A 2015 Bricolage Workshop

This year I will again be teaching a day-long workshop on Bricolage: Making Fine Art with Unconventional Materials in conjunction with the Ninth Annual Encaustic Conference, founded and directed by Joanne Mattera. My workshop on Wednesday, June 10th, is part of the post-conference schedule at Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill in Truro, Mass.

Last year's Mystery Bags containing items for students to use in the workshop

The object of this class is to encourage students to transform materials into a component of an artwork. The objects do not retain their original identity or function but become part of the whole. This is unlike assemblage where objects are brought together and retain their identities. Finished bricolage artworks have a sense of discovery about them as viewers may glimpse and identify original forms when they look more closely at the work.

Here are some images of student works from last year's class. (Please excuse my casual photography and note that images will expand if you click on them.)

A work by Pamela Winegard using pencil marks on paper, black elastics, sticks,
hair scrunchies, part of a wooden placemat, copper wire, and encaustic paint

A work by Abear al Mogren using book pages, shredded paper, copper wire, tissue paper
from a sewing pattern, ping pong balls, copper wire, thread, pigment sticks, encaustic paint
and probably more that I can't identify from the virtual image

A work by Edith Rae Brown using hair scrunchies, black elastics, sticks from
a wooden placemat, thumbtacks or other round objects, wire, pigment sticks, encaustic paint

A work by Monica Kaczyk using ping pong balls, tissue from sewing pattern,
looks like string or wire and more paper, encaustic paint

This is one of my favorite pieces and I can't find the name of the artist. She used
brown paper, sticks from a placemat, wire, black elastics, plastic soldiers and animals,
felt, metal clips, encaustic paint, and probably more. (If anyone knows the name of
this artist, please let me know!)

The reason that these pieces work so well is that the miscellaneous objects and materials that students used in their pieces were not allowed to retain their original identities but became part of the greater whole. This required the artists to have a concept for their work that would subordinate the materials and allow them to be used for new purposes, such as adding texture, dimension, or line.

There are still a couple of places left in the workshop on June 10th. See the full descriptions of workshops here and you can register by calling Castle Hill at 508-349-7511.

Charles McGill at Pavel Zoubok Gallery

When I saw Charles McGill's show, Territories. online, I knew I had to see it in person, but I couldn't get to New York until the last day of the exhibition. When I finally confronted the work at Pavel Zoubok's gallery, I found it even more fascinating than I had expected. A surprise bonus was the opportunity to meet and chat with Charles McGill, himself. He is a warm and engaging person who spoke freely about his work, his intentions for it, and his emotional, intellectual, and aesthetic attachment to his chosen material of golf bags.

Charles McGill with Blue Moon Tondo

Bricolage
What drew me so much to McGill's work was his use of repurposed or reconfigured golf bags. Destruction of the original objects and transformation of them into works of art makes these works bricolage, according to my definition. I really appreciated the materiality of the work from a formal, technical perspective. I was looking at them more as geometric abstractions with the intriguing additions of zippers, buckles, straps, handles and the dimensionality of layered materials.

 (Note: click photos to expand.)

Black Tondo, 2015,  reconfigured golf bags, 36 inches in diameter, 
(image from Charles McGill's website)

Black Tondo closeup, my photo from Territories exhibition

Political implications
McGill, however, comes to this work as a golfer and as an African-American. These works grew out of his political and identity-focused approach to art making that began in the late 1990s with "the Legendary Political Trailblazer Arthur Negro II, aka  Art Negro, aka Black Art." McGill wanted to emphasize the racial and economic gulf between the privileged leisure of the game of golf and the oppressed situation of the majority of African-American people. McGill personally bridged that gap as a golfer himself and integrated the de facto whites-only game. After experimenting with various forms and approaches to the subject, he began deconstructing golf bags and using them as his art material. This allowed  him to enrich his work with many connotations and implications such as leisure, race, masculinity, wealth, sports, and class.

White Tondo, 2014, reconfigured golf bags, 36 inches in diameter
(image from Charles McGill's website)

Development of the work
As time and work have gone on and McGill has continued using golf bags, his intention for the work has undergone some modification. As I understand the progression, the work has become more about formally composing works containing an interesting variety of shapes and dimension, focusing on color and also referring to art historical subjects. The personal identity components are still there but play a lesser part in many works.

As McGill says on his website: "The recent work is a testament to the belief that the material can dictate the direction of the work and how it evolves. Tondos and Totems aren’t objects I would have ever thought I would make with this golf bag as a starting point. But that is exactly what has occurred in the studio." (quote from McGill's website)


Black Tondo and White Tondo were the first two of McGill's works to be based on a circle, rather than a square or rectangle, but his varying treatment of the center of this shape as well as the draping of zippers, flaps and other parts becomes very elegant and really moves the work beyond the original source. Also note that with these two pieces McGill means "black" and "white" to refer to race as well as to color of the materials.



Self Portrait in a Tondo
McGill told me about this work representing himself in relation to his father, who died at age 51 when McGill was 30. As he grew older, McGill was understandably fearful of reaching the age at which his father had died. Marking the milestone of his 51st birthday with this large work, must have meant an easement for him of having passed that emotionally-disturbing age.

Target 51, 2015, reconfigured golf bags, 48 inches in diameter
(image from Charles McGill's website)

Aside from its personal meaning to McGill, I particularly liked this tondo for the red markers at the edge forming slightly skewed compass points that may represent McGill's passage through life.


Other Forms, Other Meanings
In addition to tondos, there were many other forms in this extensive exhibition of works, including free-standing sculptures and some pieces representing hooded, menacing figures. These, of course, allude to the KKK and its persecution of African Americans. They portray another, more frightening aspect of McGill's commentary on race and evidence a progression in tone and approach from the satirical figure of Arthur Negro.

I, 2014, reconfigured golf bags, 48 inches high

Material Effort
McGill speaks about his physical struggle to deconstruct golf bags and the fact that works in progress are sometimes marked with blood from cuts he sustains while tearing and cutting the bags apart.

"New pieces literally wrestled into shape. Stubborn objects. There is so much resistance. Each step is a physical challenge. These bags were made well and not manufactured to come apart, especially not to be pulled apart, twisted and manipulated into shapes that are counter-intuitive to their nature."

And all that physical struggle becomes part of the work as well so that the "knowing" of the material by the artist is not only discovery but also creation of the material.

A Ghostly Dimension

Exploring the material for as long as McGill has and becoming able to push it in new and unexpected directions has resulted in a rich variety of works that transcend their origin. However, it seems to me that bricolage works exist in more than one space; the original forms of the objects from which they are made remain as a kind of ghostly presence in the new art pieces. We look at the new work but still get glimpses of the source material. We seem to experience it in more than three dimensions as we see the present and receive intimations of the past.

Charles McGill's website

Pavel Zoubok gallery website link to "Territories"

Margaret Roleke at Odetta Gallery in Brooklyn

"Gobsmacked!" is the title of the exhibition currently showing until October 5th at the beautiful new Odetta Gallery, 229 Cook Street, Brooklyn. This show features large, rich charcoal drawings depicting visions of psychological topographies by Charlotte Schulz and bricolage works by Margaret Roleke. Both artists create work that addresses the political and cultural state of the world without being didactic or conveying a directly gobsmacked attitude at the horrors and inequities of life on planet earth.

Margaret Roleke, Fairytale Western, 2013, 38" x 38" x 5"

Margaret Roleke's work certainly fits the definition of "bricolage," and she achieves a considerable amount of dimension in some of her wall works by using plastic objects such as palm trees, buildings and animals that protrude off the panel. Most of Roleke's works in "Gobsmacked!" are painted a single unifying color that brings together such disparate plastic toys as horses, wagon wheels, soldiers, spacemen, cowboys, guns, rocket ships, houses, canoes and canons - to name just a few. 

Fairytale Western, side view

Fairytale Western, extreme closeup

Roleke wants to emphasize the difference between "girl toys" and "boy toys" by challenging the genderized assumptions we give to the toys themselves as well as by applying the "girl color" of pink to cowboys, Indians, horses and Western what-alls that are assumed to be playthings for boys.

I thought that Margaret Roleke made effective use of the materials she chose and coating the plastic toys with paint in one color subdued their plasticity with a reductive palette. In a way, however, there is something about the garish colors common to so many in toys that makes the toys uniquely other worldly and sets them apart from other plastic objects. These gaudy colors are thought to be attractive to children and to their parents. There is also the distinctive processed petroleum odor emanating from so much plastic in a confined area. You will get a whiff of this if you go near a toy department at Target or some other store and you will know the Girl Aisle by that garish plastic pink that falls somewhere between magenta and hell.


Toys on a Disney Image
Another panel work, "Tink's Army," uses plastic soldiers mounted on  fabric that portrays a Disney character - Tinker Bell in this case - looking almost like a world map at first glance. I liked the way the arrangement of military toys distorted and almost hid the figure underneath.

Margaret Roleke, "Tink's Army," 2013, 30" x 30" x 3", plastic toys on fabric

Of course the idea of sweet, voiceless little Tinker Bell having an army is an idea that jars the mind. Roleke wants to point out that the the vision of this little fairy wearing an ultra-short dress and acting coquettish (or what Disney describes as "Sassy, Fashionable and Creative,") is a sexualized vision thought to be an acceptable character for children. Are we willing to accept the flirtatious Tinker Bell and not the war-mongering one? Does war belong to boys and fashion to girls?


Black Barbie, Black Guns
The color black (an all time favorite of mine) carries its own tone or connotation - not of gender, but of meaning and associations - mourning, fashion, absence, threat, foreboding. In the center of Odetta Gallery is a spiderish hanging work by Roleke painted a dense matte black. Only when you view it closely can you distinguish its various components: guns, soldiers and Barbies - many of the Barbies separated from their heads.

Margaret Roleke, "Hanging," 2014, painted toys, 76" x 76" x 30"

Here Roleke co-mingles girl toys and boy toys, uniting them in a fashionable but mournful coat of dense black. This strange combination of headless Barbies (with plenty of unattached hairy heads), guns, and soldiers all suspended in the gallery's center makes me think about what we give children to play with and how this forms their vision of male-female relationships and human interaction. Kind of a ghastly thought that we are perpetuating the sex and guns culture now destroying the world in various ways. All we need to add to this mix is some cold, hard cash to really portray adult reality.


Chinese firecrackers
What looked to me  at a distance like strings of Chinese firecrackers turned out to be colorful plastic shotgun shell casings. Who knew that bullets came packaged so attractively? Roleke has wired empty casings together in long, bead-like strings, and they are hung on the wall at Odetta in a mass reminiscent of Mardi Gras beads or Anatsui's metallic hangings.

Margaret Roleke, Shells #2, 2014, wall sculpture, site specific,
 spent shells and wire, 89" x 58" x 17"

Close-up of plastic shell casings

That these bullet castoffs carry printed names such as "Top Gun" attests to the cultural messaging inherent in our gun-happy culture. You, too, can be Tom Cruise in an elite group of expert marksmen if you use the right brand of ammunition when you are plugging away at a target, a live animal or who knows what or whom. This is branding at its finest.


Odetta Gallery
Finding such a beautiful, Chelsea-ish storefront gallery in the midst of grungy Bushwick is a lovely surprise.  Created and operated by artist Ellen Hackl Fagan, Odetta is a new gallery that plans to show contemporary works "focusing on Color Theory, Minimalism, Glyphs, Buddha Mind, Fluxus, History, Humor, Psychedelia, Ephemera, Science, Math and Music." Be sure to visit!

The front of Odetta Gallery listing a show earlier this year

BRICOLAGE: Art With Dimensional Materials - Phyllida Barlow

I am making this short series of posts about artists who will be included in my talk at the Eighth Annual Encaustic Conference (June 6 - 8 in Provincetown, Mass.) because I want to pique some interest in the work and to show short videos that animate the work in a way that still pictures can't.

Phyllida Barlow, one view of "Dock" installation at Tate Britain, 2014

Phyllida Barlow is a sculptor whose work I became aware of after watching a video in an ArtDaily Newsletter (this one is a long video). I had never heard of her, but that was my loss. She has been teaching and making sculpture for a long while and is very well known in Britain. I admire her particularly because she has just reached age 70 and began showing her own work publicly just a few years ago. She's now in the Hauser & Worth stable and so showing worldwide in some of the world's most enormous galleries. Any artist, particularly a woman, who has been working that long and has just been "discovered" is well worth a close look.

What interested me about her was not only her work but what she had to say about it and about sculpture in general. She spoke about time as an element in sculpture and about choreographing the audience's views of sculpture because of the way the work is placed. She also mentioned the pomposity and grandiosity of older sculptural works, especially in Britain. (I am envisioning the general-on-the-horse kind of thing that viewers have to strain their necks to see from a viewpoint far below.)

The relationship of space and the work is very important to her and she spoke of her works as making "an aggressive invasion of space." She has a lot to say about materiality, surface, destruction, surprise and invention. What an interesting person she is and what a wonderful teacher she must have been for so many artists who went on to become art stars on their own.



Here is a short video I found of her speaking about the Tate Britain installation, Dock, pictured above.

And here is another video about an installation called Hoard, where she speaks about her inspiration coming from an interview with a man whose home was upturned in Hurricane Katrina. She is careful to say that although she may begin with an idea such as this, she lets the materials themselves lead her to something new in the actual work so that she is making discoveries along with the audience.

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BRICOLAGE: Art With Dimensional Materials - Nick Cave

Nick Cave is another one of the artists I will be including in my talk at the Eighth Annual Encaustic Conference in Provincetown. The conference, founded and directed by Joanne Mattera, runs Friday, June 6, through Sunday, June 8th this year. Here is the link that gives all the details.

A button-covered soundsuit with an abacus faceguard by Nick Cave

My talk on the Friday is entitled, Bricolage: Art With Dimensional Materials, and I will be presenting the work of more than 15 artists. I have chosen a range of work, most of it wall mounted, to illustrate that bricolage can bring art to a place somewhere between two and three dimensions. However, I have also added a couple of sculptors to the mix of artists because the technique of bricolage can be used with freestanding, fully-dimensional works.

For me, the important thing about bricolage as a technique or process is that found objects and materials lose their original identities and are transformed into new creations. Bricolage often involves destruction and revisioning, unlike assemblage, in which found objects retain their original identities.

Nick Cave is a unique artist who exists between worlds: he's a sculptor, a clothing designer and a dancer. A website describes him as "part Alexander McQueen and part Andy Warhol." Nick Cave's first soundsuit was created from twigs he gathered in a park. Initially he thought of it as a stationery sculpture, but when he put it on his body and moved with it, the twigs hit against each other and created sounds that reflected his motions. The suit also gave him a new identity without racial, gender or national origin characteristics

Click here for a short video from the New York Times where Nick Cave demonstrates the sounds that two soundsuits make - the first one a loud and clanky collection of spinning tops and noisemakers, the second a soft, swishy, swirl of long fibers.

Cave's soundsuits transcend other boundaries in that they may be worn for public performances and also exhibited in museums and galleries as artworks. Nick Cave's New York gallery is Jack Shainman (also home to the great Anatsui) where soundsuits list for $45,000 and up. The suits are designed by Cave using a vast collection of objects and materials gathered at thriftshops, tag sales and wholesalers.

Last year the Denver Art Museum presented Sojourn, an extensive exhibition of works by Nick Cave. Here are two videos provided by the museum. The first one is a tour of the exhibition narrated by Nick Cave. The second shows the labor-intensive installation process.

Denver Art Museum tour of Sojourn - 5:34




Installation - 2:52

Bricolage: Art With Dimensional Materials - Joan Snyder

Joan Snyder - My Life - 1996, oil, straw, velvet, silk and plastic
grapes on linen, 48" x 54"

For this year's Annual Encaustic Conference, the eighth consecutive year for this wonderful conference, held in Provincetown, Massachusetts at the Provincetown Inn, the dates are Friday, June 6, through Sunday, June 8th. Here's the blog link that gives all the details.  I will be giving a talk on Friday, June 6th, entitled, Bricolage: Art With Dimensional Materials. I am presenting the work of more than 15 artists who transform objects and materials into bricolage works - both wall mounted and free standing.

Several of the artists I am including in my talk have videos and other online presences, so I intend to feature some of them in this blog.

I am very pleased that Joan Snyder, wonderful painter, will be among those I am featuring. Here's a 10-minute video by James Kalm of Joan Snyder's 2010 show at Betty Cunningham Gallery. From this video you can really get a sense of the dimension she adds to her paintings with materials such as textiles, paper mache, flower parts, mud, straw, feathers, herbs, and many more.

Note that Joan Snyder will also be teaching a week-long master workshop at Castle Hill Center for the Arts in Truro, September 8 - 12, entitled The Anatomy of Your Painting. And finally, here is Joan Snyder's website where you can see more of her work.

Using Metaphor in Art (Especially in Bricolage)

Arthur Simms, "Globe, The Veld" (2004).
Metal, Wire, Plastic, Artist's Nails, Wood, Objects, 17" by 14"by 14".
Text by Peter Orner. Courtesy of the artist.

This morning I was reading the review of  "Come Together: Surviving Sandy" by Roberta Smith in the New York Times. This is a big exhibition of work by 300 artists who survived and were affected by Hurricane Sandy (The show is currently on through December 15 in Brooklyn. See the link for details.) Roberta Smith mentioned an outstanding work in the show, a 1995 piece, “To Explain, Expand and Exhort, to See, Foresee and Prophesy, to the Few Who Could or Would Listen”  by Arthur Simms. She said that it should have been in a museum collection by now. 

I went looking on Google to see Arthur Simms' work as I was unfamiliar with it, and I discovered that Arthur Simms is a sculptor who uses the technique of bricolage to transform found objects into art by combining them in particular ways. (You can see some of his spectacular sculpture on his website.)

Previously I have written about the difference between bricolage and assemblage: while assemblage emphasizes the identity of the individual objects, the objects in bricolage lose their individual identity and are subsumed into the whole of the work. The objects or pieces become parts of a new whole that is the artwork. But what is the meaning of such transformation? Why do artists use found or repurposed objects in their work?

My search for Arthur Sims also turned up an interview with Simms by Phong Bui of "The Brooklyn Rail. ") What I found was the usual very insightful interview by Phong Bui, but it really spoke to me about the metaphors inherent in art, some of which artists focus on and others that are simply too ordinary to even be recognized per se. I hope you will read the whole interview, but here are some highlights about metaphors in Simms' work.

Arthur Simms, "Caged Bottle" (2006).
Rope, Wood, Glue, Bicycles, Metal, Bottles, Wire,
50 by 62" by 36". Courtesy of the artist.

Rail: It’s your identification with the materials, therefore allowing the alchemical process to take place. This is a strong belief that Martin Puryear has always insisted on, even at the expense of what comes and goes in the art world.

Simms: Yeah, I love his work man. His retrospective at the MoMA in 2007 was an important experience for me. In fact my piece, “Hemp Or If I Were A Bird,” (1991) is an homage to both Martin Puryear and Constantine Brancusi, whose work he admires for the same reason we are talking about. Like them, it’s the transformation that excites me most. People have asked me, “Why do you choose certain objects?” and I have said, “well, maybe because it’s shiny, rusted, has a certain color or patina,” and so on, or maybe it references my background and a million other things. Whatever the reasons may be, once they’re chosen and find their ways into the work, they take on into another life. So, as you had just said, it’s about alchemy

Rail: "...the way you tie things together is essentially a form of wrapping, which is interesting in that it is similar to the way in which, let’s say, polite language wraps social interaction, architecture wraps space, or how people in Asia, particularly in Japan, take extreme care in wrapping objects, whether it’s groceries or gifts. Or how the dead bodies, depending on their socio-political-religious ranking, are wrapped as part of the process of mummification, which was considered a passage to the after-life, as in Ancient Egypt, for example. Do you see your work as a wrapping ritual that transcends the mundane, in this case, found and used objects, to some form of transcendence?"

Simms: Yes, I do. It’s like a skin that has energy. To me, the rope is like lines as in drawing, an activity that I do more than sculptures. I’m drawing with the rope obsessively until it becomes a sort of skin over all these various things that are on the inside, which you can barely see. Later on I started using wire as a different kind of skin..

Arthur Simms, "Buddha" (2008). 81" by 50" by 52"
Wire, Bottles, Bamboo, Wood, Metal, Ice skates, Wheels.
Courtesy of the artist.

Rail: Like a painting that has been painted over so many layers that you can see its accumulated history on the surface but you can’t see what has been buried underneath. At any rate, in citing the found materials that you use in your work, which are basically everything from milk crates, plumbing parts, old shoes, rags, bottles, and cans to various objects such as hand tools and so on, it reminds me of the bower bird, especially the male, which, to attract its mate, often builds a bower with a variety of materials such as feathers, stones, broken shells, and leaves, mixing them with discarded plastic items, coins, nails, pieces of glass, and so on. And this selection of various materials is what makes up the bower, and one is never identical to the next. This is what some ornithologists called the “transfer effect.” In other words, do you have a general idea that relies mostly on a spontaneous process in which the image is gradually formed? Or do you make drawings beforehand?

Simms: No, I never make a drawing beforehand. I always consider my drawing as something in and of itself. I don’t make sketches or little maquettes of the sculpture mostly because I enjoy the improvisational aspect by keeping the two activities of drawing and sculpture independent. But as far as your reference to the bower bird, I had looked at and admired many birds’ nests at the Museum of Natural History like I do with other natural occurrences, things that are made by different creatures and insects. It’s all open and all there for any one of us to take and use accordingly in to our works.

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I will be including images of Arthur Simms' work in my talk on bricolage at the 2014 International Encaustic Conference in Provincetown in June.

Bricolage at the Brooklyn Museum

I'm sharing a post here from Art Critical about an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum by El Anatsui. I like the way the writer, Alex C. Moore, speaks about Anatsui's use of materials and the meaning Anatsui finds in them that relates to his own life, cultural inheritance and social movements. That's a lot packed into some discarded objects that shows the power of bricolage. Note that Anatsui uses the objects as raw materials from which to make his work. This is bricolage.


The Wall is Also a Story: (from Art Critical, the online magazine of art and ideas)

El Anatsui at the Brooklyn Museum
by Alex C. Moore

Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui

February 8 to August 4, 2013
The Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
Brooklyn, NY, (718) 638-5000

El Anatsui, Gli (Wall), 2010. Aluminum and copper wire, installation at the Brooklyn Museum, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Brooklyn Museum photograph.

El Anatsui’s exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum begins in the fifth floor rotunda with Gli (2010), a majestic installation comprised of four sheets of delicate metal rings that are suspended at various heights, inhabiting the space from floor to ceiling. Gli is an Ewe word that has multiple meanings: wall, disrupt, or story. An accompanying text elaborates that Anatsui was thinking of walls in Berlin, Jerusalem and Notsie when making this piece. Probably less familiar to many New Yorkers than the other examples, Notsie is a town in modern day Togo, West Africa, where according to oral histories, the Ewe people settled briefly before fleeing an oppressive ruler sometime in the 17th century. Reminiscent of chainmail, these hangings are solemn and haunting, conjuring the memory of powerful walls and ancient sorrows. Gli is torn and crumpled like a curtain in places, but as one moves around the space, the sheets shift and glimmer, becoming more solid and lively.

It is for these elegant and impressive bottle cap tapestries that Anatsui is most well-known and, unsurprisingly, they are the centerpiece of Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui, an exhibition which originated at the Akron Art Museum in Ohio. The show demonstrates the range of Anatsui’s aesthetic—from the dense painterly abstraction of Black Block and Red Block (both 2010), to the gentle humor of Ink Splash (2010), and the seemingly precarious structure of Ozone Layer (2010) which flutters in an artificial breeze provided by fans hidden in the gallery wall, rattling like the gentle wheeze of an old smoker.

El Anatsui was born in Anyako, Ghana in 1944 and is a member of the Ewe ethnic group. In 1975 he moved to Nigeria to teach at the University of Nsukka, where he has resided ever since. After studying western sculptural traditions and methods at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, Anatsui became interested in the indigenous forms and materials of his home country. He began to look at adinkra symbols and kente cloth–a weaving style practiced by members of his family–and one of his earliest pieces experimented with the wooden trays used to display food in the marketplace. From there he moved into other wooden, ceramic and recycled forms, often choosing materials associated with consumption, before discovering a bag of discarded bottle caps outside a local distillery and starting upon the explorations that led to his current work.

El Anatsui, Gli (Wall), 2010. Aluminum and copper wire, installation at the Brooklyn Museum, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Brooklyn Museum photograph.

Earlier artworks such as the painted wood reliefConspirators (1997) allow the viewer a glimpse of how Anatsui’s work has developed and the common themes that run through his practice. The picture that emerges is of an artist who is interested in the mutability of forms, works arduously to explore and reinvent his materials, and transforms personal and historical narratives into form and content. A number of the artworks reference specific stories that warrant a closer look. Waste Paper Bags (2003), an installation consisting of seven grey forms, modeled on the large, red and blue stripped bags that are deceptively strong, and are a ubiquitous sight at a West African bus station or marketplace—the go-to bag for a woman with a heavy load or a long distance to travel. In Nigeria these bags are referred to as Ghana-must-go, harking back to a moment in the 1980s when an influx of Ghanaian refugees into Nigeria caused tension between the two groups. El Anatsui’s versions of the bag are large enough to house or transport a family, but too heavy to move. They are made of discarded aluminum printing plates that carry the stories of contemporary Nigerian life–newspaper articles celebrating new anti-malarial studies or a local political leader, school textbooks, wedding announcements and church pamphlets. The piece is the most monument-like of these monumental works, commemorating the rootless and sometimes uncomfortable position of an expatriate.

El Anatsui, Gli (Wall), 2010. Aluminum and copper wire, installation at the Brooklyn Museum, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Brooklyn Museum photograph.

Like the trash that El Anatsui uses as raw materials, the difficult historical relationships associated with Gli, Waste Paper Bags, and the bottlecaps themselves (a token reminder of the Atlantic Slave Trade) are present in the galleries, but do not overwhelm our sensory experience of the work. Instead, memory and history are transformed into a celebratory occasion. The eponymous piece in the show is one of the largest of the tapestries, measuring 145 5/8 x 441 inches. As with all his work, Anatsui wields his deceptively simple palette masterfully, building blocks of colors with subtle care and changing the direction and rhythm of the weave as a painter would carefully choreograph her brushstrokes. A red form pulsates outward across the space, meeting a cool continent of silver and yellow. Suggestive of a pinwheel, a sunset, or a flower, the energy is vibrant and expansive. It is not a finished statement, but a ball of potential energy thrown up against a wall, continually growing and shifting, adjusting to circumstances with gravity and grace.

(Thank you Alex Moore and Art Critical.)

Thinking About Bricolage

I am gearing up for my two-day workshop on May 28 and 29 at Castle Hill Center for the Arts in Truro, Mass. in conjunction with the Seventh Annual International Encaustic Conference. This year, for the first time, Bricolage: Making Fine Art With Found or Recycled Materials and Encaustic will be a two-day workshop preceding the encaustic conference. I have expanded it to two days to give students more time to think about the concept of bricolage, make examples of work and present them to the class for discussion and critique. Having the opportunity to make several examples results in a big difference to students. I saw this last summer when I was a visiting artist at R&F Paints and able to extend the bricolage workshop to three days.

There are three places left in the class and you can sign up here.)

What is bricolage, anyway?

Last year I did some thinking about collage, assemblage and bricolage and defined for myself what the differences were between three types of art that use found, recycled or invented objects.

Collage – Works made using paper or fabric and glue, or also using wax as glue. Collage is basically two dimensional in this more traditional definition.

Picasso and Braque were two early practioners of this genre, but perhaps the most famous 20th century "collage artist" was Kurt Schwitters. Note that gluing paper into the composition is probably the most important aspect of collage but paint, charcoal and other additions may also be incorporated.

Kurt Schwitters, "Das Unbild" 1919

Collage can also be built up into more dimensionality with the addition of more and thicker paper or even other objects. Take a look at this interesting review of a current show of 20th century works in collage.

Assemblage – Works made with found objects that are not changed but are brought together into a new whole. The objects retain their original/unique identity and the new work emphasizes the connection between the found objects. (For example, works by Bettye Saar)

Bettye Saar, "Sunnyland (On the Dark Side", 1998 courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum

Bettye Saar is well-known for her assemblage (and collage) works that reference racism and feminism. I have been a fan for some years. In 2011 I visited a show called "Cage" at her New York Gallery and wrote a blogpost about it along with the work of her daughters, Lezley Saar and Alison Saar. You can see more examples of her work by clicking on the blogpost link.

More Assemblage
Joseph Cornell was perhaps the most famous artist to work mostly in assemblage by bringing together found parts, pieces and images and usually putting them into boxes that formed little worlds of their own.

Joseph Cornell, "Hotel Eden," ca. 1945, courtesy National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

Unlike Saar's more topical work, Cornell evoked an air of mystery with his strange juxtapositions and hidden allusions.

While Saar and Cornell are two of the most accomplished artists using this type of construction for their work, many unschooled and/or hobbyist artists are also drawn to the use or re-use of things they may have at hand. Some of these have a charming folk art quality, but others fail to achieve more than a desultory bringing together of disparate objects.

What Makes It Fine Art?
I think what separates "art" from "hobby" in creating assemblage works in particular is attention to formal elements of art making. This may be as simple as color or shapes of objects but these principles have to be made part of the work for it to succeed. For example, look at the arrangement of objects in the Cornell piece above: the unifying white color, the repeating square shapes, the repeating round shapes, the vertical lines broken by the diagonal white bar and the central focus of color on the parrot. This is an arrangement of forms in an illusionistic space.

There is also the issue of intention in creating the work. If the artist's intention carries too direct a message, the work may become trite.For example, if Cornell had inserted a sign saying "we are all caged" in the work above, it would have lost its air of mystery. If the artist tells the viewer what the work is instead of letting the viewer decide that for themselves, the artist is giving the viewer too much information and not provoking the viewer to reach his/her own conclusions. In more subtle work, viewers' interpretations may not match the intention of the artist, but the search itself provokes attention to the work Isn't that what artists all want - for people to pay attention to their work? Subtlety and universality of meaning seem to be learned skills.

Bricolage – Works made with found or invented objects that are re-purposed, re-identified and subsumed into the new whole. The found objects are transformed by their inclusion in the new work. The work of art as a whole is more important than the individual parts and the parts themselves may be manipulated or changed before inclusion.

The difference between Assemblage and Bricolage can sometimes be a fine line, but I believe the amount of transformation the found objects undergo is where the distinction lies.

El Anatsui, "Ink Splash" (I am not sure of the title or date), probably about 8' H x 10' W

Close up of "Ink Splash"

Above you see a work by El Anatsui, that shows the piece as a whole and then a closeup of the individual folded bottle caps and pieces of bottle wrappings - all held together with thin copper wire. (I saw this show of his work at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York last January and wrote a blogpost about it that shows many more images of works. In fact, I am practically an Anatsui PR maven. If you search my Art in the Studio blog, you'll find it loaded with Anatsui posts.)

So, you see what I mean by the individual pieces being subsumed into the whole work?

Here is another artist whose work I admire:

Ted Larsen, "Two Reds Form a Slant," 2011, 14" x 3.5"

Ted Larsen, "Only Choice," 2012, 18" x 24"

Ted Larsen works in found painted metal, which I believe is mainly from salvaged cars.

Now here is some student work from the R&F workshop last summer.(I apologize for the bad iPhone photography, but I think you can get the gist of what is going on with this work.)

Work by Rita Klatchkin

Work by Barbara Winkel

Work by Deb Cole Townsend

Work by Laura Cave

Summary
Grasping the distinction between the three types of found object art takes some thinking and experimenting. I believe that our natural inclination is to focus on the individual identity of the found objects and to combine them in assemblage. Learning to use the objects in bricolage works of art means seeing the objects for their transformational possibilities as part of a larger whole. The objects may have to be taken apart to use their component parts, their color, dimensionality or some other aspect. The mental leap required may take a while to achieve but once there, the finished work can gain dimensionality and another level of interest. My workshop will help you to do this and to make some exciting work.

The Stuff of Art

It's been a long time between posts, but I just had to be sure that the bricoleurs out there were aware of Joanne Mattera's wonderful post that collects images of artworks made from non-traditional materials that she saw at the Miami art fairs. (Talk about a run-on sentence!) Anyway, there are some wild and wonderful pieces in her post and you can link to it here. (The image below is from her post, "Fair Play: Stuff" of today's date. The work is by William J. O'Brien at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, at ABMB.)

Image from Joanne Mattera Art Blog - "Fair Play: Stuff" of 12.28.11. See details above.

When you link to Joanne's post, you will see all her other wonderful posts about the Miami art fairs that give you a real sense of being there in a tour edited and organized by JM herself.

My Solo Show at The Bing

Material World, 2011, tacks boxes, book parts, printed corrugated, rubber,
patinated aluminum and copper, record album parts, tacks and encaustic on panel.
This image will be on the postcard for the show.

I am getting ready for a very large solo show that starts February 3rd and runs to the beginning of April. It will be called GEOMETRIC BRICOLAGE: Found Materials Transformed. Believe it or not, there are more than 100 linear feet of lovely white walls for me to hang on at The Bing Arts Center in Springfield, Mass.

The Bing at night, photo by Chris Marion Photography from the Bing's website

The Bing is a 1950s neighborhood theater that has been revived and reinvented as a non-profit "multi-use hub for community cultural activity." The prime mover of this endeavor, Brian Hale, had a vision for the Bing that is becoming reality through dedication, hard work and a terrific blend of alternative arts programming. I am pleased to have the opportunity to exhibit in this great space. I'll be posting much more about this later complete with images. Right now I'm making two bricolage works in my largest size ever - 4' x 6', each made as a diptych. The plan is that these will hang in the lobby entrance at The Bing.

For more about this and The Bing show, see my other blog Art in the Studio

Marc Sparfel - The European Bricolage Connection

Writing this blog and Art in the Studio have led to some surprising virtual connections for me with readers who let me know that they have appreciated posts I have written. One of those surprise connections happened recently when I received an email from Marc Sparfel, a sculptor born in Brittany, France, who has lived in Barcelona for the post several years. He wrote to me when Google turned up a post I had written on Lee Bontecou*, whose work he had seen at the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

Some of Marc Sparfel's bricolage sculptures

I thought that Marc's work would be perfect for this blog because he creates sculptures from furniture and wood he finds on the streets of Barcelona. He says that he started late in sculpture, having begun only about seven years ago, but has always used found wood because it is free but mostly because "sometimes there is so much wood furniture in the street that you can 'hear' the trees shout! It's really sad." Also he enjoys the fact that there is a history within the materials and the idea of transformation which symbolizes the possibility of a different life. Chairs are his favorites. He loves disassembling them and giving them another opportunity that may be less stressful for them than having to support people as they did in their life as chairs.

In front of Marc's studio - Fossil 2, 75" x 71" x 8"

Fossil 1, 51" x 51" x 2.75"

Fossil 3, 126" x 85" x 8"

Fossil 6, 65" x 82" x 8"

(Note that I have converted all the dimensions into inches from centimeters.) Marc says that he is usually able to find planks of wood for the backgrounds of these fossil pieces. He cuts and pieces the wood and then paints or stains it before mounting the sculpture on the background.

Since I understand that in France there are stores called "Mr. Bricolage" that are like Home Depot, made for the weekend warrior or do-it-yourselfer, I asked Marc if there was a bad connotation to the term "bricolage" in Europe. He said that "it can be quite perjorative in regard to art, as [in] the expression "Sunday artists," but if you think it's the best term in the U.S. to describe the type of work I do, maybe it's a good solution."

I picked these Fossil pieces above because they are more like the bas relief that I usually show here, but it looks like most of Marc's work is freestanding sculpture, so here are some examples:

Aphrodite and Satire (I think that might be Saturn)
Aphrodite is 53" x 29.5" x 12", Satire is 59" x 33" x 12"

Elephants, 37" x 14" x 10"

Oiseau Senufo (Senufo Bird), 39" x 21.5" x 12"

Guerrier (Warrior) III, 37" x 37" x 16"

Grand Taureau (Large Bull), 53" x 29.5" x 12"

Marc shows in Barcelona and is also represented by Friedmann-Hahn Gallery in Berlin. Meeting him and seeing his work through the magic of the internet was really a pleasure and I am glad that we could make this connection. Who would ever imagine even a couple of years ago that the world would become so much smaller this way?

Marc Sparfel, Sculptor

*Note:  I wrote three posts on Lee Bontecou in 2010 in Art in the Studio, here are the links
http://artinthestudio.blogspot.com/2010/08/lee-bontecou-personal-inspiration-part.html
http://artinthestudio.blogspot.com/2010/08/lee-bontecou-personal-inspiration-part_08.html
http://artinthestudio.blogspot.com/2010/12/discovery-of-lee-bontecou.html