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Valerie Adams wrote:Definitely a matter of personal taste, but the idea of one of us accidentally breaking a piece, and then figuring out a way to bandage it back together and then call it 'enhanced' reminds me too much of the pieces I see with bubbles blown through them being named things like "Eye of the Storm." Intentional design is something I work hard to achieve so it annoys me to see failures passed off as design. Silk purse from sow's ear is one thing; if something is truly made better by manipulation, I'm all in. But most often what I see amounts to polishing turds.

As hard as it is to discard pieces that don't survive the process (at whatever the stage they were in), there's a learning experience that's more valuable to me than selling substandard work.

Now obviously, I know there are exceptions, like pieces in museums. But until my work is of that quality, broken pieces in my studio are given a decent farewell and good riddance.

Well, that's not exactly the intent with kintsukuroi and kintsugi. The idea is that you've got a beautiful, usually older piece with a rich history, and the break becomes part of that history, as does the repair. The repair is done with intrinsically valuable material, usually far more valuable than the object it's fixing, and so increases its value. And in doing all that, the piece becomes more beautiful than its unbroken mates.

I don't know how I feel about it applied to an accidentally broken work of glass; I don't think our culture really has a place for the notion of damage increasing the beauty of a piece, at least not with glass until it is really old. Somewhere in my mind is this picture of a frantic Japanese guy breaking an heirloom and promising his angry host that fixing it would actually improve it...

I don't think we like to cede that much control over works of art; if a broken piece of glass wasn't the original intent, the repaired piece is simply flawed and valueless. It's interesting that I don't feel the same if the idea was to break the piece deliberately and make the repair part of the design. Then, it somehow becomes ok, even innovative.

I made a chocolate cake yesterday -- lovely recipe with buttermilk and strong coffee. I was going to put a simple icing on it.

I was impatient trying to get it out of the darned bundt pan i'd used, and basically ripped the whole bottom off of it. After I stopped kicking myself (the cake was for a dinner I was going to). I whipped up heavy cream with Amaretto, cut up strawberries, cut the cake up in chunks and made a lovely (custard-less) trifle.

The repair was definitely better than the original product .

Dana

I've scanned the image of Albin's Shattered Nude, referred to by Bert, but can't upload it. Get message saying file is too big. According to Preview it's 170.5 Kb. Photoshop is crashing on opening so any suggestions, please? Jen

<< Edited post to add image. -- Brad >>

This a classic example of differences in eastern verses western aesthetic values.

Western art is based around beauty and perfection. It's about permanent, finished and perfect artwork.

Eastern art, especially Japanese art, has a concept called Wabi-Sabi. This roughly translates to: nothing lasts forever, nothing is finished, nothing is perfect.

Persian and Oriental rug makers make deliberate flaws in their rugs as they believe that only God is perfect and pride is a sin.

Native American beadwork must have one intentional flaw to show that the artist was only human. The spirit bead, the "mistake" bead, is a gate through which the Great Spirit/God can enter the art.

I would go ahead and try to port the technique to glass. Perhaps using gold mica somehow?

Peter

Morganica wrote:
... It's interesting that I don't feel the same if the idea was to break the piece deliberately and make the repair part of the design. Then, it somehow becomes ok, even innovative.

My thoughts, also.

Buttercup wrote:I've scanned the image of Albin's Shattered Nude, referred to by Bert, but can't upload it. Get message saying file is too big. According to Preview it's 170.5 Kb. Photoshop is crashing on opening so any suggestions, please? Jen

<< Edited post to add image. -- Brad >>

Thank you Jen (and Brad). The gray pieces are mirror. When I saw it in person it was quite stunning. You see pieces of yourself reflected amongst the pieces of the shattered nude.

I go by that old statement not made by Duke Ellington. If it looks good it is good.

Jazz messes around with a synthesis of eastern and western thought as described by Peter. It is made up in the moment. The ensemble is tasked with listening, responding, and innovating, in the moment. Wayne Shorter describes jazz as "I dare you to play that". We all know that some moments rise to the sublime, and others not so much. Albin's stained glass window comes under the heading of "I dare you to do that". It has been several decades, but I think the memory is coming back that when the glass painting was finished, Albin looked at it, decided he was bored with it, and then smashed the panels on purpose.