cud - two American artists talk

John Drury and Robert Miller: Chicago Museum of Art project

Spike and I attended an artist's talk organised by the Canberra Glass Works.  John Drury and Robert Miller have worked together for 25 years in what i would describe as arts-based community development work.  the art produced, it seems to me, is less important than - maybe even incidental to - the processes of connection and relationship building that leads to the art.  The talk - 20 minutes too long IMHO - was interesting enough, aided by a slide presentation that confirmed for me that it is the community engagement rather than final art work that matters.

I'm not quite sure what the group of Canberra glass makers would have thought of it all.  there's a tension, I think, between Drury / Miller's commitment to found objects and readymades as the building blocks of their community-focused arts projects on the one hand and the labour intensive, technically precise and often highly personal works crafted by the bunch of 'hands-on' artisans and artists I've been introduced to by Spike.

but we had a mostly pleasant evening with some interesting ideas floated by a couple of interesting men from America.  There are worse ways to spend a Friday evening.  The food at the Kingston Hotel was ... the kindest word was ordinary and i had a quadriplegic problem that led me to scurry away as soon as the talk was done.  But that apart, I enjoyed my evening.