The Tears of Things

New Art: Density Our Destiny

Density Our Destiny. Colored pencil, graphite, and digital printing collage on paper. Maquette for a sculpture. © 2006 Jerome du Bois

by Jerome du Bois

This is a drawing for a ten-foot by eight-foot sculpture, which may or may not be made. The sculpture itself, mounted on a wall, would be constructed of wood, rope, and fabric, and would be different from the drawing, in that the "pencils" on the top row would be in seventy-two colors, instead of eight repetitions of nine. The bound bundle of rope at the bottom would rest on the floor.

Further explanation and description follows the jump.

This meme -- density our destiny-- goes back, for me, about twenty-two years, while I was reading The Next Economy by Paul Hawken. Hawken, an environmental entrepeneur --or bioneer, in the new lingo-- founded Erewhon, the natural foods distributor, way back in the day. By 1983 he was already deep into Smith & Hawken, the high-end gardening-tool company he also founded. In the book, he used the tools he sold as examples of dense information carriers. That is, every hoe, shovel, and pick in their catalog was the end product of centuries of development and user feedback. Over thousands of years, humans have learned, through trial, error, and reason, about the best woods, the best metals, the best ways of fitting the two together, and the best edges, to make the best tools. So that the S & H tools were most distilled, refined products of that information sifting. They were the smartest tools, because they were dense with all that engineering history.

Hawken applied that reasoning to information itself, just on the cusp of the burgeoning personal computer revolution, and years before the internet took off. His point: The more intelligence you could pack into the smallest amount of recoverable space, the better.

I had just got my first IBM PC, I was studying computer programming at the time, so that resonated with me. So I wrote down in his book somewhere, "Density Our Destiny."

I have always been interested in portability; don't ask me why. When I was a teenager I conjured the notion of "pocket stones," thumb-sized shapes with Braille-like embossing that you could rub and thereby recover a poem, or a bit of wisdom.

A year or so after I read Hawken I saw Back To The Future. In that movie, the tongue-tied teenage nerd George McFly, mangling words given to him by his future son Marty, declares to his future bride Lorraine, "You are my density."

The year after that came Barrow and Tipler's The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, which contains the seeds of the Omega Point Theory, which is all about density being our destiny.

So I carried the idea around, for years, then finally began shaping it out, for years. The original piece was just going to be two fabric-covered slabs of wood with fabric-covered cut-out wooden letters glued to their surfaces. Then I got the idea of hanging free-swinging wooden dowels, also fabric-covered, from the bottom one. Just a few weeks ago they turned to rope, and the dowels grew all the way up through both wooden slabs, turning colors as they grew.

Now the piece evokes candles, a menorah, weaving, sewing, quilting, color-blending, a tree, the tension between suspension and support, and wordplay. It has come a long way. It's denser now.

O CHRISTMAS BIRD!

Nature Photography by Catherine King. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce in any form.

DAY OF THE PARROT

Nature Photography by Catherine King. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce in any form.

Gingerbread Gothic

Gingerbread Gothic. 2006. Digital net art © Catherine King. Do not reproduce in any form.

One Shoe + Zero Imagination = Good To Go

by Jerome du Bois with Catherine King

You see something --something stupidly wrong-- and it bugs the hell out of you, but you don't want to write about it because --well, why bother? It won't change anything, these people have impoverished minds. So forget about it. But then you see it again, and again, and it sticks in your craw, like a bone in the throat, and so you say to yourself, You know, they're throwing it in my face, I'm going to throw something right back. (Well, we both are, Catherine and I, since we've talked a lot about this; I'm just doing the principal writing here.)

So there they are at Biltmore Fashion Park, a couple of dozen huge photographs of "Treasures From The Vault" plastered (vinylized?) on several of the outside walls of the newly redone upscale mall. "The Vault" being Dennita Sewell's fashion sanctorum at the Phoenix Art Museum, and the "treasures" being some of the dresses and other accessories stored therein, in their grey boxes.

What follows in this piece is about the complete lack of imagination evident in this publicity for the Museum, both in the photos themselves and in the concept --"Treasures from the Vault"-- itself. I have nothing to gain from writing about this. So why do it? Because I'm talking to myself, telling myself how I --how Catherine and I together-- would have done it to the nines, because it makes me feel better, in these shallow, stupid, lazy-ass times, to imagine how sweetly beautiful the whole damn thing could have been, and how it could have been worth some congratulations. (And, not incidentally, traffic for the Museum.)

The treasures are mostly dresses, but Sewell also included a matador's suit of lights, a couple of fancy fans, a pair of gloves, a leather motorcycle jacket, a '20s men's bathing suit, a Campbell's Soup pattern miniskirt (from the soup company, not Andy Warhol), a woman's hat, and . . . one . . . woman's . . . shoe.

I think it was the one shoe that got us going. Who displays one shoe? in a world where most people have two feet? Dennita Sewell, whose mind must reside inside a grey box, does. It's a beautiful antique, this shoe, all red and gold and velvet, and it must have a partner somewhere nearby. Why not put them together? You know, a pair of shoes. It --they, the pair-- would have evoked emotion, and stimulated empathy, in the viewer.

The solitary shoe is a perfect stand-in for the emptiness, the impoverished imagination, within all the photographs, every one of which is totally contextless, on plain, one-color backgrounds, the dresses hung on boring white mannequins. Look: put the pair of shoes on a brocade carpet, at the foot of a bed with a baroque duvet, and include a pair of stockings --one hanging down the foot of the bed, the other rolled up next to the shoes. That's context.

The matador's suit of lights? Outside, idiota, in the sun, so it sparkles, and standing in the dust, with a red wall behind it, and long-stemmed red roses at its feet and falling through the air around it.

Are you getting the idea? Gaslight and fireplaces for the antique evening gowns. Go-go boots and disco balls for the Sixties party stuff. An urban street scene for the Fifties brown suit ensemble. River rocks and a tree branch for the vintage bathing suit to hang from. A vintage Sixties kitchen suite for the Campbell's Soup shift. The motorcycle jacket draped over a vintage Indian (motorcycle). A film noir night scene for the black cape and slanted hat outfit. Fancy fans on bird's-eye-maple tables, with jewelled lamps and pearls spilling out of velvet drawers. The evening gloves on a lace tablecloth, next to a man's top hat and walking stick.

No time? Hell, she had years to set it up. The props are all over town, beginning with the Costume Institute's connections and including just about any antique store worth the name, most of whom would be happy to cooperate for a little attribution. Those photographs could have been beautiful. As they stand, they look as embarrassing as jackalopes stuck on a bare wall.

As to the second part, the treasures themselves. Except for the pieces which are in the "After Dark" exhibition at the Museum, the objects in the photos should be right there, in Biltmore Fashion Park. In vitrines, of course, or securely under glass, but there, in strategically-placed venues, with neatly printed descriptions and pointers to the Museum. It's easy: the dresses, of course, could be distributed among Saks, Escada, Macy's, Amy's, and so on. The matador's suit of lights? At Polo, naturally. The vintage bathing suit at Tommy Bahamas. The Campbell's Soup dress? You guessed it: Williams-Sonoma, in a frame up on a wall.

You see how this works? The fans go to Betsey Johnson, in the glass case just next to the register. The Apple Store gets the motorcycle jacket. Fortuny's three confections gracing Godiva's. And Stuart Wietzmann should have the shoes --both of them.

In the gang photos, showing all the pieces, you could have little notes on the bottom saying, "On display at . . ." for each one, thereby getting people into stores they normally wouldn't go into.

This isn't difficult, and don't talk to me about insurance or lighting or wear and tear. Just check out the "After Dark" exhibition, with all the breathing and sneezing and sneaky touching and harsh lighting going on there. (I'd say the Biltmore stores are pretty well insured, and secure, as well.) In our idea, the pieces would be both protected and on display, and every one would advertize the Museum in an unobtrusive but charming way. Not to mention the word of mouth: "You won't believe what I saw at Polo today . . ."

In fact, they've probably got things in those grey boxes that would fit many of the stores at the Biltmore. If only Dennita Sewell had the imagination, she and her crew might have got some real synergy swinging between the Biltmore and the Museum. Instead, they've got dullsville; they've got nothing --nothing except some big vinyl photographs, most of which are smaller than the window-display banners in Pier One and Restoration Hardware --smaller, but just as corporate, just as boring.

THE TREE OF EVERLASTING LIFE

The Tree of Everlasting Life. 2006. Digital Net Art by Catherine King. Do not reproduce in any form.

Who Let The Cows Out Of The Dress Barn? Or, Send In The Clown Costumes

by Jerome du Bois, with Catherine King

On November 11, Catherine and I sat in a darkened hall and listened to Dennita Sewell, Fashion Curator at the Phoenix Art Museum, describe her latest exhibition, "After Dark: 100 Years of the Evening Gown." She accompanied her talk with a slideshow, and at the end, as the last slide appeared on the screen, representing the very latest, most recent evening fashion, Catherine drew her breath in so sharply the woman in front of us turned her head curiously. I was curious, too. On the screen was a shop window with dim views of dresses behind it and, inscribed on its glass face, one word: "Rodarte." Catherine whispered to me, "Those fat sisters." Ah! Now I knew what she was talking about.

Rodarte --Kate and Laura Mulleavy-- is the latest word in bad fashion, in the line of Alice Roi and Heatherette and Imitation of Christ. And Dennita Sewell was all excited about them. Rodarte was the cherry on top of her Hundred Years of Eveningwear lecture. Sewell gushed breathlessly about them being featured on the cover of WWD after just a few days in New York City. The story of their attainment of the pinnacle of fashion after twelve months of struggling with their art was obviously being hyped up to the stuff of legend.

After Ms. Sewell's presentation, we went to look at Rodarte's contribution to the evening gown exhibition. It was crap-- a shapeless shift with pinked clown flowers.

Fashion is going the way of the rest of the culture, promoting mediocrity and ugliness, and denigrating elegance and good taste. Time after time I'm astounded when Catherine calls me to the computer, or shows me a page in a fashion magazine, to look at some of these designers' creations, or the designers themselves. Here's Rodarte, for example, at the presentation of one of their collections (they only have two, so far). Two dumpy women with no personal pride. Here's another picture of one of them, at a party. It's easy to see why they don't wear their own clothes; they wouldn't fit in any of them.

Catherine showed me picture of Marc Jacobs at a party in camo pants and an obscene t-shirt. There's a gay-bear pair of fashion designers, too; two fat guys in lumberjack outfits with snap-on suspenders. Their dungarees were even dirty. One of the Rodarte sisters said recently that the biggest fashion faux pas is to dress as if you care "too much" about your personal style.

Catherine showed me a fashion spread of nice satin party dresses in which every model wore a grandpa sweater over the dress. Another one where someone wore a hoodie over an evening gown. My point is this: they're going out of their way to uglify beauty.

At the debut of the Phoenix Opera in September we saw a woman wearing a very nice, expensive looking white jacket with hair dirtier and more disheveled than if one drove all the way over from L. A. with the roof of one's convertible down. Or Rocky Point, more like it. Not tousled, not teased. Her cowlicks were showing, for heaven's sake-- at the opera!

Yes, I know that dirty hair, French-style, is all the rage, but that's the point. It's a choice to look skanky, a socially offensive affectation-- "gotta love me-- warts and all!" It's like wearing motorcycle boots with beautiful, expensive eveningwear-- also de riguer.

Gotta love me. That's the key: the aggressive, bullying demonstration of bad style, to bring the self-loathing to the surface. They don't even hide it anymore.

BEHOLD SPOT BEHOLDING

Spirit Photography by Catherine King. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce in any form.