Sunday, September 7, 2008

Study with pink dress

Originally I was trying to "fly" the dress over a fan with monofilament, which didn't work well. So I quickly taped the dress down with blue painters tape, not thinking that I would leave it like that. But I've had so many people tell me that they actually like the tape that it has me a little confused. I had one person mention maybe using a belt in it's place if I didn't want it to look so shoddy. It just makes me wonder ... can I really let myself call it a sculpture if I just threw it together in a few seconds? I'm used to painstaking processes and projects that take weeks or months or years before seeing an end product. That's not to say that there wasn't time spent on trial and error before arriving at this. I just think a lot of people get turned off to contemporary art because they think artists just throw stuff together without thought or talent, and then call it "art", like it's some kind of joke (we have to thank Duchamp for starting this trend with his readymades). 

Either way, I think a lot of fun could be had with the dress's shadow on the back wall. I wish I could fill a room with all of my dresses. Or one dress from each of my friends. It would be so noisy. And expensive (each one of those blower fans costs about $300, and I only have two). Maybe two people would be interesting, though. Like two friends. Or mother and daughter. Or lovers. I could get Peter to send me a pair of pants and a shirt and make myself a partner. Although I can't see how I could tape the bottom of the pants to the fan. Too bad boys don't wear dresses too. 

But what to do about all that noise? I can hear it right now while I'm sitting here in my studio, and the gallery is two doors down. It's a very obnoxious noise. Maybe I could add something to it (like a voice). But that might be too literal. What about headphones with some sort of narrative sound or story playing about these characters? Headphones with a fun dance song playing. Dance party!


2 comments:

lenka said...

I love this dress piece! Did you do anything with it? I also really like how the obnoxious noise contrasts with the delicate dancing frills.

It reminds me of the sumo suits that people dress up in and then charge at each other. And like a chaste extension of the wind up the skirt athena poster cliche.

Alicia Eggert said...

What is a "wind up the skirt athena poster"?? I tried googling it but got weird images of Amanda Holden flashing the camera in a tennis skirt.

I like the piece too. But I've haven't thought of anything to do with it yet. And I don't think it's done as-is. But maybe someday something will come to me. Perhaps I could borrow some dresses from women - their "girliest" ones - and ... then what? I might be able to attach some ductwork to the blower fan to extend the air to several dresses at once.