some small views of madrid...

when houses are humble...

a 1967 concrete over cardboard prototype house by kieth critchlow and michael ben-eli, as pictured in paper houses by roger sheppard, richard threadgill, and john homes, 1974. (note how much this humble abode looks like a felt house.

before joseph beuys...(well, sort of)

richard scarry's 1963 best word book ever was one of my favorites as a kid. scarry has a knack for filling a page with numerous things a child can wander over, and generally, every image has a name next to it. i remember spending hours on a single page, just looking at both the words (which i couldn't read yet) and images (perhaps at times words as images...).

to suggest that much of the relationship of word and image in own work came from these earliest experiences might be stretching it a bit, but the book was one of 3 that definitely inspired me to make drawings (i.e. i made very poor copies of a lot of pictures in this book!).

i hadn't re-visited the book in years, and last night pulled it out on a whim and noticed on a page of various kinds of houses, this 'felt house'. there are so many interesting aspects to this, particularly as most of the others are what you'd expect: stone house, tree house, wooden frame house, houseboat, etc. i can just imagine a youngster asking mommy what is a felt house and receiving a blank stare in return.

the insane thing is that of course scarry's felt house is not unlike our airform dome in terms of form (as well as size!). the felt form also resembes a number of early 70's environment artworks related to caves, wombs, and contemplation environments.

beuy's first started using felt in 1960, mostly in collaboration with fat. his famous wrapping of pianos and larger felt works didn't come until the late 1960's, putting scarry's 1963 felt house right in the middle. having seen one of beuy's felt rooms and being overwhelmed by the quiet, i can only dream of someday living in a felt house like this.

i think i'll try and dig out the other two books from childhood and see what they might reveal this week as well...

the oxygen utility dome...

the oxygen utility dome was designed by doloris holmes. holmes was an artist / activist, who eventually founded the white mask theatre and changed her name to janais (to honor both janis joplin and anaïs nin) in the mid 1970s.

i'm not sure if the oxygen utility dome was designed specificaly for the 1970 "art for everyday living" series of articles or if it was something she had been working on prior. the drawing and ideas behind it certainly came at the beginnings of the ecological movement, and also relate to ideas that were prevelant in science fiction films of the time, like silent running...and there's a good chance it was inspired by the mitchell park domes, built in milwaukee, and completed in 1967 (these domes, coincidentally, were considered for locations for silent running...).

the idea of the oxygen utility dome was that it would be run like a utility "along the lines of con edison", and would contain a number of different kinds of spaces and uses; but mainly providing a series of "clean air rooms" - where one could get clean air by putting "a coin in a meter at the door of a room".

holmes was also interested in the dome as a site of social interaction and specific kinds of activity. before arriving at the clean air room of one's choice, one enters a bookstore, art supply store, or music library - where focused breathing becomes an activity accompanying art making or experiencing. along with the 300 clean air rooms there are communal spaces where "alienated men and women can talk to others" and a small children's zoo with hairless and featherless animals for allergic children. the dome would also include a botanical garden of plants which are becoming extinct accompanied by a soundtrack of calls of extinct birds.

the article ends with the words: a small prototype of the oxygen utility dome is to be built next year. i can't find any information as to whether or not this happened, but in holmes' archives there is a folder called - proposals [1969-1970] by doloris holmes with clippings [1970-1977] about her oxygen utility dome - so i'm guessing something was built or there were more published proposals.

...and did i mention how much i love this drawing...

marfa and the road to it...