I-cord is great travel knitting. I-cord in hand, I flew to New York to stay with my sister and to go out to New Jersey with her to visit my mother. In between visits, I got to play in NY, including the theater one night with said sister and her boyfriend. My sister and I also went to two museums -- the Museum of Art and Design and the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum. The latter is actually the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum and is part of the Smithsonian.
The Museum of Art and Design used to be the American Craft Museum on West 52nd St. It is now on Columbus Circle. Their big inaugural exhibit is called Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary and showcases art work made from reused materials, everything from nails and metal bottle strips to plastic forks, cotton swabs and shopping bags. The resulting art work is stunning. The piece using plastic forks and cotton swabs is a huge installation vaguely resembling a sea anemone, with incredible grace and depth -- truly interesting to look at, rather than a "hey, look, I am making art from funny objects" result. One piece not represented on the web page is the one I chose when asked on a survey which piece I liked best. Using paper from newspapers and magazines, the artist created pseudo-museum artifacts and set up on a table a faux exhibit of items looted from Iraqui museums during the war. Each item had its informational card, with faux facts (i.e., "a pottery shard from the 10th century" describing a small paper bowl) and quotes, not from historians, but from people involved in the war. Donald Rumsfeld for example. Other gorgeous pieces included a bench -- a gorgeous piece of reclaimed wood studded with thick nails the artist then bent at 90 degree angles. He used a torch on all of it to obtain a certain patina. The nails are thick and flattened and you WANT to sit on that bench. The artist obtained a beautiful curve, almost a wave, across the bench.
One fiber piece I remember, though it may have been in their permanent collection and not in Second Lives, was a beautiful fabric assemblage that included some tapestry pieces. They also had pieces from the permanent collection by the fascinating weavers Helen Hernmark and Jack Lenor Larsen and some interesting embroidery pieces.
The Cooper Hewitt is a small museum, and part of it was closed as they set up a new exhibit. The exhibit we saw, though, was very interesting. it is called Fashioning Felt. They had a beautiful range of contemporary design work in felt, ranging from thin nuno felt scarves, to industrial felt, to felt dresses, felt stones, felt furniture, felt art. In recognition of the use of felt for yurts among nomadic people, they turned one room into a sort of nouveau yurt, with beautiful transparent art felt curtaining the walls. I decided that was what I wanted to do with my own patio. (Yeah, right. But hey, that patio would be much more interesting as an art installation.) The link will take you to great pictures from the exhibit. They also had 3 short videos showing how felt is made by industry, by artists, and by the yurt dwellers.
As usual, I came away inspired.
Oooh, I'm jealous you got to see the Cooper-Hewitt exhibition. I got the catalog, and it looks fabulous. Sounds like a fun trip!
Posted by: Julia | April 15, 2009 at 12:59 PM