loud paper

mad and matter

Sunday evening, a week later than when I wanted to write, and I am sitting here trying to wring meaning from the fact that Matters of Sensation, the new architecture show at Artists Space curated by Georgina Huljich and Marcelo Spina, opened the same week as Allied Works Architecture Brad Cloepfil’s Museum of Arts and Design. I think there might be something to say about craft and the continued return to materiality, but I am not sure I am ready to make that leap.

For one thing, the MAD building, which has been skewered in the press, just isn’t that good. Sure, Cloepfil’s slots make for nice views of the city from within the gallery, but all the rejiggering of the core and revamping of Edward Durell Stone’s loopy, lollypop façade doesn’t make up for the fact that the floorplates are too small for galleries. The failure of Huntington Hartford’s old Gallery of Modern Art still haunts the place. The tight gallery layout, especially in the permanent collection rooms, brings the viewer uncomfortably close to a lot of Chuhuly glass, Memphis-style functional sculpture from a decade or two ago, fiber arts, and a Frank Gehry gestural thing. It is the kind of art that perhaps only a craft artist could love.

A DIY knitter of scarves and the occasional obscene cozy, I wanted to like museum and its collection. (The special, one floor exhibition, Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary, a showcase of fifty-four artists who repurpose and transform mass-produced objects into works of art, is pretty groovy. Imagine a chandelier constructed from vintage eyewear, each myopic lens twinkling.) I could appreciate the technique, of the architecture and the art on view, but had to navigate around certain issues involving taste.

And maybe it is here that I can come back to Matters of Sensation. The show features fourteen architecture practices—davidclovers with C.E.B. Reas, Emergent, Gage/Clemenceau Architects, Gnuform, Hirsuta, Höweler+Yoon Architecture, IwamotoScott Architecture, mod, MOS, murmur, Ruy Klein, Sotamaa, SU11, Xefirotarch—all young, all experimental. The goal of the show was to transform the understanding of these firms’ digital allegiances from the virtual to the material.

From the press release:

Whereas architects’ use of computers first affected shape and structure, the participants in this exhibition address the way materials are not just about construction choices but also a means of creating diverse sensations in a space, focusing on the effects produced by the materials’ textures and surfaces.

Matters of Sensation, like MAD, is a lot about appreciating technique, and then being compelled to an artwork based on taste. I really loved MOS’ Desert Island No. 2 (silicone rubber mats) simply for the fantasy of walking barefoot through the sea anemone–like surface. Other laser-cut or CNC milled pieces seemed lickable, while other folded, kinetic, twisted works (from IwamotoScott Architecture and Howeler + Yoon/MY Studio) were beautiful in their organic repetitions.

And because I liked certain works, regardless of their architectural intent, I just might let the press release seduce a little more:

Unaligned in their interests and bored by old debates, the group of young architects featured in Matters of Sensation produce work that attempts to answer no questions, solve no problems, and broach no oppositions. It is, rather, about a fascination with architectural forms that induce sensation—about fantasy, intimacy, and sci-fi, and, above all, about experiencing pleasure.

knot craft?

As craftiness gains more and more mainstream acceptance, working its way further into graphic design, architecture, and fashion, the debate of what, exactly, is craft heats up. Earlier this year knitting needles and crochet hooks rattled at the SNAG conference when Andrew Wagner and jewelry artist and educator Bruce Metalf presented "D.I.Y, Websites, and Energy: The New Alternative Craft." Apparently Bruce, representing old-school art craft, sent currents through the crowd with a comments about quality and training among alt crafters. Catch the blow by blow on Imogene's blog.

Jump to last month, Andrew invited Bruce and Chanel Kennebrew of Junkprints to face the issues at hand in a panel discussion that is part of American Craft's Summer in the City Salon Series. I was there, as was Amy of Greenjeans, who reported on the event. The debate was quite genteel, with upstart Chanel and curmudgeonly Bruce finding that for all their differences in process and market, at heart there is overwhelming similarity in their motivations.

At one point Chanel challenged Bruce to do something with the waste he generates in his jewelry making process. An email list later, and I'd signed up to receive a Bruce scrap. So did Amy. A week or two ago a small package arrived with a tiny wood pediment tucked inside.

How'd he know I have a love for mini-architecture? Ms. Greenjeans, a handcrafter, received a hand. Many thanks and many props to Bruce for following up on his challenge and for apparently researching the recipients. Either that or ti was just good luck.

A podcast of the event is here.

Up next in the AC salon series, The Politics of Craft, with the ever-fabulous murketing man Rob Walker, KnitKnit's Sabrina Gschwandtner, and knitting nationalist Liz Collins.