Well this morning between constantly fixing the weeder eater cord for Lee I finished the left brain dormer. Tidier than the right brain.
Full of prints that took time and concentration. There is an order to doing these types of prints. Some contact prints are in the attic.
So here I am, Printmaker Sandy.
Now I have to clean the studio up for the sewing to take place. I still need to think about wheels for all of the heads but that can wait til a brainstorm hits me.
But what we could do is go back to the discussion about “art”. Using this piece to make my point.
First of all you could not say it is “well crafted”. What are the techniques even if you could label them…..mostly it is different glues and using found objects to talk about something. There certainly are no perfectly processed prints involved. The books are pretty easily put together….no perfection there. And can we really say that have very well-placed wood chips?! They are tucked into all the cracks and shellacked heavily.
So whatever this object is, it does not speak of technique and specific materials. Even if we could say the stamps and books and head are materials…..each of them is in service to something else…..an idea.
So if it was in an exhibition, sitting up on a pedestal, the viewer would see that it is a head first of all. And that it definitely has two sides….one dormer has some things just stuck in and the other has definite order. Plus anyone can see that the “hair” is made of printing stamps.
So maybe, just maybe what they are looking at is a sculpture that talks about the left and right brain of a printmaker…specifically Sandy Webster because inside one of the books is her name. And of course the name SANDY appears in the center top front of her head.
So this work is an idea fixed in a visual form. Therefore to my way of thinking it is definitely art.
I am not saying it is “good” art….that is way too hard to define. But it is not decorative art because it was not made to decorate the body or a home. It is not a work of craft because just where is the craftsmanship?
So there is nothing else there but the question, “What is this about?”
My next one will be the “Homemaker” and I may need a tall house atop the head just to get all the bits of things fitted into the idea of my years invested in making a home.
Til later.