What Is Art?
And Is He Worth Knowing?
Between the first and second floors of the Fine Arts Building of the UW Campus, the battle raged so fiercely at times that one expected to see the drawing of palette knives and chisels for a duel to the death in the stairwells that separated the disciplines of 2D and 3D (painting and sculpture). Each was forever trying to win one of us over to the other side. We didn’t even consider involving the graphics people, still stuck in their closet classroom because the .com boom hadn’t yet hit. They were below our notice, non-entities, superfluous to the debate. This elitist attitude strikes the blossoming artist and performs an alchemy of snobbery that is insufferable if it isn’t beaten out of us by the time we graduate. And it isn’t. We must be constantly vigilant and self-flagellate in order to keep it at bay – especially if we just finished making something really cool. Nobody should have to live with us. It’s too much to ask of any sane person (should such an entity exist). But fortunately, I don’t know any of those; I only associate with the ones who keep asking us and themselves what the big deal is. Who cares and how do you tell the difference?
The answer, Precious Readers, is very simple. If you can use it for anything practical, it’s a Craft. If nobody needs it to survive; it bears no resemblance to anything in the natural world or defies explanation; or it can’t be utilized for any purpose other than staring at its awesome beauty (or ugliness), that’s Fine Art.
The World Is Flat . . .
. . . Until We Decide It Isn't.
Everything in the piece above, 'Smithsonian Art Train'', was born wanting to be a stretched canvas, but something happened in the riotous Sixties, thanks to Hippies like me. Artists started pushing the envelope in all sorts of directions. Consequently, boundaries and Stone Age ideas about having to paint on a rectangular, canvas surface no longer apply. 2D elements can begin any project, or coexist alongside 3D details. So, if you paint the oceans and continents on a ball, does that make it a sculpture? Or is there simply a round form inside that flat world of paint? Only YOUR perception is reality - right or wrong.
2D: Referring to flat works viewed from one position and using only height and width, i.e. paintings. (Depth is only a perception here, for both the artist and the viewer.)
How Far Can You Go?
Before You Stop Yourself?
This project came about because I wanted , like the pioneers before me, to see just how far you could stretch a two-dimensional canvas around a piece of wood and still call it a painting. I suppose I'd have to call this particular work (China Vase) 6D - or maybe more. The flat painting encompasses the inside as well as the outside of the 'vase', and across the water at the 'bottom'. I was asked wouldn't it have been easier to make the thing in ceramics? Probably, but where's the fun in that? I'm still finding out how far I can go and don't plan on stopping anytime soon..
“This is just my own opinion, but I think the real jolt doesn’t come because the art is objectionable or because it evokes social critique but because the viewer becomes lost in the sheer beauty of it. It gives a person an experience of the eternal.”
The Mermaid Chair, Sue Monk Kidd