On Tuesday, January 25, 2011, our guest speaker was Sara Rabinowitz, who educated us on the media of fibers. This week was a brand new kind of art for me, because I had never looked at fibers as art before. Although my mind has been changed about what counts as art, I will honestly say that this may be my least favorite medium so far. No offense to Sara or all of the other artists who work with fibers, because I really do appreciate the fascinating work that they do, it just simply isn’t my style. And that’s okay. It all goes back to Sara’s conversation about the hierarchies in art, and what each person believes to be high art and low art. I see fibers as more of a craft, and I liked that someone asked that question in lecture, because I think it’s something that many of us were wondering. I believe the question of whether or not fibers is more art or craft will never be answered, because I think it is based on an individual’s opinion about what they are seeing and feeling when they look at a fibers piece. Sara’s lecture was great; the only thing that I wish is that she would have shown us some of her own work. She left me with a lot of questions in my mind at the end of class, like what is her own style? Why are fibers her passion over any other medium? To me, she was sort of a mystery quest speaker, and I don’t know what to think of it. The slide images she showed were great. My favorite was definitely the beaded kitchen. I can’t even fathom how long that must have taken, and the intricate beadwork absolutely blew my mind. An interesting topic brought up by Tyrras that I thought was interesting was the idea that we think of fibers as a female’s medium, and the irony of that is many women who work with fibers are feminists trying to fight that idea. Definitely something that ran through my mind as well.
While watching Ann Hamilton set up her fabric walls in the shutdown warehouse, I didn’t get it, and I thought it was stupid to be fully honest. I feel like there are always those people who try and force things to be art by making their work extra strange or really “deep”, and that is exactly what I thought of her at first. It wasn’t until the lights were turned off in the building and she cast the moving projections onto the drapes that I stepped out of that mindset and thought, “wow, now that is creative!” I think that’s what the basis of fibers is. It’s all about creativity and representation; Filling an empty space with something that we have to think harder about to figure out what “the point” or the “whole meaning” is. The bubble wall was amazing to me, and I liked that after Ann had seen it for a while, she realized that it was exactly what she had been working on her whole life. There was fluidity to it, it could be touched, and you could stick your hands through the membrane, and that is exactly what working with fibers is for her.
Most of the fibers world isn’t my absolute favorite, but the video about Cai Guo-Qiang really got me excited about it. His work is incredible, awe-inspiring, and as acknowledged in lecture, truly “epic.” My favorite part about his gunpowder pieces is the fact that no matter what, he will never know exactly how it will turn out. This connects me to the lecture because we talked about how some of the best art is accidental, and that is one of my favorite parts about my own art. Even if it doesn’t go the way you planned, often times it turns out better. Explosives are never perfect, and you can see that he loves having those obstacles to get around. It keeps him interested, and ready to test new things. I was laughing at his comparison with the gunpowder process and the act of sex, because everything he said was awkwardly true. You always question whether you are ready to be done, and at the end, you are either ecstatic about your performance, or you are disappointed with the end result. My favorite thing he has done is the huge hanging structure with the wolves. I only wish that I could see it in real life because it is one of those pieces that you have to see in real life to believe. It reminds me of the time I went to the Long Beach Aquarium, and there is a life-size blue whale and it’s calf hanging above the lobby. It gives you the feeling of how incredible these creatures are, and that we are so insignificant, and I imagine that is what it’s like to look up at the wolf structure. I understand that it has different cultural meaning to him, and because I’m from another culture I don’t yet understand that, but you have to appreciate it in your own way. I had this connection with the cultural and spiritual understandings we talked about in lecture. Each artist has their own connection with their work. Often, they have connections with other artist’s work, like Ann did with the flowing bubble wall.
To stick with the topic of fibers, the video I chose for this week is based on the festivals that take place in many parts of Asia, where they release paper or fabric lanterns into the sky, creating an amazing glow.
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