I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Dan Allen’s talk last night (12/05/2021), I was very pleasantly surprised by what I learnt and heard about his work.
Interestingly, he was very clear on the idea of stereotypes and that, as a white, middle aged male, not many people would class him as an ‘artist’.
His work is mostly based on ceramic figures creating self portraits and chairs. The figures he creates tend to look back into the soul of the viewer where an intended awkward/ uncomfortable atmosphere is created between the audience and the art piece. He stated that he spends more time with his pieces once they are finished compared to when he is making them as he feels this really forms the meaning behind them, he claims to find this very therapeutic.
I really felt this and feel that maybe I will try to spend more time with my work once it is finished possibly before I write up about it, leaving time to really conjure up my relationship if any with the work. I actually went and spent some time with the project I did on Jake’s Nan to understand how it makes me feel now that she is no longer with us, and even though it makes me feel very sad and makes me miss her, it also reminds me of all the good memories we had together and just how glad I am that I spent the time to create this work about her.
Something Dan mentioned which really made me think, is how the viewer will sit and stare at artwork and create a sort of judgement on it and so on, but Dan mentioned he was fascinated by the idea of the artwork staring back at the viewer, which is why a lot of his figurative work will consist of sculptures staring straight back, and example in shown in some of Dan’s work below.
Each piece of work will allow the viewers to see something different based on their own experiences, this is something I try to bring into my own work quite a bit, as everyone will remember things different or having different memories based on where and how they grew up and with the different experiences they will have had. Different visual items, smells,tasted, all of these factors will come into how people see and understand certain things.
After realizing that it can be a bit more difficult for people to relate to his figurative sculpture, he started to make chair, something everyone can related to, as no matter what culture or nationality, everyone will have some form of chair. The chairs would be made from clay, so they wouldn’t be strong enough to sit on, however Dan would use a porcelain slip on the finished chairs so that any interaction from an audience would be picked up and recognized, which would then form the chair’s character even more.
I really do love this idea of allowing the viewer to interact with the work as it allows it to be so much more diverse and interesting. It allows people from all places to have their own sort of leave their mark.
Some of the chairs would be made to look like wood, but then waxed over to give them a wet clay look, this would be to intentionally confuse the viewers so they can see it is wet clay and they wouldn’t sit on it as it would not keep.
Task - representing self through non figurative means.
Object based metaphor - Cake chair
For this piece, he baked a cake and then casted it to add it into the chair. I did not fully understand the meaning behind this, maybe I did not listen carefully enough to hear or understand his reasoning behind making this piece.
2. Behavioral characteristics of materials
I loved this idea, here he made a porcelain chair, sprayed it in glaze and then fired it in the kiln at the melting temperature for clay and then just as the chair was about to crash he would turn it off, leaving this beautiful, yet uncomfortable piece to capture the drama of the crashing piece. This makes me feels very uncomfortable, and very confused as I can see the chair slowly crashing down and I just want to hold it up. It sort of reminds me of the times I would rock back on the chair and my parents would get really angry at me and I realized why when I eventually slipped and cracked my head open!!
I have to admit I really did give into stereotypes and did not expect Dan to have any form of art-based practice, or very little interest in it due to his appearance, but this has really proven that thought wrong, and even though I do not normally judge people by their looks, this has really taught me that looks really do not mean a thing. I thoroughly enjoyed this talk and I do believe that how the audience interacts with the work is so important and I would really like to make my work a lot more interactive for this reason. In conclusion, this talk has taught me a lot and has really inspired me with my on going project.