Day: August 7, 2006

Crankypantsing, Meta

Bouncy-bouncy E-mail

Shelly

Also! If you e-mailed me near the end of July, and did not get an answer, it’s likely that your message went bouncy-bouncy or was sucked into a black hole. I might never have noticed there was a problem, except that I belong to several Yahoo groups and mail from them stopped. After a few days of no Yahoo mail, it occurred to me that there might be a bounce problem. Duh. I don’t know what the problem was, but it seems to have cured itself.

So, if I didn’t respond, it wasn’t because I was ignoring you. At least, not on purpose. If it was something important, please to be resending advTHANKSance!1!!!

That is all.

Art, Bookarts

I’m Not Dead Yet

Shelly

100_2527
Coffee Book
5 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches, 12 sheets/24 pages
90lb cream Stonehenge paper stained with instant coffee, stab bound with ribbon and accented with aged brass brads
7 August 2006

I haven’t been either terribly busy or a total lazy-ass. I just haven’t had much to say lately. I’ve transcribed a few more letters (they’re uploaded, but not linked yet) and bound another little book, and I finally found the itty bitty ABC book I made last year, and got some better photos of that.

Instant review: How Art Made the World

I’ve watched the first disc (episodes 1-3) and am impressed with it. It’s very well put together. Art programs that appeal to both people who are in the art world and those who have no knowledge of it are rare. I think this is one of them, though. Even my neighbor, who swears she’s not artistic (ha!), enjoyed it and found it fascinating.

I got a kick out of the underlying premise that art is created by humans, and that humans were created by art. An ouroboros of sorts. I wrote something similar a few years ago:

However hard we may try, we cannot separate ourselves from the social structures that make us human. Art is the re-presentation of human experience. Art is dependant upon culture and culture is dependant upon art; man creates art and art creates man. Art is a dialogue between ourselves and our fellow humans concerning the world around us. Even if the “subject” of art is not linked to the human experience, the fact that it is created by persons with uniquely subjective outlooks on life makes it about the human experience.

I know the idea is not original, and that it has been around for a long, long time, but it’s not one that was ever discussed in my art history classes. It wasn’t until I got into the study of anthropology and history that the broader cultural aspects of art were addressed, in terms of why it exists and how it came to be.