The Theme

The Radar Angels performing group is kind enough to start meeting early in the year and develop a theme for the annual show. I don't know how they come up with them year after year...it's a brainstorm of an advanced form. They consider songs to parody, costumes, who they can include and spotlight, and come up with a starting place in the creative process. It's a big help!

So they refined the idea and it seems to be graphically portrayed as:

OCCUPY JELL-O

2012...The End?

I don't know quite what they are thinking, but I'm guessing the end refers to the world and not to the Jell-O Show, though there might be somewhat of a retrospective in there. With the great slide show running in the side gallery there is always some history present, and the piece I am thinking about includes some archiving. But as usual the theme leaves things wide open to interpretation. Thanks, Angels!

Political Jell-O Art is fantastic. The irony drips like melted art as you try to make essential life statements in a silly food medium. The colors and transparency and joyfulness of the gelatin make it a great vehicle to talk about politics and passion and life and death. The Occupy movement is rich with life-affirmation and I am quite sure people will be able to Occupy the gallery and free up their enslaved wage souls with some ridiculous sculpture. I'm serious.

I take my Jell-O Art very seriously and devote my whole winter to it on many levels. I have not progressed very far into my ideas for this show...I'm in that messy gritty period when there are too many possibilities and none of them look very fun or attractive.

I heard myself telling someone it was near impossible to make flat dried Jell-O so of course I have to now try to make that, even though it amounts to a distraction, though you never know. I tried pouring some nearly gelled gelatin on a blank screen from my screenprinting shop. It is producing some thin flat sheets but not in a useable way yet. I may have to put the screen in the bathtub and soak off the remains. I was kind of trying to merge paper-making and Jell-O Art, which is a direction I will continue in, in a vague way.

I've done a lot of research, writing and thinking about Occupy so have lots of ideas about what I might say, but none are concrete. Sometimes it works to find a prop of some kind to center the project, like the copper-fronted breadbox I found the year I wanted to do something about remodeling my house. It made a good project for Fish-head Barbie to work on. (Yes, a Barbie doll with a fish head was my "avatar" for years, representing me in my pieces. She fell apart and was too limiting anyway, but the fact remains that Barbie is usually present at the show in someone's art.)

I used to go to the Goodwill As-Is store but any trip to Bring or any kind of re-use store could be productive. I've been sorting through my many boxes of little things I've collected to see if anything comes up. Cleaning is usually a good way to get started on creative projects, if for no better purpose than making some space for them. I've been doing a lot of cleaning.

For graphic ideas I go through books and magazines and sometimes the internet, though that is kind of like going to the library without a plan. I know I need to see a picture of the Mayan calendar stone and learn a little more about the cycle's end, and I'm always looking for cool lettering to use on the t-shirt. So I will sort through the art books and fill my brain with images. That's another part of my creative process that helps to firm up the ideas.

Sometimes people give me random ideas or items that seem Jell-O-like to them but usually this is far too early for most people to start thinking about it. It's also too early to get worried about it, so I trust my process even though right now it is unfocused and not productive. It will happen.

Usually I do spend a second or two thinking I won't do any Jell-O this year. Thinking I might do the miniature model of the Jell-O Art Museum is like that...it won't actually require very much Jell-O, and I have about 25 pounds of it. I know I don't want to do a giant thing like I did last year, or a lot of small things like I did the year before, and the year before that. It is always a fallback to just bring some objects from the past shows and call it a display...but that wouldn't be all that satisfying for the artist struggling to express.

So, thinking about it and playing around with a jar of gelatin. Hope you are too.