Monday, June 6, 2011

Humidity Rising

There's a front coming our way dragging hot and humid air with it. According to Local on the 8s it's supposed to hit 90 by Thursday. Wanna know what the high's supposed to be on Friday? 67. That's right, sixty-freaking-seven degrees the day after a ninety degree day. Is it any wonder that Wisconsin seems to have birthed the lion's share of serial killers and whack-jobs? It's not the long winters, it's the changeability. Hot, cold, humid, dry, rain, wind--and that's just before noon. I'm beginning to think I should pack my wardrobe in the trunk of the car so that I'll be ready for anything once I leave the house, just in case we have a sudden blizzard in July, generated by La Nina, of course.

June 5--El Anatsui, Between Heaven and Earth. At night Anat sat in his room cutting the cans into strips or tiles, and sorting them by color. The wires he unkinked and smoothed into coils by color too. The people in his village had been weavers for all the generations before so Anat wove the wires and hung the aluminum pieces on them. He used the can colors like paint; Coca-Cola red, Pepsi blue, Fanta purple or orange, green from Quaker State. He manipulated the sheet as he made it, giving dimension to his pieces. He liked that if you stood back from his constructions you could see rhythm and movement and gradations of color but if you were close to it you could see the logos and the bar codes and the ingredients lists. He thought it was a great joke that he played on the art snobs by using such common things most people called trash to make his art.

This is a cool wall-mounted art piece. I'd like to stand and study it in person. Maybe someday.
Stay cool.
--Barbara

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