Jasper Johns, gum vs glue and LA freeways
Button, originally uploaded by lachance.
Regina Hackett, art critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (aka the P-I, if you grew up in those parts) has her own blog on the newspaper’s website, and yesterday she posted a fascinating entry about a southern California artist named Richard Ankrom, who decided to address insufficient signage on the 110 Pasadena Freeway in Los Angeles by creating public art that nobody really knew was public art (there’s a documentary made about the project which you can check out here, or if you’d like, you can zoom over to a segment of that documentary on YouTube by clicking here).
Hackett goes on to muse about art vs performance vs a sign that everybody thinks is a sign, but then to goes on to invoke Jasper Johns, who himself invokes our favorite substance:
“Publicly a work becomes not just intention, but the way it is used. If an artist makes something — or if you make chewing gum and everybody ends up using it as glue, whoever made it is given the responsibility of making glue, even if what he really intends is chewing gum.”
(And in honor of Jasper Johns and Seattle, a photograph gum functioning — briefly — as glue on the famous Seattle Gum Wall).