Art or Work?
Four things from this week
This week: Bruce. Bugs. Faces. Emojis. A fifth thing? And more!
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1. Art or Work?
I think about Setting a Good Corner pretty frequently.
It’s an hour long video of Bruce Nauman building a corner of a fence on his ranch in Galisteo, New Mexico, in 1999. Nauman sold this video for about $40,000.
A lot of questions come to mind: What is work? What is art? What’s the difference? Who cares? What’s the value of work? What’s the value of art? Who gets to decide? What’s performative? What’s sincere? Who’s watching?
ART, WORK and ARTWORK are three separate words, but many people use them interchangeably.
My uncle Craig is a farmer (rancher? cowboy?) in Nebraska. I sent him a message this week to see if he’s ever built the corner of a fence and he said, “Yes I have! The most important part of any fencing project!” In this interview Nauman said, “If the fence is going to last, it has to be done well. And so, you want to do a good job.”
It’s an important thing that needs to be done well, but is it art?
Our neighbor got a new roof this week and I couldn’t help but think about how much the workers were being paid. I know a new roof is expensive, but is each of them getting paid $40,000? If only they had filmed it.
Setting a Good Corner makes me ask big questions about the world and forces me to confront my own assumptions about work, art and value. I think good art pushes you into places you probably wouldn’t go on your own.
2. Identifying bugs
This week we accidentally discovered the iPhone feature where it identifies insects (I assume it works with plants and animals?). I have a couple apps that do the same thing but I’ve never actually used them.
We have identified a Reddish-Brown Stag Beetle, a Arhopalus Rusticus (long-horned beetle) and a Large Yellow Underwing Moth. Now when Knox asks, “What’s that?” we can actually answer.
Here’s another Charley Harper inspired illustration:
3. A new footer for this newsletter because I love changing things
Once our little girl is born and starts contributing I’ll have to update it again.
4. Emojis for designers
This is from 2020 or 2021 (lots of Covid references) but mentioning Sagmesiter & Walsh last week reminded me of emojis the &Walsh team created for designers.
Here are some of my favorites:
Use them on Slack and impress all your work friends.
Also check out ND Stevenson’s fantastic Emoji Painting Gallery.
5. That’s all I had time for this week…
We’ve been spending all our time rearranging our whole house in anticipation of a new human. It’s so funny because she won’t appreciate any of it. It’s not like she’ll say, “I can’t believe you dusted the baseboards for me!” We do it anyway.
ALSO
What a generous gift from Kelcey Ervick
Comics I read this week:
Perfect Example - John Porcellino
Whatcha Mean What’s a Zine? - Mark Todd & Esther Pearl Watson
Knox: “Ask me how my day was.” Carly: “How was your day?” Knox: “Nunya!”
Carly: “It’s shipping from New Jersey.” Knox: “You got me a new jersey?!”
Wonderful as always. Work, Art, and Artwork is a great thinker. I recently read, "A Place of My Own" by Michael Pollan where he attempts to build his own studio (with major help) but he does a great job of showcasing the "Art" in many things we might just consider "Work"
Love this weeks Charlie Harper influenced design and really love that your newsletter is a family affair. As always, thank you for the inspiration and for sharing.
Timing is everything, I'm starting a website that will be selling multiple products that seem unrelated to each other but my thinking is they each are a form of art. Candles, T-shirts, pictures and frames and postcards. Art is what YOU define it as, IMO.