Day Two (David)

Day two was marginally more sedate than day one. It is now the end of day four, as I am writing. I enjoyed going to see artists in their studios, rather than just seeing their jewellery in galleries, although there is certainly merit to seeing the work of several artists in one place, and an exhibition is a different matter. We visited Ela Bauer in the morning, and visited Gallery Ra and Ted Noten’s studio afterwards.

Ted’s talk was very interesting, I was particularly intrigued by his early work, and what he said about his early life. I enjoyed the story he told about being a bricklayer at seventeen and getting fired for being creative with the layout of the bricks in his walls and the project in which he cut up the body of a Mercedes and turned the pieces, complete with the curves of the car body, into brooches, but the idea was rejected by Mercedes because it revealed the thinness of the metal that the car body is made of.  I think my interest in these stories stems not only from their inherent humour, but the way they demonstrate where our world and the ‘real world’ grate against one another, so much so that they’re almost allegorical tales, which warn us about the pitfalls involved with dealing with people from the ‘real world.’