Thursday, November 17, 2011

When Creating Art is an Act of Historic Preservation







Over the years, while working on collages, I began to see how using source material from a certain period could “date” a piece. I do not mean to imply that by “dating” a piece it’s somehow out of fashion. But rather I am using the term “dating” in the sense of freezing time. When I use older source material in a contemporary piece, I am creating something akin to a time capsule. So much of the material I use is destined for landfills and recycling bins. When I repurpose the material for a work of art, it in turn also becomes preserved in a way other than the placing it in a drawer or mylar envelope.

A collage can be a way to preserve various ephemera. Even after a little cutting, you are setting the material in some sort of glue for the ages. But when I start cutting, there is usually little of that kind of preservation going on. I tend to work with small pieces — thousands of small pieces. But even after I cut material into little pieces and reconfigure it, what I still do preserve is the color. And color can really change over time. Some shades of a color are very distinct to a certain time.

For example, when you see a distinct shade of a color it can trigger a memory. The color may bring an image to mind or specific point in time. It happens when you see a color like the original blue on a classic car and immediately realize that particular blue was only used on cars during the 1960’s. Memory triggering color may also be associated with clothing, household objects, old photos or printed material. It might be the shade of baby blue or pink that reminds you of a vintage telephone. There are distinctive shades of red and blue that were used as backdrops in advertising photos in the 1950’s. The olive green and harvest gold kitchen appliances of the 1970’s are unmistakable. Dig deep in the closet and something in a very bright yellow or purple (or both) might fall out. It’s probably a shirt that hasn’t seen the light of day since Daddy Bush was president.

As I cut up things like old maps, atlases, vintage postcards and discarded magazines and books my first purpose is just to make a work of art. I work in the present. But, I also understand that I am preserving color palettes that are disappearing.

Some examples of some Palette Preservation can be seen above and much more is at tofuart.com.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

The Big Pink Dinosaur









How can you not love a big pink dinosaur? I went down to Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to have a second look. This time I took along my neighbors, 4 and 6 years old. They agreed — the dinosaur is cool. The dinosaur is made out of hundreds of recycled pink plastic bottles. The installation is the work of the team of Indian artists Thukral & Tagra. It’s my favorite part of YBCA’s current show The Matter Within: Contemporary Art of India.

Friday, November 11, 2011

International Mail Art Exhibition






It’s time for another show up in Vancouver at the Richmond Art Gallery. Last year it was Artist Trading Cards, this time the theme is mail art. The three 5”x5” mixed media pieces above are from the Trailer Series that was mailed up to Canada

More about the show is below and on the gallery website.


Richmond Art Gallery

7700 Minoru Gate

Richmond BC, V6Y 1R9, Canada


November 18, 2011 – January 15, 2012

Opening Reception: Thursday, November 17, 7–9 pm



Artists from all over the world have contributed their work for the Richmond Art Gallery’s International Mail Art Exhibition and Swap. This exhibition is intended to be a cultural exchange, where artists exhibit their works and receive new works as part of a swap. This shared enterprise is free from the rules of the art market, and yet we asked artists to respond to the theme of “economy” in all its forms.

Mail Art (aka Postal Art) is an art form where artists exchange artworks and correspondence through the mail to one another. The historical roots of Mail Art can be traced back to the artist Ray Johnson and his New York CorresponDANCE School that formed in the 1960s. Based on the principles of barter and equal, one-to-one collaboration between artists, Mail Art has become a worldwide cultural movement for artists to share visual art, poetry, or any other art form through the postal system.


Below is an image from the show's opening