Art as Armor

With summer vacations taking people away, I've been thinking a lot lately about my friends and how much they impact my life.  I know I don't tell them enough how much they are appreciated.  Besides their absence while vacationing, nothing makes one appreciate a friend more deeply than when that person has been somehow threatened.  Suddenly you think, "What could I have done?  What can I do to protect this friend?"

Running wild dog drawing, ©Joy Kreves

I have a number of female friends who live alone.  Some have dog companions; some do not.  When a house repair is needed, they know that they are fairly vulnerable to the workmen who come in.  Women are simply vulnerable at any age.  One female friend recently made sure to say "we" whenever talking about herself in front of the repairman who showed up at her door, but in doing so realized that her house shows no evidence of a man's presence at all.  This particular repairman acted just odd enough that her personal radar went on high alert.  Nothing was overtly wrong, but something about him wasn't quite right, either.  She stayed on the phone with a family member, then me, for most of his time there. This particular woman has a lot of skill at reading people, having had job experience working with disturbed people.  She has been a great friend to me, and a huge help during some pinches in recent years, and it distressed me that some creep could so easily be her undoing. We agreed to be physically present for each other during future "situations";  I am gathering some of my husbands extra belongings for her to put out on display and I have an idea to arm her with my art:  I remembered how it seemed my sculptures had once helped to deter some criminals.  Perhaps drawings of those same images might have some power also?

Snarling Wild Dog drawing, ©Joy Kreves

In the 1980's I lived in NYC where a composer friend, Larry Simon, called on me to play the violin part in some music he had written to accompany the reading of a poem by Frederico Garcia Lorca.  We performed this in some galleries in SoHo.  The poem (which I sadly can't find now) had a chilling line about snarling wolves that inspired me to make "stage sets" for our performance.  I drew some fierce-looking wolves, making them as menacing as I could with curled lips and spike collars, and then cut them out of foam core, life-sized, to stand up around us as we played.  An artist in New York needs friends with vehicles, and a couple of my friends had a big old van.  Graciously, they transported my ferocious canine sculptures to the gallery for the night's performance.  At the end of it we loaded them back in and agreed to leave them in the van overnight before driving them back to my place the next day. 

Growling, Collared Wild Dog drawing, ©Joy Kreves

Two Wolves, drawing, ©Joy Kreves

That night the old van was stolen.  I was horrified for my friends, whose livelihood depended on having that vehicle, and also for myself, having lost 5 or 6 sculptures in one blow.  A police detective told them it wasn't likely to be found since usually the thieves strip the vehicles for parts very quickly.  So everyone was extremely surprised when a few days later the van was found intact, having been abandoned somewhere in Brooklyn, down by the river, my sculptures still inside!  One was badly bent, but the others were fine.  The police speculated that the thieves had intended to use the van to abduct or mug somebody in, but did not have any such reports. 

Of course I immediately thought of what part my menacing sculptures might have played in deterring the muggers.  Perhaps, in the dark of the night, as they drove, they glanced into the back of the van they had just stolen and saw many shadowy guard dogs.  Real or not, surely those would have made anyone do a double-take, especially someone with bad intentions and likely high on who knows what drugs! In an alternate scenario, I imagined the thieves dragging a victim into the back of their newly stolen van, intent on mugging and robbing, but suddenly confronted with a whole collection of life-sized, snarling wolf sculptures.  It would have to have been a bit jarring, wouldn't it?  Maybe it was jarring enough to stop them in their tracks before they ran away?  I know it's possible that my sculptures had no effect at all and that the crime was nipped in the bud by something else, but as an artist, I need to believe that my work had some impact in that scene.  It certainly had some adventure, with scars on the one to prove it!

Leaping Wild Dog drawing ©Joy Kreves

Artists all believe in the life power of their work, don't they?  Why would you create a material entity if you didn't also think that you were creating some sort of a life?  When a work of art is destroyed it feels as if a life has been damaged.  I do believe that material objects, especially human-made objects, are imbued with some of the character of their creator and they have some sort of an impact on people even if a subtle impact.  And so I've decided to make my friend a guard wolf dog tee to wear when she has her next odd repairman come visiting.  It will be her talisman tee.  You are what you wear... if you come to the door wearing pretty soft flowers it sends a different message than if you wear a collection of strange, hopefully slightly menacing canines, does it not?

I am an artist, so those are the skills I have with which to appreciate and protect my friends.  I will make her an art armor tee.  Oh, I know my tee is not likely to cleanse a criminal mind!  In the best scenario, my friend will never have needed to wear the shirt; in another, it might be just the littlest thing to flip the balance towards her being more invulnerable.  That, my additional presence, her own good sensors, and the man's clothes that will not quite inconspicuously adorn her rooms on days when strange men must come fix things. She will be fine!

Now in Brooklyn by the river I have more recent art, hung with much intention.  My installation, ELECTRON MADNESS, is part of the juried COLOR show at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists' Coalition's  massive old warehouse space at 499 Van Brunt Street on the waterfront.  The reception is Saturday, July 28th, 1-6pm and the show runs through August 19th. I transported it there in my own trusty old SUV and the installation's porcelain "electrons" have nothing to do with armor...except, perhaps,...the power that the color red has...

View of Installation wall for ELECTRON MADNESS, mixed media, ©Joy Kreves