Project 1: Process
ARTIST RESEARCH

Tom Friedman

The work of Tom Friedman strikes the viewer in a very unique way. The artist creates these intricate and highly refined works out of seemingly everyday objects – Styrofoam, pencils, and spaghetti, among others (designboom.com). The final works come across as being very playful in the material that they were crafted out of, yet come across as these very beautiful, eye-grabbing objects. For example, in Friedman’s piece Loop (1995), he has crafted a single, wiggly, continuous loop out of a box of cooked spaghetti. The actual process of making the work is highly intricate, as the practice of connecting the strands of spaghetti is fraught with the possibility of failure, yet Friedman specializes in the, “…Process of isolating and exaggerating the typical functions of these materials until they are almost unrecognizable” (Dan Cameron). After viewing his work, the viewer’s own perceptions have been “suitably altered” and they will no longer be able to look at objects like toothpaste or spaghetti the same way ever again. It is the seemingly simple material that Friedman utilizes with such precision argues that everything around use is, “…endlessly connected and endlessly mutable” (Adam McEwen). The repetition of materials and distortion of scale are Friedman’s tools into gaining more information about the cycles of life that surround us.

Tom Friedman, Loop, 1995.

     Friedman’s work is interesting in how it relates to process in that there is a strict, unique process behind each individual work, one that directly relates to the materials he is currently dealing with. For example, the process behind Untitled (1999), was completely based off of Friedman’s findings/interest in how his hair would become stuck in a bar of soap. The process for the final piece then consisted of the artist meticulously spacing and layering his own pubic hair into a spiral shape on a bar of soap. The dedication to the materials and the process behind the melding of the materials sets up the viewer’s interaction with the work as a symbol of “inherent human interactions and cleanliness” (T. J. Huff). Yet this particular work is only one example of the constant variations of process that Friedman utilizes; he works with such a variety of materials to reveal the systems that are at work in our daily lives (designboom.com) and to create artworks that are aesthetically pleasing as well as conceptually founded and culturally relevant (T. J. Huff).

Tom Friedman, Untitled, 1999.

Sources:

http://www.designboom.com/portrait/friedman.html
Huff, T J. "Daily Impermanence." ArtsEditor. N.p., 1 Feb. 2004. Web. 29 Jan. 2012.
     http://www.artseditor.com/html/features/0204_friedman.shtml.
Cameron, Dan. "Tom Friedman." New Museum. N.p., 3 Feb. 2002 . Web. 29 Jan. 2012.
     http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/356/tom_friedman.

McEwen, Adam. "Some Assembly Required." frieze. N.p., 9 Sept. 2002. Web. 29 Jan. 2012. http://www.frieze.com/issue/print_article/some_assembly_required/

Images:

http://www.luhringaugustine.com/artists/tom-friedman#/images/14/

http://momentc.blogspot.com/2011/01/tom-friedman.html

Jackie Winsor

Jackie Winsor, Four Corners, 1975.

Jackie Winsor’s sculptures are objects that contain a great energy behind them. Yet this energy is hidden or unknown to the viewer at first, instead the pieces display this energy through the amount of time and commitment that Winsor put into making them. The knowledge of the process of their making adds a whole other element to these works, they become not just these stationary objects made of rope and wood and nails and cement, but become objects with an actual life behind them. Early in her sculpture career, Winsor said that she thought of her sculptures as drawings, drawings in which she wanted to make the form “fuller and fatter” until a “shape” was there (Whitney Chadwick).
     Winsor herself has said that she aimed to, “…Both visually and physically build up a sense of energy” and that she came to see the, “…Time I put in it as my energy transferring, and when it became embodied it created its own presence” (Whitney Chadwick). Such a presence is made obvious when looking at her piece, Four Corners (1972) which, sitting in the gallery at an imposing 1500 pounds, only begins to detail the four-day a week for six months creation process (D.E. Scott). The work itself was made from Winsor setting out a frame of four two-foot logs that were bound together by thousands of feet of twine that Winsor had unraveled from older pieces of rope (D. E. Scott). This commitment to the materials and the process of making the piece shows Winsor’s attachment to the ritual of creation and the painstaking series of repeated motions used to create them (Cathy Curtis).

Winsor’s connection to the concept of “process” is obvious. Her works are monuments to the lengths of time and the expenditure of her own energy that it took to carefully bond different materials into the final work. For example, Nail Piece (1970) was created over a period of three months, during which Winsor joined together two seven-foot wood planks with thousands of nails until nails covered the entire surface (Dean Sobel). She then continued this ritual until the work was nine planks high, and had at that point used an equal weight of wood and nails – 50 pounds each (Sobel). Her works are a unison of time and materials that allow for said materials to exist together and at the same time, the ritual of the work’s making, the months of repetition of action provide the energy that the piecesrepresents.

Jackie Winsor, Nail Piece, 1972.

Sources:

Winsor, Jackie. "Interview with Jackie Winsor." Interview by Whitney Chadwick.Oxford Art Online. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Jan. 2012. http://www.oxfordartonline.com/public/page/winsorinter.

Curtis, Cathy. "Hang Time:Getting Into the Sculptures of Jackie Winsor Requires Getting Down With Them at Neport Harbor." Los Angeles Times. N.p., 13 Feb. 1992. Web. 29 Jan. 2012.
                 http://articles.latimes.com/1992-02-13/news/ol-3040_1_jackie-winsor.

Scott, D E. "Index of Selected Artists in the collection: Jackie Winsor." Oberlin College. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Jan. 2012.             http://www.oberlin.edu/amam/Winsor_FourCorners.htm.

Sobel, Dean, et al. Jackie Winsor. Milwaukee: Milwaukee Art Museum, 1991. N. pag.

Images:

http://www.bluffton.edu/womenartists/womenartistspw/winsor/winsor.html