Friday 1 June 2007

Art in the wild

Back when I first started making altered books, I thought how cool it would be to make one and leave it in our local library, I wonder what would happen to it (having worked in our local library and knowing how their tiny minds work, I think our chief librarian would probably toss it in the trash) but as a library user how exciting would it be to find one, maybe leave it amongst the art books so at least it might have a chance of being found by an artlover.
But, like most of my grand plans, I never got around to doing it.

The idea triggered again when I went to the high school Art Express exhibition this year, and saw that the work involved creating a piece of artwork and taking it out into the environment to photograph.
I started to think about doing this, the making, the photographing, but then to leave it out there in the wild.
Is that art, or is it another form of littering the natural environment?

So when I came across a link to Paula McCartney I got all excited about the idea again.
Paula is a photographer/book artist. She photographs brightly coloured fake craft store birds in wooded areas.
Quote: "Rather than settling for what nature has to offer, I have taken control and adorned the trees with their longed for, but absent, tenants" - Paula McCartney

But I think the work that attracted me most was her "accumulations" series of pod-like cocoons. There is nothing in the way of explanation on her web site (which brings up another subject for another day - does art need an explanation?) but googling brought up this "Accumulations focuses on the formations of detritus found as evidence of turbulence and motion along creek beds and river streams". She doesn't say what becomes of these 'accumulations' after photographing.

Imagine making a series of cocoons, go for a bush walk and attach them to the trees and leave them....am I just an environmental troublemaker...?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Erica! I've just cruised by your blog from your flickr profile (I had a couple of mosaics with your images in them). You and I have "blogs in common" - I'll be back!

Anonymous said...

Hi Erica...

Reminds me of the tree sweater. http://erika.fisherking.org/?page_id=271

Erica said...

Hi Kirsty, I've just discovered your blog too, I'll be back to see you as well!

anonymous, I've come across that tree sweater before, it has a great story, it started a whole underground knitting movement to make sweaters for trees!

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