unmakings

I’m getting the feeling that these plaster pieces (pictured in the last post) are really successful. I showed them to my dad this morning and he was especially into the darker colored one (on the left). He mentioned how he felt as objects they were something ‘unmanufacturable’ and that looking at them, he wasn’t concerned with taking them apart but just appreciating them for what they are. The plaster effectively defamiliarizes the familiar clothing-ness about the garments, but even though they are stiff and almost archeological, they still are recognizable as shirts. I was thinking last night, in the vein of the Japanese broken and gold mended tea bowls, that instead of painting the seams to highlight them, what if I gold leafed them? Or maybe they are just fine as they are? Its hard to know when i should stop adding to them. I also like their solidity in juxtaposition to the seam drawings. What if my installation was a crowd of empty people, sort of like a mingling art show of stiffened seams and plastered mutant relics? I can imagine doing more of these in portland. A whole crowd, free standing, communicating.















{these photos are from style rookie's flikr and are inspiring surfaces for the plastered mutants. }