Glenn Adamson Talk

I went to Glenn Adamson's talk yesterday sponsored by The University of Oregon/Architecture and Museum Of Contemporary Craft. Adamson is a noted writer/curator from Victoria Albert Museum in London. I've heard him speak before at The Furniture Society conferences and met him briefly at one of those events, and I've enjoyed his offering for the world of creative furniture and other crafts. Yesterday's talk was more broad than specifically furniture. I wasn't particularly enlightened with the talk, he was speaking of material that is not new to my experience and I agree with his assessment of the state of the Craft 'movement', not unlike Garth Clark it's pretty dead as a movement but there will always be a need for individuals to carry on a rigorous investigation of their own thoughts and objects, and maybe the result of the Craft Movement attention it will naturally be assimilated in some form with acceptance into the broader ART context. If you'd like to listen to this talk I understand that it will be offered online and you might go the the MOCC website and check the lectures section. But I'm sharing these thoughts today as they are revisting my thoughts at my previous posting "Some Definitions".

But I was taken with the end of the talk with some picture juxtapositions of various designers with artists. The first two pics above are from Toord Boontje a wonderful designer (http://www.tordboontje.com/), an innovator of product design. This piece is a wardrobe, a piece of furniture with laser cut steel carefully enameled for color and detail and cast bronze. I have been aware and really enjoy what he has done as an industrial designer, how he has stepped away from the easy and trendy and has attempted to redefine design. Not a maker per se, although I don't know enough about his business so I'll happily stand corrected, but he finds resources/people in the industry to realize his ideas into product form for sale. So much of what the media presents to the public as 'truth', beauty, and 'current' thinking is sadly more retro from people with a profit motive, who didn't grow up with stuff my parents delivered to the landfill when I was young. Little of what is being 'created' is innovative except only in the sense that they are using new materials and processes but it's a meager effort and frustrating to me with the amazing potential available with our new technologies today- Toord Boontje is one of the few willing to take chances. Adamson's presentation yesterday gave him little credibility only by using him as a reactive counterpoint to a more conceptual/artistic offering by Yoshihiro Suda's "weeds" - the third photo above (http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1637_outoftheordinary/artists_detail.php?artistTag=suda).

Suda was a discovery for me, thank you Glenn, his weeds ring my bells as an artist to be sure. His renderings are carefully and exquisitely carved out of wood and painted by hand in extraordinary detail. One can easily explain his efforts as the result of his cultural artistic history, a reverence for beauty in the simple form, very Japanese. Even at second and third glance it would be easy to place him squarely in that genre. He is, yet he isn't. His rendering of weeds and other plants would be far too subtle to allow as representative of current ART until you become aware of the context in which they are installed. You will find these delicate little plants and flowers growing out of cracks in gallery floors and walls- not in vitrines upon pedestals - as weeds tend to grow regardless of our lifelong efforts to eradicate them. A little too mundane, not quite overtly beautiful enough to fit the Japanese stereotype - a little too LA, a little too aware of what kind of impact a simple weed might have when one is exposed to it in an unorthodox context.

The chord he strikes in me is one that is always hanging around, nipping at my heels - the obvious is too easy, too much of what we are inundated with today in the media is the celebrity object. I am far more enamored with garden hoses, a popsicle stick on the side of the road, the run in a woman's stocking instead of her beautiful face, finding beauty by drawing it out of the mundane. Finding beauty in these things is part of my task, my rigorous inquiry as an artist. Of course the furniture you view at my site is clearly aware of it's own beauty or it's inherent presence - yup it's overt, it's in your face a counterpoint to simplicity. But what I'm referring to is my other personality, the painter, and other, that is going on separately from the furniture designs. I'll get to that in a future post and show you some of this work, but for now an appreciation for Yoshihiro Suda's beautiful little pieces and the wonderful designs of Toord Boontje.

Thought you might enjoy a little contrast in the thinking of creative people.