gourdathon | Orlan
so much to say
so little time
Purple-haired gourd and glass girl Leigh Adams is an Altadena [California] based everywoman of art and craft. Art as a way to teach science. Art as a way to open up lives. Craft as a community endeavor. This weekend was the Gourd Fair L.A. [the California Gourd Arts Festival at the L.A. Arboretum (the county botanical gardens) in Arcadia, organized by Leigh, a gathering of all things and all people gourd...... Gourd painting for kids. Gourd craft for all. Iron Gourd competitions for professional gourders. (!! gourders !!) And more.
Leigh Adams came to The Longest Potholder and wove. I returned the favor and spent a morning gawking at gourds. Variety! Spectacle!
I bought a fabulous new (to me anyway) glue. I flirted with peacocks and babies. I marvelled at the organic gourd shapes—outrageous, bulbous, phallic, both..... Which was quite the contrast from the night before, when I heard Orlan.
Orlan, famed conceptual and performance artist, gave a talk at Otis Art Institute [now out in Westchester]. She is brilliant, outrageous and outraged, and very very French. It took two translators(and then some) to even begin to give the audience a sense of what she was talking about.
Plus, Orlan speaks in paragraphs.
Most people speak in phrases. Some of us speak in sentences.
Orlan? Que non!
Orlan spoke in complete paragraphs, in exquisite, complicated, art-lingo-inflected French, the two translators gasping to keep up. Et bien, au meme temps, Orlan's computer CD ROM would lock up or crash, over and over and over. [*I* finally popped up and got her monitor on a DIFFERENT computer to work with the projector.] Nonetheless, a great talk. It must have been really tough for people who don't speak French, though.
Orlan's art conversation is staggering. Gutsy. In your face. An early feminist performance artist, Orlan's concerns relate to liberating the hidden, inappropriate, colonized woman's body. Her more recent self portraits merge Precolumbian and African masks to her own face, generating a startling mutation and bringing to light the shifting cultural methods of molding the body.
Leigh Adams, on the other hand, is interested in beauty, texture, depth, and empowerment through art. The gourd has the look of the woman's pregnant belly, of breast, etc. Suggestive, natural, and primal forms, crafted in collaboration with nature.
Vive la difference!
so little time
Purple-haired gourd and glass girl Leigh Adams is an Altadena [California] based everywoman of art and craft. Art as a way to teach science. Art as a way to open up lives. Craft as a community endeavor. This weekend was the Gourd Fair L.A. [the California Gourd Arts Festival at the L.A. Arboretum (the county botanical gardens) in Arcadia, organized by Leigh, a gathering of all things and all people gourd...... Gourd painting for kids. Gourd craft for all. Iron Gourd competitions for professional gourders. (!! gourders !!) And more.
Leigh Adams came to The Longest Potholder and wove. I returned the favor and spent a morning gawking at gourds. Variety! Spectacle!
I bought a fabulous new (to me anyway) glue. I flirted with peacocks and babies. I marvelled at the organic gourd shapes—outrageous, bulbous, phallic, both..... Which was quite the contrast from the night before, when I heard Orlan.
Orlan, famed conceptual and performance artist, gave a talk at Otis Art Institute [now out in Westchester]. She is brilliant, outrageous and outraged, and very very French. It took two translators(and then some) to even begin to give the audience a sense of what she was talking about.
Plus, Orlan speaks in paragraphs.
Most people speak in phrases. Some of us speak in sentences.
Orlan? Que non!
Orlan spoke in complete paragraphs, in exquisite, complicated, art-lingo-inflected French, the two translators gasping to keep up. Et bien, au meme temps, Orlan's computer CD ROM would lock up or crash, over and over and over. [*I* finally popped up and got her monitor on a DIFFERENT computer to work with the projector.] Nonetheless, a great talk. It must have been really tough for people who don't speak French, though.
Orlan's art conversation is staggering. Gutsy. In your face. An early feminist performance artist, Orlan's concerns relate to liberating the hidden, inappropriate, colonized woman's body. Her more recent self portraits merge Precolumbian and African masks to her own face, generating a startling mutation and bringing to light the shifting cultural methods of molding the body.
Leigh Adams, on the other hand, is interested in beauty, texture, depth, and empowerment through art. The gourd has the look of the woman's pregnant belly, of breast, etc. Suggestive, natural, and primal forms, crafted in collaboration with nature.
Vive la difference!
posted by laurelpaley at 9:31 PM
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