SOFA New York 2012

Walter Keeler - Image by Dewi Tannant Lloyd

I am in New York at the moment visiting SOFA - The Sculpture Objects and Functional Art Fair - being held in the Park Avenue Armory for 20 - 23 April. I am here as part of a research delegation of Welsh craft galleries who are accompanying and assisting Ruthin Craft Centre who have a stand here this year.

Ruthin Craft Centre are representing the work of potter and ceramicist, Walter Keeler and textile artists, Eleri Mills. We are writing a dedicated blog for the initiative - I do hope you'll visit!

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty

Alexander McQueen - Dress from the VOSS collection
- seen here

“You’ve got to know the rules to break them. That’s what I’m here for, to demolish the rules but to keep the tradition.” Alexander McQueen

I wish I could pop across the pond to see this exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty opened today and is a major retrospective of McQueen's collections from his Postgraduate show at Central St Martin's in 1992 to the final catwalk show after his death in 2010. 

The website for the show is very thorough and has lots of videos and resources, really worth getting lost in for a while!

Paul Villinski

Paul Villinski - Consonance - seen here

I have recently discovered the work of American artist Paul Villinski. He has a particular focus on the reclaimed and recycled in his practice. The pieces he has made using found gloves are particularly captivating. The artist finds lost work gloves on the streets and uses hand sewing, gilding or drawing to bring them into a new existence as art. The wing pieces (mostly from the early to mid 1990's) are incredibly striking, but I actually like the quietness and profundity of those with gilded finger tips.

Paul Villinski - Lift - seen here

Derick Melander

Derick Melander - Flesh of My Flesh - Seen here

I'm catching up with the blogs I like to visit this week. Today, of paper and things posted work from New York artist Derick Melander. Second hand clothing graded and stacked by various criteria into sculptures. They speak for themselves - wonderful!

Derick Melander - Where do I stop, where do you begin - seen here

Derick Melander - Grasp - seen here

Elisa D'Arrigo

Elisa D'Arrigo - White Shadows (2) - seen here

Thanks to Robyn Gordon for introducing me to New York City artist Elisa D'Arrigo. I like these cloth and paper constructions. The separate patches are laminated and stiffened with various media then sewn together. The process of accretion in the making of each piece is used by the artist to bring physical form to a specific personal memory. There are also many other references layered into the work from sewn artifacts and ceramic processes to byzantine mosaics. The works are unplanned and an attitude of mindfulness to the vagaries of the making allows a spontaneity and responsiveness to the materials which brings a satisfying sense of rhythm and cohesion to the finished objects.

Elisa D'Arrigo - Time and Time Again - seen here

Nick Cave - Soundsuits

Nick Cave with one of his Soundsuits - seen here

The Guardian ran a photo gallery today of Nick Cave's Soundsuits which are showing as part of Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles. If any one out there is listening - PLEASE bring the show to the UK!

Here's a video of the opening talk by Nick Cave about his work.

Nick Cave Lecture at Fowler Museum, Jan. 9, 2010 from Fowler Museum on Vimeo.

Miss Flite's Birdcages

Fun Is Always In Style - Birdcage - seen here

I found this lovely project today through Flickr. I don't know the artist's name, but on Flickr she is Fun Is Always In Style and is based in California. The series of birdcages use reclaimed domestic objects and relate to the character Miss Flite, in Charles Dickens' Bleak House. Miss Flite is an elderly eccentric whose family has been destroyed by a long-running Chancery legal case through which she expects financial settlement. Somewhat unhinged by her obsessive fascination with the legal process, she owns a large number of little birds in cages which she says will be released "on the day of judgement". The birds have "...allegorical names like Hope, Youth, Beauty & Words, Confusion, Jargon, Plunder, Precedent, Despair, Ruin, Sheepskin, Spinach & Gammon to signify the consumption of all things by fruitless law cases." seen here


Fun Is Always In Style - Birdcage - seen here

Fun Is Always In Style - Birdcage - Seen here

The Best Made Axe

Best Made Co. axes - Ping, Sam Hain, Joe Mitchell - Seen here

Based in New York, Best Made Co. was founded by Peter Buchanan-Smith and Greame Cameron. They design and make axes. The handles are made of Tennessee Hickory and each one is hand-painted, varnished, and polished. The heads are made of fine-grain steel.

A well crafted, well balanced axe is a beautiful object. I bought a full size axe when I came to Wales in 1995 and still use it, the handle is satin smooth from wear. I'd like to own one of these however!

Dave Cole

Dave Cole - Kevlar Snowsuit (cut, knitted and sewn from a used Gulf War Bullet Proof Vest) - seen here

Thanks to grrl+dog for introducing me to the work of Dave Cole. I had seen the monster scale knitted American flag he made at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, The Knitting Machine, but there are many other interesting works on his website.

Dave Cole - Trophy Wife #1 (of 7) - seen here

More Nick Cave....

Nick Cave - Soundsuit - seen here

Just because this is such a delightful image....

Nick Cave

Nick Cave - Soundsuit - seen here

Nick Cave - complete art hero! This is from his 2009 series of work shown at the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York. It made me think of this photo of a Navajo ceremonial mask.

Navajo mask - seen here

Sara Hubbs

Sara Hubbs - Angle Grind - seen here

Thanks to Abigail Doan for reminding me about American artist Sara Hubbs today. Sara works with old shoes using their inherent sculptural qualities to make new assembled forms: "... I create assemblages from discarded remnants of shoes and other personal ephemera. I investigate the relationship between these forms, and their materials while at the same time, providing these relics with new meaning. I am interested in the play between narrative and form and how it shapes the way we see. Looking to use and accumulation as points of contact with the world, muted and unseen spaces take shape..."

Sara Hubbs - Frequency Radio - seen here

I have often excused the compulsion to buy shoes by claiming them to be wearable sculptures (oh, the indulgence and self delusion!). Of all the personal possessions surely shoes are the most poignant as they mould their substance to our bodies and the nuances of our movement, recording our travels and encounters.

Sara Hubbs - The 4 M's: Material, Movement, Metaphor, Memory - seen here

Bottle Tree Ranch

Elmer Long's Bottle Tree Ranch on Route 66, image: Ken Rockwell, seen here

Finding out about Elmer Long's Bottle Tree Ranch this morning has reminded me that this is a wonderful world! A beautiful piece of roadside art. Taking up welding after his retirement, Elmer started his project with his father's bottle collection and it has grown and grown from there. Here's a You Tube piece about him and his creation.

I found this image too, which is a similar project by Winter Zellar (Zero) Swartsel in Ohio.


Winter Zellar (Zero) Swartsel, Bottle Farm - seen here

The Bottle Farm no longer exists, but there is a plaque to mark its location - here's the text:

"A direct descendant of original settlers in Jackson Township, Winter Zellar (Zero) Swartsel was born in 1876. Throughout his life he was a natural born showman, teacher, eccentric, anarchist, and “possibly the grandfather of American Pop Culture.” At a young age and tired of the routines of Farmersville, he declared that, “He would live by his wits while his brothers lived by the sweat of their brows.” He and a friend bicycled first to New York City and then turned around to head west and eventually the world. Later his home would overflow with items collected while traveling the world. Outside was a similar story. While chiding the American people for their wastefulness and abusing their environment, his 22 acres of farmland became his artist's canvas filled with the thousands of items he collected from the “wasteful.”

Winter Zellar (Zero) Swartsel's farm property became a field of glass as he adorned it with sculptures and “art” using glassware of all kinds, bells, bed frames, wood, and other discarded items. His finest works, fashioned from bottles titled “Kindly Light” and “Full Measure” created the popular Farmersville Bottle Farm. The farm also provided interesting listening experiences. In addition to the bells and twinkling glass that rang out in the wind, residents in town could count on hearing “The Old Rugged Cross” played on loud speakers on Sundays. Bells on grazing sheep added to the “noises” he described as restful. The farm attracted visitors from every state in the nation except Delaware. Dying in 1953, Swartsel bequeathed his land to the community to become the Farmersville-Jackson Township Joint Recreation Park to be used for the pleasure of children."

J. Morgan Puett and Mildred's Lane

Seen here

Hold the front page! I've just been finding out about an American artist, J. Morgan Puett. I am in a little funk of excitement. I had not heard of her before and now I don't know why! Her vision is singularly focused and currently extremely pertinent. This passage from her artists' statement is extraordinary and inspiring to me:

"My career and trajectory as an artist/cultural worker was shaped and determined very early. In 1984 I was attempting to research detailed aspects of working people's clothing from 1900-1930 in the costume archives of the Metropolitan Museum, and I was told that no specimens of these clothes survived. The actual reason for this was a shock to me—the clothes had been worn to dust, altered, patched, turned into quilts, chair backs, and curtains, passed down, and eventually used as rags. It was the fact that everything that was part of early vernacular culture was constantly being re-used, re-shaped, and re-worked—in a continuous act of invention that permanently shaped my practice. Categories shifted—clothing became furniture became architecture and vice versa—this changed my thinking about material culture and the inherent fluid nature of things. I realized that these histories and practices needed to not only be preserved and represented in museums but also activated in contemporary public life. At this moment I realized that I had to find a way to reconstruct historical practices and networks - making products and systems that could activate all the categories of everyday life. Art alone, I found, is singularly lacking in the tools to do this. I strategically came to situate myself at the nexus of art,architecture and principally in the world of fashion".

Seen here

Seen here

In the last 10 years, J. Morgan Puett has been working with her ex-partner to establish an artists' colony at her home in Noth East Pennsylvania. Called Mildred's Lane after the former occupant of the 96 acre farmstead, Mildred Miller. The project provides a space where artists, interns and other folk can come to 'locate their own creativity' in this living, breathing, vernacular installation.

Seen here

Here's a lovely article from 2008 about the artist and Mildred's Lane.

Here's a link to the the artist's gallery, Alexander Grey Associates.

Anna Lorich Jewellery

Anna Lorich - Pillow Rings - seen here

I like these rings by American Jeweller, Anna Lorich. Her work has a freshness about it, a sense of innate authorship. She states that her practice is an exploration of her emotions and identity; she views her pieces as keepsakes or mementos of that process. There's a hint of irreverence about the work which brings a lightness of touch to her craftsmanship. It's a difficult modern conundrum that visual work is required to justify itself with a 'statement' of the artist's intent. It feels like these pieces are part of an instinctive process - a visceral thing; not a word thing.


'Narrative' has become a very well used phrase recently, but these pieces really do feel like they are shaped by, and integral to the maker's experience. They are not illustrative of the story, they ARE the story. In this sense they naturally straddle the art/craft divide.



Anna Lorich - 'Ring Family' Group Shot - seen here