Hives, cocoons, and pods.

Let me show you some of my work.

When I started graduate school, I had certain ideas about art.

One of those ideas was that art was a product. An object. A thing.

My heart wanted to make work that would be meaningful to people, and that would unpack topics that were important to me.

I wanted my work to be instructive and resonant. I wanted people to engage with the work, and be different because of their experience.

I wanted my art to speak in bold powerful ways about how the world is a beautiful place and we should take care of it and appreciate it and love it, and in turn care for and appreciate and love all the people who live on it.

But it's hard to make an object that can handle so much responsibility.

My first project in graduate school was a series of white sculptures made of paper. These sculptures. The ones in all the pictures.

They look like hives or cocoons or pods. Or grapes. Or q-tips.

They were made of paper pulp that is formed with round kitchen sieves. When the paper is dry it’s peeled out of the sieve, and they’re glued together to make these forms.

I wanted so badly for these forms to take on meaning. So I put them in different locations and took pictures of them.

The locations that I chose were sites of agriculture in my neighborhood in Provo. Poultry farms, family gardens, orchards, barns, all within a 10 mile radius of my house.

I wanted to address the topic of local agriculture.

My thinking was, and still is, that people's interactions with the land that produces their food directly correlates with their interactions with other people.

When we are mindful of and careful with natural resources, we also become mindful and careful towards others who also use those resources.

So if people can interact with the land in new, authentic, creative ways, they’ll interact with each other likewise.

Or so the thinking goes.

But the paper forms kept getting in the way.

They took on different identities in different locations, and they were certainly unique within the different landscapes.

But they weren't doing much to help me reach my goals.

They were just me acting like an artist. I was making an object and using it to put my mark on the world, without providing a way for people to change in any way.

And so, I’ve gotten rid of the object.

I will write about my current work soon, but this is what I want to say:

Art can be used to make the world a better place.

It really can.

Bringing beautiful objects and images into the world can do this. And I still love making things.

But I’ve started to think about art as a process and an experience, and not just a product.

And this has made all the difference in the world.

The Love House

This week I attended a lecture at the Salt Lake Art Center by artist Alexandra Grant.

And it was completely brilliant.

She's this fantastically talented painter (see her website here) who also works outside of the studio/gallery arena in a project called the Watts House Project (see their website here).

The WHP is an artist-driven urban revitalization project in Watts, CA. The area is known for gang violence, the Rodney King riots, and the Watts Towers, which you can read about here. But artist Edgar Arceneaux wanted to give the neighborhood a new narrative. So he began a project to revitalize the neighborhood through art, and Alexandra Grant became involved with the project a year after it started.

There are 20 houses involved in the project.

(you can watch a short video here)

One of the houses is called the Love House. It was designed by Alexandra Grant.

And I'll tell you why I think it's wonderful.

First of all, this is a digital mock-up of what Alexandra first envisioned. It is an image of one of her sculptures photoshopped onto this house.

But, check it out. It's an artist putting love symbolically and literally onto someone's house.

I love that.

At her presentation, she spoke with real affection and care for the people who live here. They are her friends, and she's using her talent and know-how to enhance their home and their community with her work.

Beyond the great symbolic gesture of putting love on someone's house (that I SO appreciate), it's also quite practical.

There are 7 or 8 people living in this small house. There's not enough room. But when the home is remodeled to accommodate this sculpture, they have finagled things so that an extra bedroom has to be added and used as a "support" for the sculpture. This will circumvent zoning regulations which have kept them from making this much needed addition.

The Watts Towers generate a regular stream of tourists every year. But the neighborhood has not been able to capitalize on this traffic. The addition of this project to the several other houses that have been rennovated/redesigned will bring some of that revenue to the people who live directly across the street from this huge tourist destination.

And the work that has been done, the painting, remodeling, designing, has all been done with participation from everyone on the block. They have come together to paint fences, plant gardens, pave driveways, and share meals. This is work that brings people and communities together in authentic, positive ways.

One of my students at the beginning of my class this semester said after one of my lectures on art for social change, "But art doesn't actually do anything."

Au contraire mon fraire.

Art is a symbolic gesture, yes. It can be figurative and allegorical,

and seem purely cerebral.

And some art is.

But this.

This is something more.

It is art that is both symbolic and literal. It is causing actual, practical, meaningful change to happen in this neighborhood.

In her presentation, Alexandra said, "I'm concerned not only with the work I make, but with its role in society. Artists tend to move in more and more secluded circles. But the question is, how can artists work to benefit a community that's not just the art community?" She believes that artwork should be smart and accessible. It should be deep and address real issues and concerns.

Her work is deeply sincere and unapologetic in an increasingly cynical world.

It strives to make positive changes in the world.

It makes people love each other more.

And I love it.

Flowers and Neanderthals

I drive a car with a tape deck.

And since I haven’t owned a tape since 1993, I listen to a lot of NPR.

A few weeks ago I heard a few minutes of a piece (click here) that has profoundly influenced how I think about art and art making.

The expert speaking said that they recently found shells dating back to Neanderthal times containing pigments that were used as make-up. The shells had holes bored into them that were used to hang them, possibly as jewelry, and they contained traces of glittery pigments that scientists suspect were used for ceremonial purposes.

Later that week I was assigned to read an article for a class that explained that flowers had been found on Neanderthal graves.

Okay, think about this. Neanderthals were actively transplanting flowers onto graves.

First, this is evidence of deep, symbolic thinking. But in the scheme of things, this was a technological leap. These people weren’t even planting food to eat to survive. They didn’t use this potentially life-enhancing process to grow food – they used it to make symbolic, metaphorical, spiritual acts.

The article was about the evolution of technology, and how every major innovation was preceded by art.

My perception of art through history was that it followed technological advances, but the article said that in fact the advances were made first because of art - art being physical evidences of symbolic thinking. Metal working was developed to create jewelry first, and only later was used for weaponry. Ceramics, photography, agriculture as we know it, were developed first to act in deeply symbolic ways, and then later to enhance life.

This article may be full of gaping holes, but this is what I know: as far back as 300,000 years ago, and probably farther, human beings were making symbolic and aesthetic decisions. They used what they could see and what they could make to represent what they thought and felt.

And we still do that today.

And it's called art.