BLOG CROXFORD: CREEP OF THE WEEK 5: ARTIST STATEMENTS!

Saturday, December 31, 2011

CREEP OF THE WEEK 5: ARTIST STATEMENTS!

Hey y'all!
Usually I show you a place that has been abandoned and shows no sign of life.
I find the old ruins FASCINATING!!!!
I am not sure what it is about it!
BUT
This week I wanna show you 3 art projects centred around abandoned places...check it out:

In 2008, artist Jennifer Marsh revealed her covered gas station, part of her World Reclamation Art Project. Marsh accepted submissions of 3x3 foot squares from fiber artists all around the world then stitches them together to cover a gas station in Syracuse, NY. The project was meant to bringing attention to the world's dependence on oil. She sees this project as a way to get the community involved in both fiber arts and in a movement towards positive change.

Here is a video of the installation and an interview with Jennifer Marsh:

You can also view images of the individual panels submitted for the project right here.

Cool HUH????
Here is another site specific installation:

Dutch artist Marjan Teeuwen creates eerie, unsettling spaces by reclaiming the wreckage of destroyed abandoned buildings and re-assembling it in studios or museums for aesthetic and artistic effect. She also occasionally creates these installations within the abandoned spaces themselves, at one point hacking down an entire exterior wall and bringing the pieces inside to arrange.
The detritus of life is categorized according to function, texture and color. Holes are cut through walls and floors and rooms are no longer recognizable for what they once were. In one installation entitled ‘Destroyed House’, Teeuwen cut out the walls from a post-war apartment block in Amsterdam and crafted sawed fragments of the building’s doors into partitions.

And Finally....

New York-based photographer Gregory Holm returned to his hometown of Detroit to draw attention to the nation’s housing crisis by coating an abandoned house with a sheet of ice. Called the Detroit Ice House, the project was designed to inspire residents of a city with thousands of vacant homes and a foreclosure rate that is among the nation’s highest.

Working with Brooklyn-based architect Matthew Radune, Holm covered the two-story house – its windows broken and boarded-up — with ice that reflects the sunlight and icicles that reach from the roof almost to the ground. At first, the men used rooftop sprinklers, but those froze in the cold mid-teen temperatures. Eventually, they sprayed the house from fire hydrants via hoses.

Holm and Radune picked the house, which was about to be torn down, from Michigan’s land bank. Additionally, they agreed to pay back taxes on another foreclosed house so a Detroit woman can move into it. The Detroit Ice House will be torn down in spring and the building materials recycled.

“This gives them an opportunity to see something different in their neighborhood,” Holm said. “It’s not saying it’s going to change afterward. But it’s a gift. This has been a real test of will.”