Janine Antoni

To prepare for our soap carving project, we were to watch a segment on artist Janine Antoni, creator of Lick & Lather (1993). I gleaned much from her Art 21 video, as I do from every episode of the series. My art teacher in high school often had us watch Art 21 segments; I actually still have my 10th and 11th grade notes about James Turrell, Mark Bradford, Laylah Ali, Maya Lin, Laurie Anderson, and Pepón Osorio, among others. It's an undeniably wonderful resource for expanding one's knowledge of contemporary artists and practices as well as finding inspiration.

Chocolate, left, and soap, right

"Cleaning the body with the body / Feeding oneself with the body"

Here's what I scribbled while watching Janine Antoni's video: 

• Stories held in the material
• The taking apart of things - what things are made of. Taking apart to understand
• Body as a tool, the maker of experience
• CLUES
• Cow drinking from bath - reversal of relationship: breasts and the archetype of the Virgin Mary
• The importance of "holding"
• Our distance from the true source of things
• Submission / absence
• What is "me-ness"?
• Chunk from ear that falls off while she washes herself with herself, both sad and beautiful
• Loving = erasing?
• The tightrope, the horizon: balance comes from being comfortable with being out of balance
• Learning leads to learning leads to learning

One thing I love about the Art 21 series is that every episode is, in itself, a work of art. For example, in Antoni's segment, the editors used her found objects rope piece, Moor (2001), to link the episode together. By using images of the rope for transitions, they made the pragmatic and symbolic aspect of the object-to tie or bring things together-an essential part of the video. Moor reminds me why I am a bit of a packrat...I love collecting things and putting them together to create meaning. There's nothing quite like holding an item, especially a personal one, and feeling the electricity of all it's ever meant and will ever mean surge through your body.

Just a small segment of the rope, but it contains so many lives

 "If I don’t have an experience with the object, how can I hope that the viewer will have an experience with the object?" - Antoni

Animal Testing: Soap Carving and Form Changing

Soap Carving: An Overview

Besides my patience, the soap carvings project really tested my ability to apply previous problem solving solutions to a new medium. I had never really sculpted seriously before this assignment; though familiar with Play-doh and those coil pots everyone makes in art class on "clay day," subtracting from a form with carving tools proved much more complicated than sculpting (with the ability to add to and easily "fix") a piece. I felt a lot like SpongeBob in the episode "Artists Unknown" when he talks about the process of really knowing one's marble before beginning to work with it.

        

YOU GOTTA BE THE MARBLE!

Unlike SpongeBob, I'm not sure if I ever really "became" my soap. But one thing is for certain: I will never, ever be able to forget the smell of Fiorentino peony and seaside body bars. 

Professional pictures of my final pieces are forthcoming. Below, however, is the process one of my sculptures underwent to transform into a new object. Miss Laura said, "If it feels wrong, that probably means you should do it." Well, I did it...and let's just say that things got pretty nasty.

Creating a New Form: Addition and Subtraction

  

I started out with this lumpy critter as my animal form.

I then grated the tiger's head and tail. (Subtraction) 

This resulted in a pile of soap shavings, which I then scooped into a Ziploc bag, mixed with purple ink, and put in the freezer (depicted below). 

Because I had grated off the tiger's tail, the stick that held it to the tiger's body was no longer necessary. So I used the extraneous stick to poke holes all over the tiger's body. (Subtraction)

Going along my concept, which I will explain later in greater detail, I tried to use mostly cosmetic/bathroom products. Consequently, I covered the tiger with Crest toothpaste. (Addition)

I then stuck the tiger in the oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. I felt really bad about it, but it had to be done. (Subtraction/Addition)

While the tiger baked, I created a simple form of tiny Dixie cups (used for water, mouthwash, etc.).  

This is when things started to get stinky. A strange, clinical odor emanated from the oven, especially in the last few minutes of the baking process. It smelled like a dentist's office, but one where something was definitely amiss. The toothpaste had bubbled and formed a crusty layer over the soap.

I then cut the tiger into three pieces (Subtraction)

As if things didn't already stink enough, I decided to add lip gloss to the mix. Using the cosmetic like glue, I put the pieces back together. (Addition)

Then came my worst/best idea: to microwave the tiger on high for 1 minute. I stopped at about :40 because the microwave started smoking and it smelled really, really horrible. However, after letting it rest for a bit, I was able to finish the minute. (Subtraction/Addition) 

The odor of the hot, mutated soap/toothpaste/lip gloss nearly made me puke at least four times after taking it out of the microwave.

While trying not to vom, I scooped the fluffy mush into the Dixie cups (pictured below). (Addition) I also discarded the material that did not fit into the cup structure. (Subtraction)

I then stuck Q-Tips into the mixture. (At this point, everything smelled so bad that I slowly felt my body shutting down.) (Addition)   

After placing the form in an aluminum baking pan, I took the inked shavings out of the freezer and sprinkled it over top the whole thing. (Addition)

FINALLY...

"Animal Testing" 

Elements and Principles in 3D Form

The first project of my 3D Design career challenged me both conceptually and materially. We were to use only balsa wood, masking tape, wood glue, straight pins, and clear tape to create four sculptures, each representative of a specific element or principle of design. Although every material need not be present in each sculpture, all had to be utilized at least once in the span of our collection.

Sculpture 1: Pattern 
"I Had This Argument Before"

       In my first sculpture, I portrayed the principle of pattern using balsa wood, masking tape, and straight pins. The w.i.p. photo to the left shows the painstaking process to which I subjected myself in order to create a controlled visual experience: loops of tape with the sticky side facing outwards. I create two layers of loops, careful not to crush the delicate "underloop" layer as I added the second on top, and then raised the square platform with loop-encased pins to structurally continue the motif. I added pins in a careful pattern to the top loops, giving further unity and texture to the sculpture. The myriad loops contrast strikingly with the flat "oneness" of the square plane on which they rest. While the visual experience is thus expected, it is rewardingly so; I have to admit, it's a lot of fun to look through the negative space the loops create as light dapples through. One thing I wish I had fixed, however, is the spacing on the left side of the sculpture. With slightly too much wood and not enough tape, it looks a little unbalanced, which in turn throws off the regularity of the pattern I tried to build. Proper measuring (and, in turn, patience) is something I still need to work on - too much of the time I just cut without consulting my ruler first.   

Sculpture 2: Scale
"Planets"

       For my second sculpture, I played with notions of scale by creating clear tape balls of different sizes and placing them in a somewhat surreal, cosmic setting. I am not a sci-fi fan by any means, and my sister and I always made fun (lovingly, of course) of Denny's space-themed kid's menu (Galactic grapes! Space Cadet mac 'n' cheese!), however I really like the spindly, rover-esque legs supporting the main platform of the sculpture. I trapped wood shavings and other bits and pieces littering my cutting board in the tape balls. I then decided to add a strange, tape-based offshoot perpendicular to the taller balsa wood platform. I used wood glue to create a goopy, yellowish mess dripping from the upper platform to the tape mat, and continued making tape balls of different sizes to place on this lower platform. I also trapped glue between the pieces of tape, playing with actual and intangible texture. Overall, the design does not overwhelm my emphasis of scale, however its main flaw is in its flimsiness - I should have reinforced the bottom platform with a piece of wood underneath. Nevertheless, I am happy with my final result. It's out of this world! 

     
Sculpture 3: Texture
"Our Home" 

     Texture is one of my favorite elements of design. In my third sculpture, I wanted to build a small, secure space in which all different textures were able to manifest. I first created a structure of wood, which I then wrapped with masking tape. I twisted the tape to become an unorthodox type of yarn and wove it around and around the wood base, thereby creating a sort of rug-like wreath. (It actually reminds me of the old yet hearty rug underneath the table in my grandma and grandma's kitchen.) The contrast between the wood grain and the "woven" tape is lovely, but I decided to push it further by adding an adjacent piece of wood - this one torn up and gouged by my knife. I added a clear piece of tape to the back of the main square "wall," a pile of tape "garbage" in the corner, and two little needle-like wood pieces on top of the pit-marked wood chunk. Piercing the wood with the pin was strangely satisfying and somewhat therapeutic. Then it started reminding me too much of skin, and I started feeling a little sickly. Although the piece is complicated by its different textures, I believe it retains an important sense of unity. Eyes move around the piece harmoniously and in all directions. 
            

Sculpture 4: Focal Point

"Alabanza" 

For my final sculpture, I decided to work with focal point. I knew I wanted to make a vertical statement, so I created a diamond-shaped structure wrapped with clear tape and adorned with pins atop a plain wooden base. By creating a stark contrast between the horizontal and vertical planes of the sculpture, I automatically created a focal point, however I wanted to emphasize it even more. To do so, I added a small hanging piece in the diamond structure, to which I gave some fine detail. I still felt like something was missing, however, which is when I decided to add the straight pins (as seen in the w.i.p. photo below). I bent them with my scissors into a state of praise, and so even their line of sight meets up with the small centerpiece of the diamond. I feel like this piece accomplishes what I set out to do, however I believe the main structure could have been strengthened by better, more concise measurements. Like I said, patience, patience, patience!

                      

Class Discussion of Mementos

From Susan Stewart's On Longing:

1. The body is the primary mode of perceiving scale.
2. Capacity of objects to serve as traces of authentic experience is exemplified by the souvenir.
3. The souvenir reduces the public, the monumental, and the three-dimensional into the miniature, that which can be enveloped by the body.
4. Nostalgia cannot be sustained without loss.
5. To have a souvenir of the exotic is to possess both a specimen and a trophy.

Margin notes from our discussion:

• A remanent
• Our bodies as a home
• Own your thoughts, own the things that make you you
• What is "exotic"?
• (I circled "authentic" and boxed "loss")
• Fortune cookie fortunes: the visuals of the environment in which you receive them, the colors/textures of the experience (intangible?), the people 
• Peeling away the layers
• The process of making meaning - why do certain things stick with us? 

For Little Laura, caterpillars were a token of a day well spent

My freewrite:

      One of the first things I think about when I think about mementos and memories is smell. It's truly the way I access my past. Of course other senses matter too, but there's something undeniably evocative about smell. I can throw a few out there: waxy crayons in the thick wooden cupboard adjacent to the tiny kitchen window at grandma and grandma's house; stale coffee and cigarettes and citrus spray in dad's car, especially the old Fifth Avenue with the sagging fabric ceiling; watermelon-like freshly-cut grass at the old Manhattan house and that cool yet metallic smell of the sprinklers we used to play in during the summer; the sweet plastic and rubber of the tub of Halloween party favors I kept in my closet and would take out to play shop; the "merchandise" scent - in a cheap way, almost sugary but also a bit off, a bit rank - of Beall's Outlet, and then the contrasting richness of expensive cologne in department stores at Christmastime...

     
     Speaking of Christmas, I will never forget the smell of warm plastic lights around the tree, and musty, dusty cardboard boxes from the garage, and mom's favorite Storm Watch Yankee Candle she always lights when we have company, and the homey fragrances of dishes cooking in the oven and on the stovetop. Things being made and being shared. Things becoming so much more than what they are. I could go on and on recounting, through smell, places I've experienced. I am astounded by everything I remember and even more so, how those things remember me.

Looking back on what I wrote:

     It's obvious that the process of making meaningful mementos is intricate and intimate. Although I talk at length about smell, my freewrite is not entirely tangential; in order to make sense of the project and choose something really important to me, I have to riffle through my memory files, most of which I access first through scents, then visuals, then sounds, then taste and touch and so on...

     In fact, right now I'm listening to a song that will forever remind me of the International Dance Olympics competition I attended in Riesa, Germany when I was fifteen. I immediately liked the song, but the space in which I experienced it was so strange and surreal: a large, wide-open arena that was mostly gray except for the bright blue and red stage, smelled like cabbage and doner kebab, and was very, very cold. (It was snowing outside, since it was late November, but I have a feeling that even during the hottest days of the summer, the inside of the Erdgas would be freezing.) The entirety of my experience in Germany was dreamlike and so rich in detail that I have difficulty narrowing down what materials I would want to emphasize were I to do my memento based on this trip.

     And that's the trick, isn't it - deciding what to put in and what to leave out.

         

 The song of cold cement, and red and blue tiles, and cabbage and doner, and snow, and team jackets, and pre-performance anxiety , and so many things

Response to Christopher Turner's "Inventory/The Tokens"

Babies/Tokens: What are objects, and how do they define us?

Christopher Turner's piece Inventory/The Tokens introduces the objects found at the Foundling Museum, relics from the days in which the London hospital was used as the drop-off site for unwanted babies. The hospital gave women a safe place to shed their unwanted "baggage," however the pretense of "do-gooding" is questionable: by 1756, more than a decade after the hospital's opening, two-thirds of the 1,500 children admitted had died. One thing that really struck me was how in this process, the babies themselves were objectified and consequently made inhuman and commercial. Once the hospital changed practices after accusations of encouraging "vice and illegitimacy," they instituted a new rule that "if any peculiar marks are left with the child great care will be taken for their preservation." Besides the blatant arbitrariness of the notion that those infants given a "token" deserve greater care, it absolutely shocked me how some women felt comfortable leaving not just one important part of themselves but also another - may it be a medal, necklace, brooch, or the like - in the hands of strangers.

The exchange of babies and tokens thus became a transaction of goods, however not one devoid of emotion. As Turner writes, "These trinkets are transitional objects - severed umbilical cords - that embody the grief of separation" (17). The process is both intimate and distant, harmonious and dissonant. Something about the listing of the children's attire and their distinguishing features gave me chills. It seems like such a cold way to approach the process. In no way can the tangibility of an object a baby cannot even begin to comprehend (literally or figuratively) replace the missing presence of such intangibles as love, hope, and compassion.

Apparently, the mothers' tokens were put on display in order to attract more charitable donors to the hospital. Even today some of the objects remain on display behind their glass vitrines: "a hazelnut; a coin with five holes; a brass cross; a crushed thimble; an ivory gambling token in the form of a fish; a penknife handle...a tiny ring, with a heart-shaped stone, is inscribed, "qui me neglige me perd..." (17). The range of the items is simultaneously fascinating and heartbreaking. It makes me wonder what made these objects so significant. The article states that the tokens were often used as identifiers rather than gifts, objects that could prove kinship; because of this, the women often halved their tokens in order to prove a match when reunited. But only 152 of the 16,282 children admitted between 1741 and 1760 were ever reclaimed.

I have luckily never been in a situation where I had to make a decision to keep or get rid of a child. I hope I never am. Because of this, I am reticent to judge the women who left their babies at the Foundling Hospital, never to return. I realize the difficulties of rearing a child, especially in a time when single mothers were considered whores, travesties of motherhood, outsiders. But even when I focus solely on the objects the article describes, I feel so unsettled. Everything they represent - loss, transition, love, sadness, regret, anticipation - overwhelms me. As I said above, maybe it's the way they, to an extent, dehumanize the recipient. Or maybe it's the perfect and absolute fracturing of an entity. Although the dictionary offers many definitions for a token, one states, "a small part representing a whole." The women, pulling away from their center, scattered babies and tokens. Though the process may have been unconscious or gone unacknowledged, in doing so, these women broke not only themselves but also those extensions of their beings, simultaneously losing and finding who and what they were and would come to be. 

Fabric scraps as a token for orphans

Gregor's Room: A Response

Gregor's Room

Franz Kafka's classic, The Metamorphosis, is strange and lovely and very sad. Many elements of the story pique my interest, however I am most drawn to the relationship between Gregor and his sister, Grete, both before and after his transformation. Besides Gregor's obvious transition into a bug, Grete also experiences her own evolution and awakening throughout the course of the story; for example, what was once cautious but loving care turns into indifference and anger toward Gregor. The pivotal scene in which Gregor creeps out of his room to hear his sister play the violin for the lodgers broke my heart. Kafka asks, "Was he an animal that music so captivated him?" The dehumanization of Gregor, the slow yet consistent degradation of his former life, culminates when one of the lodgers spies Gregor approaching his sister and cries out to Gregor's father. After the lodgers make their exit, Grete declares they must get rid of Gregor, that she will "no longer utter [her] brother's name in front of this monster." Although I saw the change coming, I was still shocked by her use of the word "monster"! I believe Grete also became a little less human by the end of the tale. She was no longer able to see Gregor as anything more than a disgusting nuisance; no trace of her brother remained. Her seeing barely skimmed the surface.

I have a sister who I love very much and is also my best friend. Throughout The Metamorphosis, I kept thinking about how I would react if she woke up one day transformed into a giant bug. (Even though it seems ludicrous, impossible even, I'm still going to knock on wood!) I would do everything possible to help her get better: take time off from school, get her to the best doctors, protect her from tabloids and the like. Thinking about how much my life would change is actually making me feel a little sick. And Gregor's family's life changed too, albeit in different ways. Instead of focusing on helping him get better, it seemed like the moment they realized Gregor had changed into something strange, they became scared of him and avoided him (except for his sister, to some extent) as much as possible. I would not lock my sister away and shove bowls of milk and bread pieces under the door. 

If I were to transform into a shocking new form, I know I would react differently than Gregor. He seems so detached from it all. It takes him a long while to actually start internalizing the metamorphosis and recognize the gravity of his situation. At the beginning of his transformation, all he can think about is work. Work would be the last thing on my mind if I woke up as a giant bug! But Kafka didn't characterize him as such a workaholic by accident. Gregor's metamorphosis reveals much about the human condition, about how we can become grotesque and savage without even turning into something physically different than ourselves.

A key image (no pun intended) that stuck with me last night when I couldn't fall asleep: Gregor using his jaw to turn the key in his door and the resulting brown liquid that flowed forth. GOD. Also, the rotting apple stuck in his back. So sad, yet so repulsive. Kafka did a wonderful job with his imagery.

Words
Derangement - a disturbance of normal bodily function or operation
Chagrin - distress of the mind caused by humiliation, disappointment, or failure
Entreaty - an earnest request or petition; a plea
Prerogative - an exclusive or special right, power, or privilege; a distinctive excellence
Plaintive - mournful or melancholy

       

Some Lists

Books I've Read

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer

"Every moment before this one depends on this one."

"I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone."




You Are Here - Thich Nhat Hanh

"The wave can live the life of a wave, but it can also do better. It can live every moment of its life deeply touching its nature of no-birth and no-death...If the wave realizes that it is water, its fear disappears. It enjoys its rising and falling much more. Rising is joyful, and falling is, too."






To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

"'Atticus, he was real nice.'

'Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.'"







You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried - Susannah Gora

"...Printed right there, in inconspicuous blue letters positioned just above the poster's photo of geeky Anthony Michael Hall and the dreamy Michael Schoeffling and the soulful Molly Ringwald, is a sentence that no one could have predicted - when it was written over twenty-five years ago - would go on to describe the shared experience of a generation forever changed by the movies of their youth:

'It's the time of your life,' it reads, 'that may last a lifetime.'"



Quinn's Passage - Kazim Ali

"Quinn imagines the ocean in his heart.

But in the body the blood rushes to all the far corners, and then in to its heart.

Where do the waters of the ocean rush back to when they flee from the beach?

The answer is the same as what is 1 divided by 0, he thinks."



The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky

"So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be."







Books I Want to Read

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

The Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan

Cien Anos de Soledad - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

People I Find Inspiring

Melanie Moore

Melanie's incredible season 8 SYTYCD audition




Melanie and Robert - Contemporary








Stephen Fry

Mr. Fry's website





"Uppy-Downy, Mood Swingy"








Karl Pilkington

(He's the one with the head like a f---ing orange)




Karl's movie idea, "A Love of Two Brains," made into a trailer




Karl in Egypt







Music I Like

Alt-J (∆)

"Taro"

"Fitzpleasure"

America

"Ventura Highway"

"Three Roses"

"Tin Man"

Boards of Canada

"Roygbiv"

"Oscar See Through Red Eye"

"Left Side Drive"

"Julie and Candy"

Kimbra

"Settle Down"

"Cameo Lover"

Toro y Moi

"Still Sound"

"Say That"

"Cola"

Yonderboi

"Almost Sweet"

"All We Go To Hell"