Category Archives: art

Jan19

raining popcorn.

Posted on January 19, 2022 by beth

popcorn is art and one of my favorite snacks

(though it’s no flamin’ hot cheetos!),

something to consider on national popcorn day.

Raining Popcorn (2001) is a piece commissioned by the Faulconer Gallery of the Grinnell College in Iowa. The commission would take artist, Sandy Skoglund many months to complete. In Skoglund’s art practice, the conceptual subject matter works in conjunction with the physical materials she uses, drawing on historical references, and instilling them with psychologically complex meaning.

Produced in 2001, just before the September 11 attacks, Raining Popcorn references the complex roots of American contemporary culture and overconsumption. The unifying subject throughout the piece is popcorn, so pronounced and repetitive it replaces nature. The popcorn becomes an all-encompassing reality, lining the walls, the floors, the subjects, and alas growing from trees. This obsessive environment constructed by Skoglund derives from the artist’s desire to combine sculptures of animals, live humans, and nature into a space that involves thought and play, as part research and part recreation.

The abundance of Popcorn acts as a reflection of the cultural environment, being noisy, excessive, universal, and part of popular culture. Currently, Americans eat 13 billion quarts of Popcorn a year, produced mostly in the heartland of America, from Illinois to Ohio. The piece is a response to memories and experiences Skoglund felt as a graduate student in Iowa.

The painstakingly handcrafted quality of the endless popcorn creates a fantasy landscape, one that raises questions about climate issues and our surrounding environment, as well as fantasy and reality. In Raining Popcorn, Skoglund’s objects and composite staging have a base in truth; they are not a product of photoshop or digital manipulation. It is critical for the artist that the photographs evidence something genuine. The constructions are explicitly staged to be photographed from one unique viewpoint.

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“americans love popcorn, and their love doesn’t quit.”

-rosecrans baldwin

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Credits: Sandy Skoglund, Raining Popcorn – Holden Luntz Gallery

Nov22

twists and turns.

Posted on November 22, 2021 by beth

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i love that someone has created a poster

with some of our more interesting twists and turns

and wonder about the mindset

of the road planning engineers.

were they perhaps going for

more of an ‘artsy’ and unexpected approach to the roads?

more like the road of life?

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“life is full of surprises and serendipity. being open to unexpected turns in the road is an important part of success. if you try to plan every step, you may miss these wonderful twists and turns. just find your next adventure – do it well, enjoy it, and then, not now, think about what comes next.”

-Condoleezza Rice – Former U.S. Secretary of State

Nov20

land art.

Posted on November 20, 2021 by beth

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Every fall in Osijek, Croatia – Nikola Faller, academic sculptor and Osijek land artist, creates this magic.

Her drawings are made by raking leaves.

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“every photographed object is merely the trace left behind by the disappearance of all the rest.

it is an almost perfect crime,

and almost total resolution of the world,

which merely leave the illusion of a particular object shining forth,

the image of which then becomes an impenetrable enigma.”

-jean baudrillard

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image credits: plava planeta, suzana vida-suz

Nov13

colors.

Posted on November 13, 2021 by beth

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our latest mural created thanks to a community initiative

Ann Arbor Art Center’s Art in Public Places murals project – a fresh initiative designed to infuse art into our community. To make this dream a reality, they crowdfunded to raise $50,000 for the last two years to pay the artists a living wage and covered other mural expenses like equipment rentals, paint, permits, etc.

Ann Arbor has innumerable large- and small-scale murals already, but they have new company as the result of a crowdfunded project to bring art to walls and alleys around town.

In July, the Ann Arbor Art Center (A2AC) raised more than $50,000 to commission 10 murals around the city. The fundraiser was through Patronicity, and once the goal was met, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) matched the donations to double the money available to the mural artists. At the onset of the project, 10 artists paired with local business owners on the sites of their future murals. In October, two additional murals were announced, raising the total to 12. This initiative is part of the ongoing A2AC Art in Public program that aims to make art “accessible and equitable to everyone,” relying on community-based donations.

Since the Art Center helped crowdfund two other public murals in the recent past, those have been added to the A2AC Murals Map, which features a walking tour of all the works. Currently, 13 murals are finished, with the 14th debuting sometime in 2021.

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“one can speak poetry just by arranging colors well.”

-vincent van gogh

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link: https://www.annarborartcenter.org › art-in-public › murals

Nov7

a dream is a wish your heart makes.

Posted on November 7, 2021 by beth

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the holy grail for me, as a great admirer of fairy houses, i finally had the chance to see

colleen moore’s dream come true and breathtaking fairy castle

at the museum of science and industry in chicago

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Silent film star Colleen Moore was always fascinated by dolls and doll houses. She owned several elaborate doll houses as a child, but later in life her father, Charles Morrison, suggested that she should pursue her passion for miniatures and doll houses by creating the “doll house” of her dreams. Her position as a popular actress in Hollywood gave her the resources to produce a miniature home of fantastic proportions. Beginning in 1928, Moore enlisted the help of many talented professionals to help her realize her vision.

Creating the Fairy Castle

Horace Jackson, an architect and set designer who worked for First National Studios, created the floor plan and layout of the castle with the basic idea that “the architecture must have no sense of reality. We must invent a structure that is everybody’s conception of an enchanted castle.

Moore also enlisted the help of art director and interior designer Harold Grieve. Grieve had designed the interiors for Moore’s actual mansion, so he was a natural to create the interiors of her fantasy castle.

By 1935, approximately 100 people worked on the Fairy Castle. The price tag for this 8’7″ x 8’2″ x 7’7″ foot palace, containing more than 1,500 miniatures, was nearly $500,000.

On Tour

In 1935 Colleen Moore’s child-like fascination with her Fairy Castle was transformed by the Great Depression into a passion for helping children. She organized a national tour of the Fairy Castle to raise money for children’s charities. The tour stopped in most major cities of the United States and was often exhibited in the toy departments of prominent department stores. A brochure from The Fair in Chicago promotes it: “A museum in itself—it awaits you—starting November 15th in our Eighth Floor Toyland. You will want to see it again and again.” The tour was a huge success and raised more than $650,000 between 1935 and 1939.

Coming “Home” to the Museum

In 1949 Major Lenox Lohr, director of the Museum of Science and Industry, convinced Colleen Moore to have the Fairy Castle make one final journey. She described their encounter as follows: “When I was seated next to Major Lohr at a dinner recently in the directors’ coach at the Chicago Railroad fair, he mentioned the doll house while we were having soup, and by the time dessert was served, he had the doll house!”

Millions of guests have enjoyed their visit to the castle since it first arrived at the Museum, and it remains a timeless reminder of the imagination, ingenuity and craftsmanship of cultures and artisans all over the world.