Friday, January 13, 2012

an arrangement of furniture


This is one way to think about the project, perhaps not the most serious, but maybe the most delightful.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Mapping

One my favorite things about Laurel Ulrich's work is her ability to "map" the point in time that she discusses in her work. She elegantly describes the domestic domain in her book Good Wives. This drawing, done very early in my investigation is an interpretation of a 18th century Maine homestead woman's world. See the slide show to the right for my interpretations of this world.

for the imagination

In the mist of the Model controversy this article appeared in The New York Times. Critic Roberta Smith proclaimed the Carrie Stellheimer dollhouse featured at the Museum of the City of New York "an environmental artwork for the imagination".   My rooms are not as detailed because my intention is to investigate the space making gestures that decorative arts offer.  What is the space making capability of a chair, stool, floor. this is something all my work investigates? But they are offerings for the imagination.

a stitch into a room


I arrived at Textile Arts in September with a vague challenge from a teaching colleague. "How would you make a stitch a room?"  What that lead me to was embroidering a series of rooms that investigate notions found in 18th century feminist studies but it also made me attack notions of decorative arts, patterns, flowers and colonial architecture that are considered "bad" form with you are a practicing architect.  What I walked into that I did not anticipate was that the medium of model making was a very charged construct in the art world. For designers and architects its a testing ground a way to experiment; in the art world there seems to be a set notion of the miniature and what it garners emotionally. This article found in Architect's Newpaper explains that a model is an uncomfortable condition because it sits in between idea and representation. Some say the point of art is to present the uncomfortable, even its as well meaning as a model with flowered walls and floors.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Reading List



The work of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich has really guided my work. I have endeavored to research the late 17th century/18th century women that Ulrich focuses on and try to physically manifest the historical ideas that she brings forward. For instance in her book The Age of the Homespun, she puts forth the idea that a woman's life is traced historically via the handmade artifacts she produced during her life time.

The beginning

This was a starting point for the project. While reading Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's work I was captivated by the idea that a 18Th century woman on a Maine Homestead could perform the epic list of chores and household drudgery and still have the state of mind to produce this beautiful crewel bedstead. See Museums of Old York.