Oh, yoo-hoo! Creative souls who read this blog, here are three things you might like, even need, to see and to hear.
I am knee deep in wires and condensers and pop screens for microphones and hating the sound of my voice, but I have run across three fabulous creativity pieces. The first is a short video on how the above air sculpture by Janet Echelman was erected over the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston along and over Atlantic Avenue. The second is a short video by Ira Glass about creativity and the other, a 30 minute podcast about a sculptor, Arlene Shechet, (Sh-ek-et) whose 20 year retrospective, I just saw at the Institute of Contemporary Art (after passing under the Janet Echelman sculpture) in Boston. WOWZER is all I can say to both. Photos don’t do it justice. One room of the Shechet exhibit, and not even considered her showstopper room, knocked me totally off my pins. She made large pieces of paper out of cotton and then did stencils and pigment and plaster and god knows what else to it. I swooned from one to the other. Here’s one example:
I left with ideas whizz-banging from one side of my head to another and, to add to the buzz, that very night a podcast, “The Modern Art Notes Podcast”, which I listen to regularly, released their interview with Arlene Shechet! So, Kismet, indeed.
It was this interview that made me think anyone with artistic leanings might benefit from the part of the interview where she talks about having to reinvent her studio rules of experience to match her life: mother, caregiver of parents, wife, teacher –in other words, she didn’t have all day, every day, to work on her art, and yet she had to figure out “how” to do her art with the time she had for it. Her choices of material, how she used it, what she didn’t want to do, what she did, was just audio gold to me.
After seeing this exhibit and listening to her process, I thought she articulated reasons for doing art that I’d never heard before but resonated with me and inspired me to redo a few of my rules as well! Her work is not done justice in photos but, all I can say is, from start to finish of this exhibit, I had a smile on face, not because I understood what the hell she was doing but simply that whatever it was I was smitten.
First, the video showing how the art installation over the streets of Boston was installed one day in May.
Greenway Echelman Sculpture – Installation Time-Lapse – 5.3.2015 from Julian Tryba on Vimeo.
Second, the short Ira Glass video
THE GAP by Ira Glass from Daniel Sax on Vimeo.
And, here’s the Tyler Green interview with Arlene Shechet on “Modern Art Notes Podcast”.
I’m supposed to start podcasting regularly by Aug 1st and by then I should be back doing my “other” stuff. In the meantime, I hope your work is going well and will enjoy these three creative snacks. Sorry, everything is about food these days.
