OOPS!

Yesterday was all art. Play Day at the Newark Museum. Four of us spent most of the day dye-painting, discharging, batik-ing, and yakking. I also took some pictures of blobs and mistakes so that I will have slides for my "Oops" lecture. THAT might be one of them. I could cut it up - but that's cheating. The challenge is to leave the spots and work with them. OOP Art, as my friend Lisa calls it, is art that incorporates or results from a mistake -- and it usually unique and more interesting than it would have been without the mistake. Sometimes it's a "design opportunity" and sometimes it just IS. Like the time I put wonder under on the FRONT of a piece. Fortunately, it was an image transfer of a woman's face; I ironed a piece of glittery netting to the wonder under and she looked even better behind the veil. But - big groan till I figured out what to do. Coincidentally, there was an article in yesterday's NY Times ARTS section (that I didn't read till this morning) that touched on the subject of accident and chance in art. It was a review of the print show at MOMA which included work by Jasper Johns, Barnett Newman, Le Bontecou, Kiki Smith, and Robert Rauschenberg - among others. While Rauschenberg was making a lithograph, the stone broke. He decided to incorporate the mishap into his work and it appears as a jagged white line running diagonally across the image. The artist's hand was in this work in a way it never could have been if he were making a digital print. The review made a strong case for traditional printmaking and all of its possibilities. I feel very strongly about this subject. Digital is digital but you can't get an OOPS! Help me out here, guys! SEND ME JPGS of your OOP ART. Surely you must have something that came about as a complete accident. I would dearly love jpgs or slides and anecdotes that go with them, so if you would like to be included in my slide show, please e-mail me and let me know. I'd be grateful! As many mistakes as I make, it gets boring just looking at my work.

Well, I was going to upload some of my better experiments from yesterday but Blogger won't let me. So, since I have been up since 4:am, I am taking this as a sign that the day is over.