Art Vs. Nature

My thoughts on last night's episode of Work of Art, for anyone who might be interested. For the story of the image to the left, skip down to the last paragraph.

For the second to last episode, and the last themed challenge, the remaining five contestants were put into more of those sophisticated luxury vehicles that we saw a few weeks ago and driven to a nature preserve, complete with plenty of woods and water. The challenge was to create something inspired by the visit, and that included at least some natural material collected during the visit. Most of them were excited by the possibilities, though not city dweller Jaclyn, who told us she probably would have done one of her nude photo shoots in the woods if not for the cold wet weather. She settled for taking some photos of the water and picking up some rocks instead. Other grabbed such materials as sticks, gravel, acorns, etc. Miles found some large fungus to build a work around.

They got a little more time this week, and needed every minute of it. At the end of the gallery show, two would be sent home. Jaclyn spent the first day just sleeping on a couch (suffering from a cold she had before the trip to the woods). The next day she decided to use a nude self portrait photo she shot in the bath tub back at the residence, but this required permission of the rest of the contestants, and Peregrine was having none of that. (it's all over the blogs today that some of the others, including Peregrine, were able to add outside items with the blessings of the other artists in previous weeks) Her idea didn't strike me as that interesting, but a naked Jackie is usually successful in these challenges, and the stakes were very high this time around. Her plan B was to print out some of her water/horizon photos on the large printer and mount them in a corner, with one of her rocks hanging from a bar fixed to the walls.

Miles, once he was talked out of creating mustard gas, used his basic carpentry skills to build a giant membrane and a mechanical poking device/medieval torture instrument, all in the service of producing an obsessively planned random pattern with bleach on brown craft paper, which he hung on the wall. Oh, and in the gallery show he put the fungus a shelf next to it for some reason.

Nicole had the most fun collecting stuff, and talked about her childhood spent in the woods and her family's Algonquin heritage. She created a small but complex symbolic sculpture using plaster and lots of her collected natural materials. Peregrine decided to reference her experiences as a child exploring the urban parks of her native San Francisco. But beyond that she didn't have a clue what to do. She built a sort of figural thing with her collected tree branches, stuffed into a pair of plaster filled boots and partially wrapped in papier mache. On the second day, with no idea where to take it from there and no time to start over, she got some advice from Miles as to how to save it. (whatever else Miles has been accused of, he has generally given advice and technical assistance to the others whenever asked and has never appeared to be sabotaging anyone)

Abdi was in the most precarious position coming into this week, and spent the first part of his time in the woods meditating/praying for guidance. He collected some black gravel, which he ground up and added to charcoal and black pigment to create an oversized self portrait drawing (based on a photo of himself reclining). In the very impressive resulting drawing he appears to be either floating on the water or levitating. He finished framing it just seconds before time expired.

Abdi was declared the winner of the challenge. Miles got the next spot in the finale, despite it being noted among the judges that his intellectual work generally lacks heart and soul. Of the remaining three contestants, Jaclyn's piece was probably the most conceptually sophisticated (resembling Miles's work more than a little) but not very interesting in its execution. She was the first to be sent off. Neither of the works from Peregrine or Nicole were particularly impressive (the former a mess, the latter indecipherable without her explanation), and the judges decided to send Nicole away and advance Peregrine to the final. One more time with the gang next week.

Now, my work above. My prints are pretty traditional in technique, but there was one occasion about a decade ago where I chose to use some different materials. In the years leading up to the year 2000 people began to become concerned about the potential perils of Y2K bugs in computerized systems all through society. Many felt the likelihood of disaster was exaggerated, but it didn't stop some for preparing for everything from minor inconvenience to the collapse of society. I wasn't too worried, but if civilization did end and I couldn't buy plywood or Japanese tools anymore, it would be good to have a back up plan. So I dragged a small log from the woods behind my house, stripped off the bark, and rubbed it with rocks to smooth it out a little. Then I found some small rocks and chipped them to make some crude stone age style tools. For the design I combined (from top to bottom) a simple self portrait, the engineering symbol for batteries, images of canned food, the molecular symbol for water, an image of cash (the last four all things being hoarded by some at the time), and the date. On New Year's Eve I chiseled the design into the log, inked it, and printed 3 copies. Having proved I could still make woodcuts no matter what happened, I could relax and enjoy the holiday. And as it happened, I didn't even lose cable that night.