Review of “Decelerate”, Kemper Museum-Kansas City, MO

Again the Kemper has proved to be one of my favorite local museums. The current show, Decelerate, is a great example of some excellent contemporary sculpture. The idea behind the show is the act of slowing down or decelerating in an art environment or artistic process. Many of the pieces in the show could actually be considered direct examples of O.C.D. in the artists themselves. ———– draws window screen on fairly large sheets of paper. ———— stacks silk thread in a strip that is approximately one foot high and 50 feet long. And ——– knits materials such as bridal tooling, nylon rope and rubber into very large format sculptural installations that envelope the veiwer and much of the gallery proper and entrance to the museum.

It was refreshing to see good works of art that were contemporary in the midwest. Much of the contemporary work in our area is only contemporary through the 70's and 80's and is lacking in structure, both on the work level and the gallery installation level. Conservative galleries and museums do not show such works usually, which is what most of the Wichita area is made up of.

I left Kansas City with a recharged attitude and willingess to create art. The ideas behind the show, mostly well thought, made me think about the slowing down of our society and as artists and our art making. And many of the processes seemed very cathartic and processed as theraputic movements by the artists themselves. Just the very action of a repetetive movement, mark making process or construction was a strong backbone for many of the works.

I only wish that I had not gone on the final weekend of the show so that I could have revisited the Kemper another time to participate again in the artists thoughts and products of Decelerate.

Final Project Idea

I have been working on these “mason jar hives” for several weeks now.  The jars are quart mason jars (canning jars) that are partially covered with industrial flocking and partially with dipped wax.  The ends of the jars are filled with an industial aircraft phenolic honeycomb to represent a real honeycomb.  What I have come up with in the past few weeks are small motors that fit into these jars and have small pieces of rubber attached to their drive shafts.  When turned on, the motors turn the rubber, flicking it against the class and causing a noise reminiscent of a moth or butterfly trapped in a jar.

The final project would be a hanging cluster of these jars.  Most of the jars would contain only the motoroized parts while several others would contain the rechargable battery, sensors and the chip to run the sensors.  When a viewer comes in contact with a sensor, it will trigger certain jars to turn on and off… causing the butterfly noise.

The visual part of these jars is already in production.  Now I just need to figure out the sensor and processor chip….

4:15 AM

Holy shit… for some reason my file won't attach to the wiki properly. I did it the first time and it worked, but then went away… and hasn't worked since…

blah!!!

B E H I N D

Yup, I know… I am behind.  Was ill the first part of last week and rediculously busy for the rest of it trying to give my class a critique, a quiz and a new assignment… not to mention all of my personal critiques with other professors.  God this sememster is moving at a past pace.

A Meeting…

Several of us all decided to meet at the Anchor on Thursday night for some beers and conversation.  The group consisted of Ann, Myself, Jason, T Jay, Joey, Danielle and Andrea.  I’m not leaving anyone out am I?  Anyway, it was a nice evening of getting to know one another better and just shooting the bull for a while.  I think there seemed to be some nice ideas and at least one group informally formed to work together.  That will have to be worked out more I am sure.  So… I say we do that again.  I had a good time.

I had alse met with Muaz earlier in the day.  He and Ann were headed over to Engineering to pick up the Logochip boxes so I tagged along.  Good conversation between the three of us!