Oh shit, who let the artist start blogging

So, freshman year, one of my class readings was Claes Oldenburg's "I Am For An Art" a series of musings of being interested in art that "does something other than sit on its ass in a museum." As an eighteen-year-old in her first three months of an art school, to put it mildly, it didn't make an impression. Luckily hindsight is 20/20 and all those other clichés. I just read it again for another class, four years later, in the first three months of my senior year and I realized...

I am making that art.

Last year, I reconciled myself to something: I am never going to make museum art. And I okay with that. I make art that hangs from someone's cell phone, or sits on someone's bed. I make art that lives in context. If you put my Bitty Biters in a museum? Everyone would laugh and I would laugh the hardest. Because dude. What?

Admittedly, I am not a huge fan of Claes Oldenburg's art. Neither enamored nor enraged. I grew up in Cleveland and his Free Stamp has been a ubiquitous part of the landscape of my childhood impression of the city and maybe because I've been exposed to it for so long without knowing it was supposed to be Art by a Famous Artist, I cannot bring myself to admire it now.

But I do like his "I Am For An Art." It's hard to ignore it when this is part of the statement.

Ich bin für eine Kunst, die sich auf den alltäglichen Mist einläßt und doch siegreich bleibt.
Roughly (which is to say Google) translated: I am for an art that gets involved in everyday crap and remains victorious.

I work in everyday crap. It is my goal. Toys, charms, trinkets. I want and am happy to make that.

Let's hope I remain victorious.