteridge - Envelope Book II 1995

Christine A Forsythe - Roadways: Message and Meaning. 1995

Rosemary Bell - The InXricable Letter X

recto - right hand page of an open book
verso - back of that page