grown-up toys

I recently attended the graduate design show at the T.W. Art Gallery and had the time of my life. Through sheer coincidence, I happen to know several of the graduate students in product design and have spent a little time in “the Loft” as it is known, and I was totally amped to see their final work, but I was totally unprepared for the incredible variety and quality of the work. What struck me most, other than the beauty of the pieces, was their seemingly unified purpose: the public exhibition of the concrete realizations of artistic whims. Perhaps you are thinking, but Max, you pretentious snob, what can you possibly mean? Allow me to explain.

Some artists, like Hollywood actors, directors, screenwriters, etc., aim to entertain; others, like George Orwell or Betty Friedan, encourage you to think and decide for yourself; these students, on the other hand, sought neither of these ends, I believe. Instead, it seemed as if they tried simply to bring to life an idea or a vision that would otherwise have remained just a dream. For example, the bronze bike followed by the veritable circus of knife-jugglers, clowns et al. This fanciful contraption, nominally meant to brighten one’s day, must in reality be incredibly impractical, but potentially functional. Although I did not actually ride the bike, I didn’t have to. Just by seeing the bike, in all its ridiculous glory, I was granted a glimpse into the mind of another and it cheered me up without even having to set foot on the pedal. Similarly, I was enchanted by the film of the guy who pulls balloons out of the suitcase. Plot-less, devoid of character development, and entirely without theme or moral, it remains a fascinating work, minimalistic in its execution of the depiction of a magical suitcase and its supernatural properties. Contradictory? A little. Finally, I was impressed with, albeit confused by, the plastic representation of music that the description explained had been the artist’s fantasy since her youth. The highly detailed and color-coded structures take an immensely innovative approach to traditional conceptions of both visual art and music, taking a temporally changing, polyphonically complex, and invisible piece and turning it into a static, still complex, yet visible construction.

You may think I have been unduly laudatory of these artists’ works, and you would have a point. Their purpose, as I see it, is rather less than challenging and thus one would not be unfounded in criticizing them for their lack of ambition, however I would disagree. True, these pieces may not have a pragmatic or even an academic objective, yet in simply being created they have achieved much more than many of their equally fantastic fellows and this feat is valiant in and of itself.