The House at 3601 Siam Drive

This Saturday Martin Papcun unveils his new work House, Turned Inside Out.  The installation is literally a house turned inside out.  Walls and ceilings have been sawed out and then flipped.  In this way the interior of the home becomes a display of the building materials that are usually hidden.

Link to House, Turned Inside Out Facebook Event Page

Gordon Matta-Clark's "Splitting" 1974

Reading about Papcun’s work , one can’t help but think of Gordon Matta-Clark, the man who sliced up building ready to be demolished.  Matta’s artist’s too was the power saw, a key to understanding his work as well as his rebellious attitude.  It gives his work a visceral quality and really gives a person the destructive power needed to single handedly rip apart a building.  Also using a power saw for art is a great comment on technology.  So often the creative and constructive side of technology is focused on because that side is more marketable.   But turn the coin around and you can see that technology is just as enabling in destructive potential.

Despite the nature of the power saw, Matta does create new things.  Strangely these building have more value cut than the did before.  With holes these building become pieces of art that show the viewer something about all building.  Before being cut these building have already been deemed useless by the standards of economic value.

While Matta was working in the seventies, his work is equally topical today. Now more than ever we need to find new values for derelict land.  The first step of this process is to find a new way to perceive the land, which is exactly Martin Papcun and Pop-Up City Cleveland are doing.

Link to New York Times Article on Matta written for his 2007 Whitney Retrospective

Yesterday I attended the last session of Regionalism in Practice as part of Spaces Plum Academy.  The session was hosted by the wonderful Tom Orange who took on the dubious task of extracting something useful from late 20th century art theory.

For the meeting I put together some of my thoughts on what Cleveland’s regionalism might be.  In doing research I stumbled across “Andrew’s Folly”, a gigantic mansion built in 1882 by Samuel Andrews.  The house was located on 30th and Euclid as part of Millionaires Row.  The house boasted over 80 rooms and 5 apartments.

So what makes it classic Cleveland?  Well the manor was left vacant  in 1898 just 15 years after it was built.  The reason being that the floor plan of the building made it impossible for the servants to function efficiently.  Seems a shame that a house so grand couldn’t find some way of fitting in to the city.

This is another case of Clevelanders who value quirky individuality over practicality.  My impression is Andrews felt he needed to be unique in order to be recognized as great.  Unfortunately glamor is not enough.  The need for function was too powerful.  It makes sense that  the architect was Geo Smith who designed the Cleveland Arcade, another structure of grandeur that seems to be too beautiful to function.

One last thing: Spaces is having its wrap up party to Plum Academy this Friday October 21st. It should be a blast and I’ll be sure to be there.

Andrews’s Folly entry at the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History

Pink Eye will be releasing their sixth issue on October 10th at the Beachland Tavern.  I’m always excited about a new issue of Pink Eye. They find the best artists and are genuinely funny.

Also is that a Jake Kelly cover? I can’t wait to see what they say about him. Kelly has defined the Cleveland concert flyer aesthetic for decades now. His flyer’s suggest individual comic book realities in a single frame, as well as cleverly cramming in all the needed concert info.

In addition, the Buried Wires are playing, which is pretty exciting.