Out of the Frame

Introduction to Out of the Frame
Mid America Print Conference University of Nebraska, 2004

     A.Artaud questioned the aesthetics of the art object, he questioned the value of the end product separated form the mind and life that made it and views it. The static object hanging on a gallery wall limits and constrains the artist and relegates the artwork to a decorative and commercial context. Artists for more than a century have striven toward freeing themselves and their work from past cultural constraints. Artists have moved toward an art that reduces the distance between thought and audience, between life and imagination. Several years ago Christian Boltanski told me that he had made a work that was unrecognizable as art, he had taken the family photos from one persons house and replaced them with anothers family’s photos. The two families lived with histories and faces to which they had no connection and no visitors seemed to notice.

Bridging the Float World

     See the mouse traps shaped like boats floating on a clam, vast and deep sea. The traps have all snapped shut, tight on the beliefs of the souls of the sailors who are invisible on their crafts. Floating in the sky overhead is a vast progression of cultural, political, social, natural, scientific, and indigenous forms hanging above the sea like a volleyball net. Let the game begin! even though the rules are as yet not written or clear to the players. Its Sunday and all will be well, today all will be well.