Dennis Hollingsworth

Admin: MailCall

Due to my monomaniacalness during the past month, painting the big canvas, I have placed much admin chores on the back burner. I apologise for the continued lame and busted comment function in this blog... but truth be told, I am super wary of the comment spam. I will wish upon a star/say a prayer/kill a chicken (or just eat one) for some solution to present itself someday soon. Or maybe I'll find some web genius to slueth their way into a solution.

Until then and without further adieu, the mail bag...

(By the way, I have a sum total of two emails. People are probably trained away by the broken comment engine. As it is, I am grateful for them.)

John Holdway wrote:

Hi Dennis
I like what you are thinking about. skillz- the would be artist should create their own skill training regimen. A sculptor would learn more about metal fabrication at a community college than from any 25 year old MFA art professor. An art school could be half poly-tech and half art history and philosophy.

A different approach would be to train an artist to access technical trades men as an architect does the building trades. The artist as the mastermind directing metal fabricators.
Post Studio sits in the chair of an engineer without scope or experience to know what is possible.

Where is the art for the artist? Is it purely in the concept or does it flow from the process of making? The art is the process for the artist and the product for the audience. The product may 99% concept but takes some form to bridge the mind gap.

John Holdway

What I was driving at was how the duality between techinique/materials and intellection (I'm avoiding the term, "theory", but that's the target anyway) is more complementary than antagonistic. I want to find ideas through the physical artwork, in its' making and in its' presentation... and conversely, I want to find the making or physicality through a traffic with ideas.

The trouble with teaching specific technical trades is that this might jump the gun on the conceptual lead... that the kids would get too deep in specialities before they learn how think and thus harness their inspiration. I'm sympathetic to your suggestion that art education might find inspiration in architecture curriculum, and I hope that this is not only because I am an architect. Architects learn enough about various other disciplines in order to conduct a credible conversation with engineers, contractors, material suppliers. With traditional media shifting so rapidly (who learns bronze casting in art school anymore?), teaching systems and strategies for managing the intersection between conceptualization and material systems might be the way to go.

Nah, that idea would blow the brains of most art educators anyhoo.

But it is worth contemplating that art education, with its format set in the 15th-19th centuries, is due for an overhaul in these asymptotic times. I mean, look at this marvelous world that we are creating!

(Listen to me and all this fancy talk, as I sit amongst bottles of damar and linseed oil.)

ps: funny video.

***

I really love the ?work-in-progress? collages you do on your site? Ahora, etc.

Keeps me coming back and I?m thinking of ripping it off, if you don?t mind, of course?

Daniel

Daniel, rip away! I'm ripping Picasso, NASA, Gordon Matta-Clark and David Hockney as it is.

Nice blog, by the way.