Only in New York City could eating drywall be considered 'art'. What I find troubling is, how much of my taxes might have funded that drywall she's crapping every morning? Talk about flushing your money down a toilet......LOL :-)
Posted on 02/06/2005 10:11:39 AM PST by Randjuke
In 1962, the painter and film critic Manny Farber coined the phrase "termite art" to describe small-scale work with an obsessive bent. This month, the Chelsea gallery LMAKprojects is offering a strangely literal twist on this idea: for the inaugural exhibition of its satellite location in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the artist Emily Katrencik is eating the wall that separates the gallery's exhibition space from the bedroom of its director, Louky Keijsers.
Five days a week, Ms. Katrencik consumes a section of wall 1.956 inches square and three sheets of drywall thick, for a total of about 8.5 cubic inches of drywall; she rests on Sundays and Mondays.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
This is my favorite quote from the article: ""In art school, I majored in sculpture," Ms. Katrencik said, "but I didn't make a single object."
LOL!
I honestly can't believe how absurd the "art world" has become. It wasn't so long ago that such behavior justified a straight jacket and several doses of electricity to the temples.
Only in New York City could eating drywall be considered 'art'. What I find troubling is, how much of my taxes might have funded that drywall she's crapping every morning? Talk about flushing your money down a toilet......LOL :-)
Fine art has become irrelevent. Marcel Duchamp started this mess with his Dada movement. Art today is basically a boring version of Jackass.
All I know is that "Gene, Gene made a machine and Art, Art blew a fart,...and blew the whole damned thing apart".
Does that help in your understanding?....BWAHAHAHAHA!
FMCDH(BITS)
Modern Art at the Detroit Institute of Art.
"In art school, I majored in sculpture," Ms. Katrencik said, "but I didn't make a single object."
I'm pretty sure she's making objects now—probably one or two a day, roughly cylindrical in shape, mottled brown in color, 6" to 10" long, aromatic, ...
I think you just have to look beyond this "cutting edge" crap (excuse the coarse pun). Real fine art with real talent is alive and well, it's too bad that these freaks get all the attention, or any attention at all.
I am a painter, and while I am not the art queen by any stretch of the imagination. I have quite a few professional artist friends, young and old, who are doing well without eating walls or defecating in public.
I will apply for an NEA grant for my newest work, "Cluttered Closet"
"Yer so ugly you could be a Modern Art Masterpiece!!!
I was a fine arts major in college. Do you have any work online? I'd like to see it.
Five days a week, Ms. Katrencik consumes a section of wall 1.956 inches square and three sheets of drywall thick, for a total of about 8.5 cubic inches of drywall; she rests on Sundays and Mondays. Each meal takes about half an hour. She began on Jan. 1, to ensure that there would be a sizable hole before the opening on Jan. 28, and will keep it up until the exhibition closes on Feb. 27, at which time she calculates the hole will be large enough to stick your head through. She usually gnaws directly on the wall, working away at a sizable, eye-level hole, and avoids eating when the public is present. Video of her ingestion is included in the exhibition; she also removes some of the plaster and bakes it into loaves of bread, which are available for gallery visitors to sample. "Part of it is that I'm really broke," she said, "so this is a way to get the gallery to cover my food costs."
This is not the first time Ms. Katrencik, 29, has consumed architecture for her art. In 1999, while in graduate school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she began eating the Le Corbusier-designed Carpenter Center at Harvard. Alone at night, she would sand the building's rough edges and lick the resulting concrete dust from her palm, often documenting the private performances on video. And her work is not without a pedigree: Janine Antoni, for instance, carved 600-pound blocks of chocolate and lard with her teeth in 1992. "In art school, I majored in sculpture," Ms. Katrencik said, "but I didn't make a single object. I'm better at taking things away."
So how is this diet affecting her health? "I try not to think about it," she said. "Instead, I look at the things in the wall that are good for me, like calcium and iron." One of the main components of drywall is calcium sulfite, she noted, a mineral that can be found in tofu, canned potatoes and some baked goods. She said that she had not had any digestive problems, but was careful to eat a lot of vegetables to balance the binding effect of the plaster. And the taste? "This drywall tastes pretty chalky," she said. "I prefer cast concrete because it has a more metallic flavor. You can taste the iron."
Hmmm. I've visited that building many times as a student (You enter and exit by ramp/bridges that flow through the building -- very interesting structure).
It is Corbusier's ONLY building in the western hemisphere, so it's very significant historically, and the thought that she's EATING it would get some people a bit upset!!
In the mental health world she would have a pica behavior and behavior modification plan to stop it. In places where I have worked that is a big no-no, and if observed by surveyors during an inspection without intervention by staff a big black mark on the institution. I sincerely hope that no federal money has gone into this. I would hate for institutions to have to sue for unfair enforcement. I guess the NEA would have to have to start employing care attendants to implement the behavior mod program. LOL
No, I blew it when yahoo had their 4.95 a year deal for a personal website last month. I can't find anything still up from the cople of shows I did in the past year. I only got my 'nerve up' to try to get into a gallery about two years ago when a judge at the state fair approached me and now have a few places that sell my work and I do a few shows a year. I am not making a living at it. I didn't know whether I would sell anything at all when I started and it still surprises me when someone buys a big painting. I sell a lot of what I call 'art factory' pieces.
Right now I am working on silk using dyes and resist . I don't have an art degree. I paint and dye scarves and some clothing and home decorating items. And I do paintings on silk - I love doing it all but my joy right now is in creating the paintings.
I also teach through the local arts council (schools and adult ed). I am planning a class with the art teacher at my son's junior high school to paint scarves and suncatchers for children at St Judes.
More than you wanted to know. 'Sorry
Yes, he ground up the metal parts and ate a little powder each day.
Later he took a bet and ate a helicopter.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.