Thursday, November 12, 2009

more about commissions

Every night when I come home I see this series of enamels I made for my own tenant owner's association. And I am pleased with them - they are welcoming, they help orientation - and they look kind of nice.

There are commissions and commissions. If you get to do bigger jobs for municipals/regions/the state etc you get more artistic liberty, but you will anyway always have to take into account where it will be placed and who will see it. Then there are other jobs where it is more about creating complements to the architecture or adding some form of decoration. In the latter case it is very often art with a specific function and has to please the majority of people seeing the art piece.

When it comes to making art for a tenant owner's organization it is always the latter. They are "public decorations", they are supposed to beautify - like flowers in the garden... I see it as a challenge to make something that's pretty good under the circumstances. Of course a series of road killed wild animals for all the entrances in a building would contain much more than just "decoration", but it's not what people want to see every day coming home from work. And the kids would be sad to see dead animals...

Sometimes I might be whining about wanting to work on my own art, but I am actually happy not having to compromise there...I can compromise with the wild animals instead!

4 comments:

aimee said...

i think it's wonderful that your city places such a strong emphasis on public art! i can think of a few beautiful commissions around our town in the forms of murals and statues, but certainly not on apartment buildings. i need to get to gothenburg someday!

i'm doing weekword after all, so count me in!

nathalie et cetera said...

now i know why you liked my roadkill photo :)
in my work, i always have to compromise. it's not always easy. sometimes it's even very frustrating. but other times, it leads me to places i would not have gone to.
and i agree with aimee about art in your city. i wish montreal was more like that.

Marchi Wierson said...

I agree. You always have to compromise, it is in picking what you can live with.

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