Most works of contemporary art that you find in galleries and museums are finished by the time they’re on view; in the case of performance art that unfolds in real time, a “work of art” isn’t really an object but an experience or an interaction. This summer, the Philadelphia Art Alliance has invited a group of artists called the Miss Rockaway Armada to create something that is part performance, part salvage operation and part sleight of hand. It demonstrates that the processes of designing and building something can tell a story. And what’s their story?
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American studio ceramics have come a long way since the late nineteenth century when the “Saturday Evening Girls” decorated children’s tableware by hand in their Boston workroom at the Paul Revere Pottery. Just as the vogue for arts and crafts style was on the decline, European modernism gave American design a jolt of creative energy, introducing the clean bold forms of Bauhaus tableware to a population that was beginning to tire of lily-pad and sunset motifs and the like.
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Anxiously reading the headlines about Japan’s unfolding nuclear crisis in the wake of last week’s earthquake and tsunami, I’ve been looking around for effective ways to help the relief effort.
A benefit auction starting March 24th offers a great way to send much-needed funds to Global Giving’s Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund, a grassroots organization that is well-equipped to deploy supplies and aid across the country. Handmade for Japan, which was organized just one day after the earthquake on March 12th by Ayumi Horie, Kathryn Pombriant Manzella and Ai Kanazawa, will raise money for Global Giving with an eBay auction featuring the work of artists from the US and Japan.
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An outlet mall sweater that will never fit. Fancy toiletries so heavily perfumed you can’t bear to keep them in the house. A DVD of an Adam Sandler movie that you wouldn’t have gone to see when it was in the theaters. “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”. This December, millions of gifts will be bought, wrapped, shipped, opened — and either returned, or consigned to obscurity in the basement.
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I was seven years old the summer that “Back to the Future” hit movie theaters, and my entire second-grade class collectively lost its mind. Suddenly obsessed with glowing jukeboxes, the Andrews Sisters, and 3D glasses, we wore poodle skirts on Halloween and begged our parents to talk about the far-away fifties. We were too young to appreciate all the things that made our parents glad the era had come to an end - legal racism, sex discrimination and homophobia, and constant anxiety about the threat of nuclear war.
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On October 15, 2008, 27 prominent American ceramic artists unveiled a diverse group of cups, plates and other pots called "Obamaware" as a fund-raiser for Barack Obama's presidential campaign [figure 1]. It was a great idea-a convergence of the handmade aesthetic beloved by progressive Americans, a "green" object you can use over and over, and a way to support the arts during difficult economic times. What better way to support the candidate for change?
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