Here I go again saying I'm trying something new a few days before the new year. And also saying that it's only a coincidence I'm organizing a new project while everyone else is saying "new year new you!!" Either way, it's nice to write. In short, I'm making a monthly newsletter for this blog. Once a month (at least) there'll be a new post to scroll through while you're on the toilet.
This issue features...
updates | media spotlight | thoughts on untitled art | my current fixation
what I did in December...
This past month my partner and I finally got married, I took meditation classes, actually used the “good” candles, and did deep research on nuclear fallout shelters for work. Craft-wise, I’m back into Tunisian crochet with a cowl (ends unwoven), matching mittens (just finished!) and a new handbag pattern to test for another designer. I also picked up knitting and macrame. Thinking about it now, it’s a lot. Too much in fact! I feel like I’m rushing to get things done on a Sunday night before the long week ahead. This has been a busy start to winter, but it has also felt full of beginnings.
For those following lunar calendars, the word “day” is a unit of time and not exclusively daylight. The day begins at sundown and the day concludes at the next sundown. I love that. You greet the new day with your tasks completed. You wind down then rest—you come back to yourself at the start of the day. I love evenings, and this time of year is like a long yawn an hour before bed. It’s time to draw a bath, put the dishes in the sink for later, and cozy up with a thick book. So before the holidays drew to a close, I tried to wrap up my hectic half-finished projects and slow down to rest. Well… after I drafted this first newsletter I started drafting a pair of pantaloons to wear under skirts this winter. Even though I added to my project pile, I’ll try to take it slow.
media spotlight...
If you know me irl it's no secret I got a flip phone this past summer. I still have my 'pink phone' - what I'm calling my data-less smart phone - which basically functions as a miniature iPad. It doesn't get to leave the house unless I think I'll be taking photos. So I try to use my pink phone more intentionally. I'm really considering how different youtube channels make me feel and if I want to see them in my subscriptions tab. A new creator I've been enjoying lately is butterflygirl Grace Ruby.
Grace Ruby's channel butterflygirl is whimsical and fun. It's like stepping inside of a elementary schooler's diary from 2005 in the best way possible. This is the first video I watched of hers. The outfits she puts together look just like how I imagined I would dress when I "grew up." Whatever that means.
Her video style is personal, open, vloggy, and encouraging. I feel like I'm hanging out with a younger neighbor kid and we get into old craft supplies. I did try to join the discord server, but everyone in there was like 15 years old... So I bailed. Still, I enjoy Grace Ruby's channel.
thoughts on untitled art...
Seeing a placard that said Untitled, ca. 2010 or whatever used to piss me off. My younger self reasoned "If they put so much time into the artwork you'd think they could spend more than a second to think up a title!" But now I really don't care. In fact, I support "Untitled" as an artist's statement within itself.
A good title can do a lot for a piece. And I love that "brain go brr 🥴" feeling when a title hits you in the face. Here's the best example I know. A painting of a woman presumably at a museum, looking at a dinosaur skull in a glass exhibit case. It's detailed, muted, but relatively simple. Like a real natural history museum. This 2009 oil painting by John Brosio is titled....Two Earthlings. The first time I saw this painting and title I had to put my phone down and just breathe for a second.
Putting deep time and its reverberating echo aside for a moment, other pieces of art don't need a title. My "Think of a title!!!" sentiment vanished when I actually started making things. It was replaced by "Look at it. Figure it out." Which is one of the best things about art. You make it and it exists. That's all it has to do. People bring their thoughts and lived experience to the art they see, and so does the artist. Sometimes these thoughts match up and sometimes they don't. Either way, the viewer and the artist (hopefully) learn something about themselves.
Personally, I think untitled works of art allow the viewer more flexibility in how they interpret the work. And even more so when there's no accompanying artist's statement. An untitled piece with an artist's statement that is more specific than "I was inspired by the elements of this and that tradition..." is little more than a long
title. I'm coming at this from a framework of craft and instantaneous expression. When I crochet a pair of mittens I don't title it. When I make a bag or a tapestry or sketch my front yard I don't title it. As far as I'm concerned, I don't need to do anything else. The title is secondary, if there is one at all. Quilts, tea pots, Shaker furniture, glass vases, and other crafts don't usually have titles. They're practical crafts but they are also Art.
This is Untitled 1 by ceramicist Sloane Angell. Ceramics and pottery are crafts that easily cross over into fine art. Without reading the artist statement, this vessel reminds me of monkey bread. The bottom portion where there is light brown and dark brown makes me think of homemade rolls. For me, this vessel is very homey and inviting because I like baking. When I asked my partner, her first thought was a rotting gourd. Her second thought was that it reminded her of the Venus of Willendorf. Our individual experiences color our understanding of this piece.
The statement I found for this piece (and for the two other pieces in this Untitled series) is this:
For the artist, ceramics are a reminder of the passing of time as they capture the imprints of the maker over a series of moments. The experience of the viewer is focused on the present as each piece is compelling and commands enough attention to capture our gaze and hold it in place.
Now, it makes me think of cave formations and deep time. But to be honest, I like going through the deep time wormhole whenever I get the chance to. I will cede that this summary I found might not be the artist's statement, and is more useful as a general description of their work as a whole. After all, these vessels are for sale; not on display. Reading this is not the gut-punch Two Earthlings is. But neither were my partner's thoughts or my own thoughts on it. However, for someone else, the vessel itself is the gut-punch.
There are several pieces that knock me out, some of which I couldn't find the title or artist's statement for at all. Those seem to be the most impressive, because I know there isn't an answer to Why. Why anything. An artist doesn't need to explain anything, and neither does a viewer. In college, I was told that art is a conversation. More often, it feels like two figures sitting in companionable silence. Someone nods, and someone nods back.
current fixation...
A book I want to put forward (not necessarily recommend) is Leonard Koren's Musings of a Curious Aesthete. 
I first came across Koren in his book Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, and Philosophers in my local library. My partner pointed it out and I half-heartedly flipped through the little book until I read the author bio. The back matter reads in part:
"Leonard Koren was trained as an architect but never built anything--except an eccentric Japanese tea house--because he found large, permanent objects too philosophically vexing to design."
I absolutely agree but what does that mean??? After reading the book cover to cover, inexplicable footnotes included, I felt myself wanting to reach for my research shovels. Time to dig a rabbit hole.
Wanting to savor a new thread to pull that wasn't related to my day-job research, I set some parameters. I could only get his books through my library's interlibrary loan system and could only use information gathered from those books to build a mental biography around this guy. Musings of a Curious Aesthete reveals the story of the eccentric Japanese tea house and chronicles Koren's escapades. I'm so glad I didn't find Musings first, or even second or third in my project sus this guy out. Beginning with Wabi-Sabi, Koren's narration is mostly objective, but through experiences that are presented like they're not incredibly unique, Koren became a character to me. An Aesthete and artist who is over it all and has done it all.
I'm still working through Koren's body of work. It's delightful and inspires me to pursue my interests without holding back. Partly, Koren's books sparked my imagination in making a monthly newsletter. One especially poignant thought Koren touches on in Musings is the responsibility to make nothing. To prevent the destruction of something beautiful or the creation of something ugly. The example presented is a friend of his helping to stop the clearing of a wooded area (prevented destruction of beauty) that would have been developed into a cookie cutter subdivision (prevented creation).
But does this blog really exist? You can look at it and get an idea of some things that are important to me. You can download digital files, but can't purchase physical items. mothlymade may not even exist at all. It's light and thought. Only as meaningful as someone makes it.
Comments ()