B Team photo: Jim Curry, courtesy o f Zesty Meyers and R 20th Century
a
Ironings
, creating exquisite geo-
metric relief sculptures with
an iron, steam, and starch from
monochromatic cotton yardage.
Also in 2010, “Hand+Made: The
Performative Impulse in Ait and
Craft,” curated by Valerie Cas-
sel Oliver at the Contemporary
Arts Museum Houston, high-
lighted making over made with
works such as Anne Wilson’s
performance weaving project
Wind-Up: Walking the Warp,
in which members of the Hope
Stone Dance Company built a
40-yard-long weaving warp on
a i7-by-7-foot frame. Those two
projects in particular demon-
strate that aesthetics aren’t nec-
essarily sacrificed when process
is valued over product. Both are
Left: Anne Wilson’s
Wind- Up: Walking the
Warp, Houston
(2010).
Six dancers wound thread
through the steel frame
in this performance-
turned-installation.
Above: Kelly Lamb
(supported on her left by
В Teamer Jeff Zimmer-
man) learns how to dance
on molten glass as part
of the performance art
group’s 1997
Tricks
video.
Right: Mung Lar Lam
hangs her geometric
sculptures, made with
cotton cloth, an iron,
and starch, during an
Ironings
performance
in 2010.
s
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o
2
o
extraordinarily beautiful, if tem-
porary, works.
Craft in performance is not
without precedent. “Hand+Made”
included video of performances
from the 1990s by the B Team.
Inspired by punk rock and the
spectacular 1980s performanc-
es of the San Francisco-based
performance art project Survival
Research Laboratories, glass
artists Zesty Meyers, Jeff Zim-
merman, and Evan Snyderman
juggled hot balls of glass, poured
molten glass on steel umbrellas,
dropped hot glass heads into
tanks of water, and shot gobs
of glowing glass at a target.
The B Team’s performances
were as much about showman-
ship as process. There is some-
thing different going on in the
new millennium. Artists and
curators such as Leemann and
Stratton want to de-emphasize
the object in favor of a quieter
and more thoughtful interaction
with the viewer. For her ongoing
installation performance,
Com-
mon Sense
, Sheila Pepe invites
viewers to unravel her large-scale
crocheted modernist “drawings”
and use the yarn as raw material
for making their own knit or
crocheted items. And while Craig
and Meinolf could be perceived
as simply updating the open stu-
dio or demonstration at the sum-
mer craft fair, Meinolf wants
something more: to engage the
viewer in a conversation not
only about weaving technique,
but also about his yearning for
“a society of objects produced
in joy, guided by interest, and
shared freely, based upon need.”
As with M einolf s utopian
vision, there is a political slant
in much of this work. It would
be easy to suggest that, as was
the case with the Arts and Crafts
movement of the late 19th and
early 20th centuries, the current
focus on process over product
is a reaction against the mass
production of what had, until
the Industrial Revolution, been
handcrafted goods. The fact that
artists like Tool and Meinolf
frequently give away objects
they create suggests a critique
of materialism and capitalism.
For her part, Lam is raising
dec/jani2 american craft 071
