guitar lid dissociate

You begin with the possibilities of the material and then you see what they can do; so the artist is almost a by-stander while he's working.    Robert Rauschenberg

A third house on my street of 7 has gone on the market this weekend.  Rumor has it that another one is going on too.  Do you suppose it's my dogs driving them out?  We do turn the street into their own private dog run/squirrel harassment park/poop place after dark.  I even bought the Dark Dog, a romping shadow of a critter, a flashing red light neck piece so I can see where he goes.  I can see the White Dog wherever she goes because she even reflects starlight, no flashing collar necessary.  Oh well, fewer people, less traffic, more romping time!

Somehow this issue seems to be foodly oriented, completely by accident I think.  But then I rarely know what my mind is doing so maybe it's not an accident.

egg cartons

green plastic bottles

rusty cans

Photojournalist Huguette Roe captures that metamorphosis in her series "Recycle," which explores the afterlife of bottles, cans and other packaging destined to be reborn for reuse. Over the course of two years, the Belgian-born, U.S.-based Roe visited more than 100 recycling centers in the U.S. and France, photographing bales of recyclables, sorted and smashed together for the journey to the processing plant.

While the rest of the world was in a tizzy over the Mayan apocalypse that wasn't, the residents of Oaxaca, Mexico, were busy preparing for the very real Coming of the Radish People.  Every year on Dec. 23, artisans from around the region show up early in the morning to set up stalls in the plaza and put the finishing touches on elaborate sculptures carved from radishes — not the petite, round ones we're used to in this country, but big, heavy radishes — some as big as 6 pounds and 20 inches long.    

State shaped steak;  Sarah Hallacher's Beef Stakes project over at Fast Company's Co.Design blog, An art graduate student at New York University, Hallacher has brought into focus the top U.S. beef producing states by creating state-shaped steaks and then packaging them in Styrofoam and shrink-wrap, so they look just like those rib-eyes and tenderloins you grab from your grocery refrigerator case.  Beef Stakes is a data representation of the amount of beef produced in 2011. She is also fascinated in the amount of waste involved in beef production; the oil used to transport, the methane produced by corn-fed cows, the actual amount of meat we consume vs. produce, etc.

Live near Chandler AZ?  This is the last week of the show there.  hit the link to see all of it if you can't get there quickly!

Integrating a PAradox:  Art Quilts XVII  

Charles Ginnever, “Rashomon”

Knowing that all fifteen pieces are identical, I tried to see if I could determine the points at which two adjacent pieces lined up with each other. I hadn’t yet read the review, and so I hadn’t yet been clued in that what I was trying to do was nearly impossible. Whenever I felt I could tell how a set of adjacent pieces matched up, the relationship suddenly dissolved.  The title, Rashomon is borrowed from Akira Kurasawa’s 1950 Japanese film of the same name, which presents widely different accounts of four witnesses to the same crime. Reflective of the film’s plot, Ginnever’s installation consists of identical units, each capable of assuming 15 distinctly separate positions. Even with the knowledge that all of these objects are identical, it is unexpectedly difficult to recognize each sculpture as the same form.      On view at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art through Feb 16.  Here is more about Ginnever-

A site for making artists websites-  a wonderful resource for checking out the artists who use them!  I've spent most of the weekend going from one to another and 'meeting' new work! 


And finally, an article in the Guardian about how art critics are 'too soft' in their reviews.  What do YOU think?  

And that is how I spent my Sunday free time. Remember, I can't cook with no gas!  And I am quite tired of roaming the shelves in my refrigerator looking for something tempting. And cold, mutually excluding.  Had some old smoked trout for breakfast which normally I would have loved, but the fact that I HAD to eat it took all the joy away.