Commune-it-caution

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Social Art Practice: The Napkin Ring Project

Social Art Practice: The Napkin Ring Project 

Begun as a means to bring intention to the table and to the work involved to make a meal, this project focuses on the function an art object can serve in the daily ritual.

Napkin rings as art, remind us to stop our work, sit in our seat and assess that which lays before us. In response to, Lunch at the shop, by Peter Miller, where he employees paper napkins, and moving past the common place setting, consider the napkin ring’s role. The space between creating a meal and consuming the meal, the ring stands to separate these two practices. Holding the continued conversation from one meal to the next, the napkin ring marks the beginning of what Peter Miller calls for as, “the time to relax, savor, and commune.”  

History implies that hygiene was the original reason for their invention. As a young mother with the endless laundry of cloth napkins, this is what spurred my use. As society embraced their use, materials expressed wealth. As a child, I held a silver ring. This, a perfectly contained object of art, symbolizing a life in British occupied Japan. Alternatively, contemporary table settings are presented in duplication. Sameness rules. As my family grows and art reigns in our home, our rings hold forth as a tool.  I humbly submit the idea that they are each activated objects, reminding us to be present. A ceremonial object within a society that is progressively loosing its connection to the ritual of interacting face to face.

Simplified, I paint on each copper ring as a resist. The exterior is etched into relief. The interior is etched with a secret, verbal message in response to the exterior painting. The copper holds the hand’s warm and gives texture to touch.  The table is unified in its color, and each place is identifies a separate person.

My proposal is three fold. 

First, to show the rings in a space that I have altered with a massive wall drawing made in response to a gallery space.  To set the stage for the dinner and an opening to inspect the idea.

Second  - The Curated Potluck. 

In anticipation of each meal, 12 participants would be given a serving bowl and a drink vessel to bring their contribution to the meal. Removing labeling and constructs, the food and drink would be equally presented, and placed family style on the table. The guest list would be curated.  The table would be long and set by the artist. The RSVP process would enable the invited to pick their napkin ring out online prior to attending. The interior message will be with held until arrival. The ring will be theirs to use that evening.

Beginning with a giving of thanks in honor of art and the future, and a reference to their choice of ring, the dinner would commence. Unfurling the idea, potentially each participant could submit a name to attend the next curated potluck.

Third, documenting through out the dinner process. I will take a series of participant portraits. Have already started to collect stories from the table, and to recognize the differential that this anchor creates in home life. Attendees will be encouraged to write a response, these will be published with the portraits taken.

Exploration in activating a dynamic interaction between groups, using systems that society has in place to continue the conversation by redefining the function an art object can serve in the daily ritual.

Thank you to the StorefrontLab of San Francisco, due to your request for submissions I flushed out the first formula for The Napkin Ring Project as a performance! #storefrontlab

Consider the the object.

In response to, Lunch at the Shop by Peter Miller, and moving past a place setter. The space between creating a meal and consuming the meal, the napkin ring stands to separate these two practices. Holding the continued conversation from one meal to the next, the napkin ring marks "the time to relax, savor, and commune."

#petermillerbooks

Job description: translator

Plants have attitudes, too you know. 

I collect them in short hand.

They prefer shapes and colors to your words 

I have this discussion they have been having.

I'm here to tell you the outcome.

It wasn't a group decision.  

The forest has more to say on the topic.

To lead and not follow.

I have begun to build canvases that bend and shift with the drawing, instead of the drawing bending and shifting with the architecture.

Viburnum opulus 'Roseum'

Past her debut.

The common bush is still tied

alone

to the fence. With a

blue tie down ratchet strap

that was on sale for $7.99.

Binding her

to show her

white round snowballs.

The agreement

The water hides our hands

as we cut and pull.

The plants wave in exultation.

We come under the cloak of pleasure

and rain.

The paintings, amongst other things.

Geez. Where did they go? I have decided to pull them back into my lair. They will make apperances here within the writings formally know as amusing musings. Parsing out my thoughts, as paintings, as words, as insight.

Battle of the wills.

Side stepping ferns in my garden, I checked on my peonies and lupins in the moonlight. 

The tender leaves have been eaten without mercy. It is a battle of the wills, established roots against the invading insect. 

The spring will proceed, regardless.

Sent.

Sometimes a response is delayed longer than is wanted. A sadness grows, because there is room to fill. Until I remembered she was one of the few who saw me, when I did not. 

With Anticipation.

With anticipation. Now reread that as if it's from the Rocky Horror Picture Show- all drawn out, hissing the syllables, and you are 13 again, and with your best friend Molly, and you are reciting what you think you know and you most certainly do not know. 

Here. At age 41 I am revisiting these feelings. Waiting at the Walla Walla airport with a trigger painting that goes to Seattle. Construction for its future home is not complete, so this is just a preliminary conversation that will set the stage for a someday drawing.

Then onto a voyage across the eastern seaboard. The universe is collaborating to support and overwhelm. I'm traveling across the country to walk into another round of the "are you prepared and do you really know what your talking about?" game.

You know how it goes. It always starts with a nod that says, yeah sure, I know what your talking about.

Do I know Terry Oconor, the nineties dancer... Oh yeah, of course I do. 

 Wait, do I? Then racing home to triple check that I'm not crazy...

....Even though the nineties is definitely 20 years ago, you actually never forgot the night you sat there with your fathers childhood bestie. Timothy Smith, he who went from hairy hippy who played the tuba to be the slender, dancer/dance enthusiast book editor. Back when you were 20 living in NYC... it was really actually the entrance to Harlem, upper west side Manhattan - these things do make a difference to an city life's perception you know...We sat at the promising show in question. It was an important moment, this was "the" important young choreographer. Remember this, remember this. Store this. Let's be honest, does an impressionable forget the dance performance where Mikhail Baryshnikov sat validating the moment, and the dancer's promise?

Timmy clarified by a late night Facebook conversation: 

"Tere O'Connor 

Misha sat right behind us, with Rob Besserer who was in Misha's and Mark Morris's White Oak Project with my friend Katherine Graham.... "

Misha's? The ground breaking that was Mark Morris? Good grief that was many moons ago. None the less, I won this round, I did know the answer the nod was in truth. From the days of when I thought dance would be a part of my life and before it was a family joke. Back before now. 

The engines are starting.

Here is the nagging feeling about the winter's preparation for the week's coming game. My work is not all equal. There is promise, and I am building my own place to stand. And yet, looking at the walls last night as I repacked, in my bedroom, in the room that serves as my winter studio, as the room that serves as a giant closet. There was a reason the paintings and photographs have found their way back to my hands. They often fall in two categories. First, when a artist, better then I, saw a simple work, she called me out. "That is an ease for you and as a result, it's not interesting. It leaves me with no questions." Or second, the shrill horror I feel when I realize a piece's immaturity. Looking at a painting that refused to be bought. Those strokes look like middle school, like I was 13.

The plane is lifting. 

Here is what I do like. The process of the trigger drawing or painting, as I am travel with today. The project embodies both the moment of conception and the passage of time between the first install to the second or even third. A trigger piece is an investment in the future. And a relic of the past. My mark, almost always, is getting better. It gives me a chance to rebuild an idea. 

This trigger painting that is sitting in the cargo riding over these snow capped mountains is part II of the Welcome to the Garden Party series, from last fall's show at Studio Two Zero Two in Walla Walla.

After spending the last two winter weeks on Welcome to the Garden Party, part I, installing it in a guest house, I am very familiar with the curves and lines that were started last summer. This coming summer the drawing, that will take place, will be the third and maybe final time I construct my walk under the water birch.  

The lights of Seattle are in view, and I'm still journaling like I did in my teens and twenties on paper for what I thought would be private. In fact those pages became amusing fodder for my sister and mother, as they stored the boxes that held my youth. Tears of hilarity, as they read my scribbles trying to make sense of my love affairs, and my growing mind.

Now I insist in marking my passage, posting my progress and checking my facts for anyone and in particular, my children. Maybe it will help them in their games to come. My week to come, I will be checking facts in bathrooms between conversations, forgetting important people's names, nodding to things that I know nothing about - as often as I absolutely do know everything about.  Hm, I will play the game, and document the voyage into the fog that lays between me and where I am going "with annnnticcccipaaation."

Calm and gentle is no less powerful.

I know you. I have see your kind, with soft edges holding the sweet kiss of light. 

I am not fooled. 

I love you, and I am under no confusion about who will win. 

I am thankful for this.

Hope reflects back.

First, I asked for a photo of my new brother in law. A new one, in the water, where he is often found surfing. I waited here in the desert, imagining their burgeoning life by the sea, with ducks, and chickens and a baby and a trampoline.

“… How’s my picture of Aaron in water coming?”

“Umm, yeah.” My sister, Elizabeth said. “No.” 

“Rainy, stormy here. Three people pulled into ocean this week to their death. We are hanging out at home.”  

I sent hope to them instead.

Entrance in.

Here, I built a place to stand. We can each look a different direction that is wholly ours. Docks for sitting, or for diving and swimming away. 

Here, fear and exhilaration is so close. Wound together, I made one for you. For now, the posts sink into the earth, and respond to the terrain. 

The water is not particular, it overtakes regardless. 

Something to build on.

Something to build on.

February 4, 2016

Docks, where I have sat or leapt. They reside in my dreams as a place to go, to dive into the water and swim away. Swift raised walkways climb over the marshes, and wind past wild Rhododendrons, and hover near a cross section of leaves. On the edges of cliffs, the first nations’ fishing piers continue their reach out over the water into my abstract allegory.

Fear and exhilaration are so close to these places. Wound together with what is on hand, the posts touch the earth for stability in response to the terrain. Additions to the landscape are designed by emotion. The ground is populated without our footsteps, only our shadow. Water is not particular, it overtakes regardless. Skirting the elements, the platforms give chance to pluck out subsistence.  Collecting as I go. To give as I go.