#21 - the sculpture yard (04-97) 



i've had a strange fascination with the sculpture yard at the kansas city art institute for years. it's in a corner of the 'tute, largely behind a tall brick wall, with its own private junkyard filled with the good lord knows what from the good lord knows where--scrap metal, lumber, bits of machinery, odds and ends . . . a regular world of wonder if you like slapping big chunks of things together and calling it a concept. a few times a year the art that issues out of that racket ends up in a midterm or end of term show, and like as not it's usually good. one of these pieces of junk that keeps resurfacing is the wheel.

i don't know where the wheel came from. it's a very precise, machined-looking object so i don't think it was made at kcai but instead imported from some industrial location. it's about seven feet tall and maybe 30 inches wide, with two loops connected to the hub by radiating spokes, and to each other by short bars. it looks very much like an out-sized hamster wheel. the first time i saw it was at my friend janice's senior show. this event was memorable for other reasons, so i was not paying much attention, but i did watch people roll down a hill in this thing, which seems now like an activity calculated to break arms, legs, and necks, but when at that time seemed perfectly natural. the next time i saw it was about a year later, shortly before i drew this comic, and the scene was just as i describe it. the guy had the wheel rigged up so that when he walked a light flashed and i believe there was a loud clack, either caused mechanically or an artifact of the kind of light he was using, i do not know which.

i don't know what he 'meant' by this. he walked in it for a long time, and then other people climbed in and pursued some goal in it also. but i took from it what mortimer does. the artist struggled in existence. the faster he went, the more noise and light and sweat there was, yet he got no faster than if he walked slowly, quietly, dimly.

christopher, and i, were getting nowhere just then, but struggling very hard at it. later i struggled a lot less, and seemed to get no farther. o, there was a girl around then, and there was a lot of drumming that night, and a tiny electric organ that i saw also at a house on troost that i visited. but all that effort got me nothing more at all than standing still would have, and indeed got nothing but people looking at me as if i were a fool.

there's a lesson to be had there.

but i am writing this new year's day, 2004, and i think that for all my failures, that i have gotten farther the way i have. if you float in the water, don't you arrive at the mouth of the streamt, as surely as if you wasted your effort in swimming? so i'm a little closer to where i want to be, but i'm not tired yet. that's taoism for you.

and sure. nips 'borrowed' the drawing horse. but then, evidently he teaches at kcai, so maybe he did borrow it.

with all the wash in this one, it's almost panelled normally. no great art here, but i did pay attention to the brickwork, which is a little unusual up to this point. the animals are a bit poorly drawn; i made this mini-comic in a rush; i wanted to have it out before the art students scattered for the summer, so i could prove how smart and topical i was. hah!





 

Posted: Sat - April 17, 2004 at 08:06 AM             |

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