objets d'art ed

***Google's image uploader isn't working for me at the moment, but I want to go ahead and get the text up.  I'll try to edit the images in later***

(Photo courtesy Anne Norman)

Anything you can put on a hanger:  These are the works of art.  Some of them are more traditional--the varieties you might commonly expect to see on a hanger: jackets, blouses, trousers, paintings, pottery, video installations.  That sort of thing.  Others are maybe a little nontraditional: lab rats coated in tar, definitions cut out of a dictionary and placed on a scale, hot air balloons...  Those sorts of things.  If you can figure out a way to get it on a hanger, then you've got a work of art.

(Photo courtesy Carlos Porto)

Hanger:  These are the big ideas.  They're not all the same, mind you.  Some of them are crisp and wiry but can gradually lose their shape if you put something a little too big on them.  Some are plastic and shifty, but they'll spring back to life as soon as they're freed from their present duty.  And some are those narrow little horizontal ones that are only good for hanging pants or ties on.  But they all fit on the bar in the closet and they all hold the work you want to keep and maybe even a little of the work you don't too.

(Photo courtesy Paul Keller)

Bar in the closet:  This is the classroom or museum or gallery or school or anywhere that works of art may be placed and displayed.

(Photo courtesy Idea go)

The closet:  This is art.  And maybe—if we’re really lucky and in the right state of mind--it’s everything we see, hear, feel, and do.


If I were to incorporate Kathryn's diary, it would probably become one of the works that goes on a hanger, which means it would probably either become a work of art about private thoughts and views or it would become something like Duchamp's Etant donnes--something worked on and kept private.