Gold Monocle

It was discussed in class earlier today about the context of a piece of art. As a peer mentioned, she could be going through the kitsch-y part of a Goodwill store and everything will look like crap, but if we were to take something from that pile and put it in a gallery next to other pieces, and it just might be considered art. Fiber arts definitely enter into this through the debate on whether or not it should be considered an ‘art’ or a ‘craft’.  While it is not the only element, context is definitely something that separates ‘high art’ from ‘low art’. Cai Guo-Qiang mentions this when he talks about his “Reflection” installation. The ceramic statues, that would have been considered deities if not for their ‘imperfections’, are considered garbage. If one of those statues were simply taken from the pile of broken ceramic and placed on a pedestal or onto someone’s shrine, it would be worshiped instead of thrown away. While the idea of context makes sense to me, it is actually kind of frustrating because the piece itself does not change between Goodwill and the gallery. So why should it matter where the piece is located? I do not feel like I can fully answer that right now. So I am going to move in a different direction.

Fiber has a large sense of community. Historically, things like quilts would be made by a large group of people. Works such as Wind-Up Houston and Wind-Up Chicago, organized by Anne Wilson, are produced and created by a group of people, including our guest presenter Sarah Rabinowitz, and borders on the performance art, but it is the fiber that ties everyone together. Also consider Cai Guo-Qiang’s gunpowder drawings. These drawings take many people to put together and execute, really emphasizing the community coming together to create something. People working together can easily convey a message. The Knitta Please group for example, brings people together through the power of the internet to beautify their urban landscapes. And fiber lends itself to communication very well, I think, because it is so easily relatable. Everyone has intimate experience with fibers, whether it be through the clothes on your back or the sheets you sleep on or the rugs you walk on or the curtains you pull back every morning. Everyone knows quilts and scarves and tapestries and carpets. So when artists use fiber art to convey messages, it generally makes it much easier to communicate that message. For example, in Anne Hamilton’s “Myein” installation, raised Braille dots spelling out lines from a poem catch bright red dye falling in thin sheets making something that was invisible, visible. The use of things like dye and the illusion of a curtain successfully and beautifully, in my opinion, communicate something that is difficult to put into words. Because she used elements that were familiar to the viewer, it allowed that something to be absorbed that much more easily. In a more tangible way, artists such as Cat Mazza are bringing people together to create socially and politically charged pieces out of yarn. The “Nike Blanket Petition” not only brought together that sense of community that I mentioned earlier, it also brought about communication about sweatshops and worker abuse but by using a medium that is so comforting and familiar.

Personally, I feel that it would be a mistake to consider something with so much communicable power and beauty to be anything less that art. Pieces like the incredible Out of the Forest are crafted so beautifully and with so much attention to detail and emotions are perfect examples of this. But where is the line drawn? Is there a line? While it is definitely something I cannot answer right now, I hope to be able to have a slightly greater idea further along in this class.

I leave with some examples of fiber arts being taken beyond their constraints as a craft and into something a little bigger.

Here is a music video for the song Like it Or Not by Architecture in Helsinki. It’s a stop-motion of happy and fun adventures of some coconuts in love. It is just something a little beyond the stereotypical embroideries of cats and such.

I also would like to show the work of Amandine Alessandra. She uses photography and fiber to communicate something a little more abstract. She uses something so tangible and yet discusses something very unclear. The juxtaposition is what makes it even better.