SCION Magazine Issue 14 / Spring 2009

“Reinventing the Color Wheel”

Americana in the Arts Re-Examined
Written by:  Jonny Coleman

In order to investigate how Americana is consumed or perceived right now, it must be recognized that Americana is not a fixed, tangible, or even real genre of art, or anything else.  Americana is middle-class, surely.  Americana is accessible, populist, blending elements of the familiar to natives and Natives.  So, art Americana would be that art under $5000, sometimes under $50-something attainable, something precious but not priced out.

Americana is not a singular aesthetic.  Certainly, many younger artists have appropriated techniques, crafts from regional art styles.  The crucial base of anything to be considered nouveau-Americana is craft, traditionally taught in specific regions in an apprentice system, mixed in or inbred with other ‘new genres,’ to create hybridized artworks that embrace, ironically or not, the craft of Americana tempered with the relevance of flashier, more modern styles and techniques. 

The ability to appropriate another style to then in turn rebirth it, is wholly American.

Pan-everything DIY aesthetic-that’s Americana.  Remix culture.  A Flickr account-that’s Americana.  Lo-fi illustration and graphic design, lowbrow, pop surrealism, street art.  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.  They all have roots in the States and offer a populist approach to image- and object- making. 

THE OBSESSION OF CRAFT

Craft has probably survived for so long in the States due to its nationalistic and religious signifiers, a reminder of where you come from for a nation of immigrants, mixed with the terrain, colors, and wildlife of the present.  A visual correlative for your genealogy or story.  Historically, many crafts required an apprentice/master relationship in order to develop certain skill sets for working with very specific materials (usually, but not always, functional): glass, quilting, silhouette, ceramics/pottery, taxidermy, needlework, furniture, textiles, and on and on.  People learning any of these crafts often did so as a rite of passage and/or to cement a very specific career.  Craftophiles engage in a huge art/craft marketplace Etsy.com, and they learn and engage with publications like Craft Magazine. 

While U.S. life expectancy rate grows next to the national rate of career change, artists/craftsmen that specialize in one trade or product are a static breed, whereas the dabbler or (more P.C.) interdisciplinary creator has poked his head our of obscurity and become the norm in many circles.  Creatives and craftsmen are living longer, changing careers more often, and absorbing bits of technique, craft, and culture from everywhere-and anywhere. 

A wide contingent of emerging artists is tackling craft head on, combining the traditions of craft from one’s rearing with the criticality of a BFA.  Los Angeles’ A&K, an American duo of young female artists, use the concept of home and a home’s materials as their form and workspace.  A (Alicia Borg) & K (Kate Kendall) met while studying abroad in South Africa and quickly realized a similar yearning to play with materials associated with homemaking and tradition from their American roots.  In one exhibition, the two created three hundred and sixty five felt roses, glitterful resin coasters, and dime store felt poster repaintings. 

A&K exude a great deal of attention to craft in relationship to the home or domesticity, but their goal isn’t necessarily to be political in a classic sense.  Instead, as Borg acknowledges, “there are these qualities that had influence from craft and fine art”.  Similarly conjuring up the craft of American holidays, A&K used a garage, where someone had lived, as a space to make and exhibit their most recent body of work.  Decorated with hand carved pumpkins and fake cobwebs missed with real ones, their garage exhibition fell the week before Halloween, as it milked the general kitsch of the Halloween atmosphere.  Within the garage, they had collaged two giant walls with garbage, mostly food packaging and most familiarly American.  In the corner, a child’s pony has been stripped of its paint, exposing the original wood material it was constructed from.  This negative painting, Kendall laughs, “will be the name of our next show of videos and photographs”.