13 May Blown Away (2019)

Someone Else’s Bubble

I don’t know who originated the formula. I’ve seen it on “Legomasters”. You start with 8 teams, here 8 glass artists. You give them an assignment, material and some time. Then their creation is judged, someone eliminated until there is a winner.

With Lego it works. The competitors are pairs — friends or lovers — who collaborate. The show is surrounded by silliness and stunts. The judging is by a fellow whose opinion will usually seem apt and sometimes educational.

One fundamental difference between the shows, that and this, is that these are artists who have dedicated their lives. None of them live well. All are under appreciated and winning basically means they can have a career. Our Lego enthusiasts are hobbyists.

Another difference is that we root for Lego teams as teams. The sharing is the thing — and often the lack of expressive atunement is what sends them home. The mediums are different. Lego is a designed medium, optimised for this sort of expression. You make scenes and tell stories. It is design and not art.

So when you transplant the competitive template to glass art, you commit multiple travesties. Art cannot be competitive. It can’t be a slave to time pressure. The medium dominates, so the collaboration is between artist and the medium.

There is also a problem lining up the objects for display. Glass is often less a material than a sculpting of light. It can be environment and object, but you often have to live with it — are be intelligent enough to know what that might be like.

All this is by way of advising you to stay away. If you don’t, you may struggle with the constraints and get depressed as vision after vision is shoeboxed away.

Posted in 2022

Ted’s Evaluation — 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

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