Well another one bites the dust. But this blog isn’t really dead. It’s just moved. Mark in your feeds; I’m at: http://www.jencotton.com/blog/feeds/ (FF is still having a parsing issue but Safari/Google Reader is reading the XML fine). I’m going to be making a better effort at blogging because it’s just another form of writing, which I love.
My apologies though. Other than the latest post, it’s just a slideshow of my work. Not that that’s a bad thing!! But you should check out my work and blog on my new-now-permanent-site-that-will-never-change. Lol.
Today I went to go see the Haunted exhibit at the Guggenheim, based around works from their collection that “examines myriad ways photographic imagery is incorporated into recent practice and in the process underscores the unique power of reproductive media while documenting a widespread contemporary obsession, both collective and individual, with accessing the past.” Some of the more eloquent pieces were ones like Tacita Dean’s STILLNESS, where the viewer watches Merce Cunningham’s slight movements from six different vantage points. There’s a certain fragility of the sitting, immobile subject who is in stark contrast to the much younger, standing filmmaker–also in the shot. Adding another layer to this piece are the shadows cast onto the film by other museum visitors walking past the piece. In fact, the visitor haunts a lot of the pieces throughout this exhibit from reflections off of framed photographs, shadows interrupting projectors and chatter that emanates from the gallery-in-the-round setup.
But while there were moments that I felt like I was in the midst of an experience, I kept getting distracted by the thought that the entire show is so on the nose. It was as if a group of high school photography/film art students were asked “how do you show haunted?” to which they responded, “double exposed photographs,” “gravestones,” “light against darkness,” and “Princess Diana.” Really? I kept wanting to be surprised by the show, shown something that I had never thought of as haunted or haunting. I wanted to be stretched and forced to reconsider my own preconceptions. But none of that happened. And it’s that sort of space that makes for a truly powerful show.
Haunted runs until September 6th at the Guggenheim.
I posted some teaser pics here a few months back of a sculpture I was working on lasercutting out of acrylic plexiglass. Now that I’ve had time to set up a mini-photography studio in my apartment, I can share the awesome new pics. I am really excited about the possibility of going forward with this type of modular sculpture. I sat for just 10 minutes and came up with the few designs I’m showing here and on my website. I think the fun of this is going to be to live with it for a while and feel the life that the endless possibilities will bring.
Patience is something I’m constantly working on in just about every aspect of my life. I think the quote most used to mock me as a kid was Veruca from Willy Wonka saying, “I want the golden goose now, Daddy.” And it’s true, I want(ed) everything now. And why not? Doing stuff now rather than later has led me to accomplish a lot of things on my to-do list: travel to India, white-water raft the Grand Canyon, finish grad school. Now is great for checking shorter-term things off lists.
But now isn’t so great for things that take time. What I’m learning the older I get is that most things are in this latter category of “things that take time.” So over the past seven or so years, I’ve purposefully engaged in ceramics, which by its very nature takes time. Clay has to be wedged, thrown, dried, trimmed, dried, fired, glazed and then fired once more before it comes out. The embedded time factor forces me to slow down and be patient with the material even when every instinct is saying, “now, now, now.”
I wish I could say that I’ve conquered the beast, but I haven’t. What has happened though, is an overall appreciation and knowledge for when I should be patient. I think this is just as important as actually being patient and it’s something that I’m embracing now that I’m in the midst of post-grad school anxiety. I know that there’s no magic job for me. Rather there are a lot of jobs that will eventually lead me to the promised land of having my own design firm. And this will take time. In the meantime, I just have to remind myself that I should be patient because, unlike Veruca, I can’t have it all now.
I had a lot of amazing love happen around my graduation. Family came out, friends celebrated me. I am truly thankful for everyone who shared in my happiness. To thank everyone who decided to give me gifts, I thought I would handmake them all thank you cards. It turned into a fun (post-grad-unemployment) side project. Here are some of my faves:
Somewhere in the middle of it all, I guess I found time to throw a few sets. One is a set of white vases that get deconstructed as they go on. Really the emphasis is on the role the hand plays in manipulating the clay. It begins with throw lines and then goes to the point where the influence of touching the clay causes it to collapse. The collapse in both was purposefully thrown to achieve the same rim folds.
The second set I’ve worked on is a set of drunken sake cups. It’s sort of how I envision a Japanese Alice in Wonderland having sake with the Mad Hatter. All of the rims tilt slight either towards or away from one another, depending how they are arranged. The foot was left to be sort of woods-y and forest-like. And the glaze was a throw back to blue Asian pottery.
I’m in the process of making a sculpture out of 1/4″ thick laser cut plexiglass. It’s turning out to take forever to cut each piece and there are 40 or so total in the piece. Here’s a teaser pic of what it’s looking like. Full write up once it’s done done.
I’m working on a set that starts from a mother/father pair which are based on an interest in my work: craft + technology. For my pair, I’m making a wheel thrown vase and a plexi glass sculpture. For the wheel thrown, it was important to convey beautiful form along with a hand made approach. Doing both is an extremely fine line, I’ve learned, between naive art and a beautiful object. I think I’m going to explore an elongated neck version of the top left one.
