exhibition notes

We continue to plan the space and consider ideas for the opening panel. We are thinking about projecting "LACE FUTURES" on a billowing, diaphanous curtain.

Budda and the doiley

lace is also about what is, and what is not, to be touched, which brings to mind Grandma Beckie's Doilies. Doilies are small, hand made, crocheted lace mats. While very beautiful and intricate, they were usually made to protect the surface they covered. They also are sometimes referred to as antimacassars because they were supposed to prevent macassar, a hair oil, from transferring to, and ruining furniture upholstery. In my Grandma's apartment, all of the chairs, the sofa, and small side table were covered with doilies. The only thing in the apartment that I remember my cousins and I were allowed to come in direct contact with was the small wooden Budda my Uncle Dave have brought back from his military service in WWII. The doilies gave me an idea for a chair which would have only doilies for arms and backrest. I imagined an uncomfortable stool would sit within the wire frame.

birdsnest lace

the birdsnest stadium in Beijing by Herzog & de Meuron, is a beautiful piece of architectural lace. My own sculpture has often been about creating a sketch in space. This has a times led me to create support structures that would allow for the intricacy of the work, its undercuts and overlaps, and yet come free of the work with the ease of the magician snapping the tablecloth free of the table setting. One such experiment shown below was simply a string or thread, run through white glue and wrapped around a foam ball. After the glue has set, the ball is submerged in acetone and the foam is dissolved, leaving the sphere of thread. When I did see the birdsnest stadium I first drew it in my favorite medium, wire. The later, applied the string and foam technique.

source of light

One of my students was wondering about my fascination with sci-fi films or more precisely with flying saucers and their bright lights. Actually, use of bright light in film is just one more reference to this most powerful phenomenon. "Let there be light." We talk of "seeing the light," "the light at the end of the tunnel," and the most contradictory "blinding light." I have included some photographs I took in 1974 in Jerusalem which trace my own fascination.

barbed entry

barbed wire coil behind a translucent panel. lit from behind. The barbed wire photo is by Caroline Härdter and is found on Flickr.

another entry idea

cat's cradle. a playful web of lines. perhaps a flourescent color like the apple green below.

laced

the entry to the exhibit will require through a passage through an intensly spotlighted area. As people enter, they will be painted in light with a lace pattern. this effect will be visible to people sitting out in the lounge across from the exhibition space. this effect I want is reminiscent of the end of the movie "Starman" where Jeff Bridges as the alien, returns to his mother ship. He descends into a meteor crater and is bathed in the light from the ship and snow seems to fall through the light. the film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" also uses this intense light to dramatically mark passage. the exhibit entry will create a transition from this bright spotlight to the selected display lighting of work within the otherwise darkened presentation space.

Caution Lace Futures Ahead

thinking about how lace work manifests itself in our everyday vision. those ever present plastic fence barriers came to mind and moments later I was passing one, interwoven with a caution tape and leaning against a pattern of bare bushes.

yet another sample board

click on image to enlarge

Sample of an early submission

Note that the designer has tried to provide images which explain his idea and then uses a short narrative to put it all in the proper context. All this and it is on one 20"x15" board!

Lace Futures Grand Assembly Information

All student work for the Lace Futures Grand Assembly at the Kanbar Presentation Space February 24-26 should be delivered to Cristina in the ID Senior Design Studio on or before Wednesday February 18.

The preferred format is for work to be mounted on 20"x15", vertical, 1/4 (or 5/16") thick foam core. A short narrative which explains the lace concept and an image of the work on a single board is best. Name of the designer or creator of the work should appear on the face of the board along with an e-mail address.

Lace Futures Team

this is my Lace Futures Team. (L to R) Frank, Sarah, Jess, Eric, Cristina, and Ted. Frank is putting in the rear window of the Kanbar Center in this model of the Kanbar Presentation Space. Any of the team can answer questions and provide information on the Lace Futures Project.

Hy

....lace

This piece of corrugated cardboard came at the bottom of the bag of Chinese take out. This is the stage of the Lace Futures project where every string you pull on is connected in some way to lace. So there at the bottom of the bag is a piece of corrugated cardboard which has been cut off from a larger piece and cut right through a word, leaving the word "lace." How fortunate. I start wondering about the missing part of the word....
birthplace
bootlace
commonplace
displace
fireplace
interlace
marketplace
misplace
necklace
palace
place
populace
replace
shoelace
showplace
solace
someplace
unlace
workplace

Hy

First Official Meeting of the Year!

As Ted Layton suggested, we need to have some regular meeting times to show progress and discuss what needs to be done. The meeting times will be every Tuesday and Thursday at 12:15pm.

I have chosen these times because it is during the common hour when no classes are scheduled. I have moved it to 12:15 to give you time to get back from other extracurricular activities that may have been scheduled at 11. The meetings will only be as long as necessary. Some days we will just meet and exchange information. There is a lot of work that needs to get done before the end of January. Also, as per Ted's suggestions, we will set up deadlines for the list of work we need done.

Our next meeting is this Thursday @ 12:15. We will meet in the ID Studio by the model of the Kanbar Space. See you then.

Hy

I like the name I chose for this project. "Lace Futures." On one level the name spans time. The very old imagined new again. On another it is about the value of ideas and how we can invest in them. "Get rid of those pork bellies and buy me some more lace futures." I woke up one morning with the end of a dream in my mind. Circular patterns rising off a lace tablecloth. At first they seemed to be flying doilies but they were flying saucers.

no thing

So I'm sitting in a booth at the Trolley Car Diner with my friend David and we are discussing with the waitress whether anything should ever be called something as unappetizing as "breakfast meat." As we wait for lunch which is a breakfast, I catch him up on the Lace Futures project and my recent fascination with voids (see past few entries). As I am talking about nothing which becomes something, he tells me that I am restating a Zen idea. "No thing." Not "nothing," but very much the opposite idea. He puts his finger in the empty coffee cup, stirs it around and shows me that without the "no thing" inside there is no place for the refill of coffee, for which he is waiting.


The character "no thing"

voids

Why are we so interested in what isn't there?

connections

Are the strands of thread connecting the patterned areas or is it the patterned areas which anchor the threads between? In "Man on Wire," the Philippe Petit film about walking the wire between the world trade towers, are we interested in the Towers or the wire?

Highways and Rest Stops

images... I keep seeing different iterations of lace.
A fascinating characteristic of lace are the great voids. Lace is not simply about pattern and repeat. Pattern is dumb in a way. It doesn't trust you to "get it" or "keep it" so it establishes a truth in easily found repetition. There is certainly pattern and repeat in lace but it occurs differently. You think you understand it but then it starts to get sparse. It's a bit like driving on a superhighway. You know there will be other places to stop, other restaurants, gas stations, small towns but then you are out on that long strand of highway with no confirmation that the pattern will repeat. Just when you think you have lost it you pick up the pattern again and there is the sign for the rest stop. It is pattern connected by possibility. There is assurance in pattern, but lace is always a risk.


Hy