it's guerilla art time again

Here is an example of "she" style guerilla art. I make these "creaturas" by forming animal skulls in sculpey and adding the fur of animals both alive and dead, and the feathers of dead birds i have found. Sometimes i use the hens' feathers too. i have a bag full of guinea hen feathers...they are spotted black and white and are very attractive. i lay all the stuff out and match heads to fur and feathers and choose from brown twine to some yarn i had made from my former dog Eva's fur. The figure above is composed with spanish moss, a friend's dog's fur and the feather of a mourning dove.

so what i do is make a stick cross and bind these materials to it. I leave them in holes in trees at parks, sometimes in brick walls, and sometimes in a restaurant or a place i happen to be and spot the perfect place to leave one; that is rare though. typically they are found outside because that is where they belong. my hope is that the person who finds a creatura has a meditation on nature, on things that are loved and lost, and in general wonders what it is and keeps it....remembers it as that "weird" thing they found. maybe they have a cabinet of oddities as i do and it will make it to permanent display status.

i started my guerilla art career while in graduate school (yes even dum bronzes can git in grad skool). typically, guerilla art is defined as anonymous art that riffs on pre-existing advertisement or signage already in the environment;like this crossing sign...now it reads "weird alien-like creature crossing" thanks to the alteration some artist has given it.

some people consider the multiples of handbills produced for bands as guerilla art. I do not. I call that advertising. to me, guerilla art must serve no other purpose than the art itself, unless that purpose is to make someone think, or provoke curiosity or to charm or to add mystery to the every day workaday. if it tells you to go to a club or buy something it ceases to be guerilla.

Some classic forms of guerilla art are graffiti, both the hand done beautiful masterpiece kind as well as the stencil and a spray paint kind. Some of my favorite atlanta graffiti is done by the AK's, the aerosol kings, and "crisis". i dont know who these people are but i admire their work and look for it anytime i ride the train down to that airport. i love it that i don't know who the artists are; its not important anyway.

I make a distinction between beautifully scripted images and the punks that will deface any flat surface with banal and idiotic writing. in short, it is ugly.

sharpies are a classic tool as well and are excellent for defacing advertising. however, i prefer chalk as the ideal commentary tool because it is not permanent and therefore you have not destroyed what someone has paid for.

I started out by making photochoppies and pasting them in multiples up on plywood. I liked to do riffs on famous art works. a favorite of mine was from velasquez's "Las meninas"; the little girl in her dress only i would give her a bird head or something. i used to do a lot of fake picasso drawings...just classic both eyes on one side things or someone getting gored by a bull. one surface that was always available was the wood that separates city walkers from construction sites. since my school was downtown, this approach was a natural. but now my environment and interests have changed, and my guerilla art reflects that.

So this weekend i will place 20 of the creaturas around the local parks. Many of them will go to the dog park. Later i will go back to see if they have been discovered and taken. i keep a ledger of where and when i placed the figures. i am pleased to report last year's creaturas have all found homes. i must resist the temptation to see someone find a creatura because then i have cared about response when the process should be the "end all be all". i will report on my project to a small group in February, and i will get to see what they did too. Though we are a group, everyone does their project alone. at least one of the "guerilla girls" is in my "night out with she" video a few posts down. grrrrrrrherhahaha buts that's all i can say about my top secret group of conspirators. /t sent me an audio clip which i will play in my mind as i send out this years figures to do their work.