and getting back to the first blog conversation, kat. i think we may be talking around the same tree. all sculptures, assemblages, have to contend with two basic issues fundimental to their achieving the status of sculputre. the first is material, the stuff from which it's made, [the what] and the second is the treatment of the material, or the how. the other questions [who,where,why] are significant to the meaning of the work, but not essential, by its very nature.
representational sculpture is at one extreem, where the how overwhelms the what, in this case bronze or stone which is homogeneous and 'blank'

when abstraction comes along, the how and the what are pointing at eachother in a formal feedback loop


i see the found object revolution as a dramatic shift in the attitude toward what that is stunning and evidence of either cognitive evolution... or its opposite [a sort of intellectual fetishism]. so the material has taken on a value separate from the inherant... a cultural, quasi-spiritual value. and the what gets a leg up on the how by association and a intangible cache.





i feel that the what's trancendance of the how is pivital, but i'm not convinced that it changes a paradigm [maybe misuse of that word?] the friedman piece is important to look at because it is a great example of material and craft comming meeting and working off each other. ... oop, gotta go. catch up later...