January 16th-Class Commentary

Today we visited the McColl Center for Visual Arts. I have driven past the place 1,000 times and have never gone inside. I remember when it was just the old church with no roof. I remember the construction process, or rather the re-construction process. They have done a wonderful job at preserving the nostalgia of that location. The soot on the original walls. The crumbling decaying brick stratigically missing and creating neccessary voids.
The artist studios were interesting. Each had its own ambiance. Its own lifeline. Its own blood. It was hard gaining insight into the process work of the wood potter. I saw the finished pieces but no process work. A couple of sketches were scattered around. Does he have process work? Or does he just make it up as he goes along letting the medium determine what his next move will be? He had newspaper articles about himself out...why? Was he reflecting on his accomplishements or was he feeding his own ego...?
On the contrary, Anderson's study was great. Lively. Filled with energy and emotion. Almost as if you could jump up and pluck his passion for his work right out of the air. I love his work. It has this great mechanized animalistic quality about it with very expressive emotional qualities that seem almost anthropomorphic. Colors jump out and slap you in the face like a chill on a windy winter day.
I felt like the 5,000 labels idea could have been taken a whole lot further. I understand that they exist on pedestals. But what if some were on the floor and some were on the pedestal? Did someone get mad and knock it over out of rage and frustration? Wht if the audience was engaged more? What if they themselves could peel back or off the labels? What if there was nothing underneath? Just a framework for human development. Or if the labels and the dishes were both hanging from the ceiling? Are those labels so attached and fixed that not even turning quote un quote "your world upside down" changes anything? What if you walked into a room and 1,000,000 labels fell from the ceiling like rain coming down on a bad day? Is that ominous cloud that looms over you real or a metaphor at that point? What if that cloud followed you around the room?
When discussing the embroidered linen I made a comment that maybe the artist needed her ideas to be grounded. This could be true. Maybe it was her way of putting a stop to the discussion in order to move on to the next piece. There are an infinite amount of possibilities one can determine about the reasoning behind an art piece. There are always a million what ifs. Some clearly relevant others just plausible. But nothing is ever wrong. No idea is bad. So without knowing what the artist's reasons were, maybe this was her subtle way of saying, "Wow!, Stop thinking....you have analyzed my work enough, I'm grounding not only my concept but your ideas about my work before you forget that you had to use the bathroom before you stopped to stare at my work."