Not all artists are connected in webs of art-based relationships. When not in their studios, they work day jobs or dig in their garden, drop the kids at
school if they have kids and do yoga if they can bear to bend over.
There are artists, good artists, who have no idea what anyone in
Artforum thinks or what’s on view in any particular museum or gallery.
They are so outside the system of having a gallery or being included in
a museum that years go by without them giving it much thought, and yet,
day after day, they’re still working.
Because at its root art is so frequently about the interplay of ideas arising from a particular time and place, being cut off from other artists as well as curators, dealers and critics is not usually a good thing. For some people, however, it’s necessary. Talk can be depressing noise, and other people’s voices can drain the life from an inspiration that arises from materials at hand.
Nole Giulini is not naive by any stretch, nor is she uninformed or entirely unknown. Her banana peels sewn into a species of Persian slipper were included in an exhibit at the New Museum in 1996. Her dessicated Mickey Mouse is in the Surrealist Impulse at the Tacoma Art Museum, which is what made me think of her again.
It’s a stopper, that little mouse, made of dried fungal membranes joined by coarse thread.
Some of her sock puppets bring to mind Louise Bourgeois’ wool figures, heavy with absurdly sexual implications.
Her fungal puppets might have marched straight out of a William Kentridge video. Brought into their own universe and seen in their own company, however, both wool and fungal objects remind viewers of no other.
Giulini needs what she doesn’t have – a solo show in a respected and well-attended space. Instead, every couple of years, a single piece pops up. Take Unititled (wedding dress) from 1994 constructed entirely of used underwear, which I saw half a dozen years ago in Seattle.
A girdle stretches across the shoulders with old
lace at the waist. The skirt features a massive Jockey train, each garment
signaling a long lifeline. Get married in this dress, and you’re up front about your back story, which trails behind you, sporting intractable stains.
Out, out, damn spot! This dress says don’t bother.
This dress says, virginal white is either a fantasy or the person
wearing it is too young to make the commitment. Getting married means
dressing up, but being married means picking up somebody else’s
underwear.
Be mine.
The box with clear glass sides contains rabbit droppings, each wrapped in 22 K gold, Untitled from 1991.
A curator or the right kind of dealer could put it together. Do artists have to make the scene to make anything happen for them, even in a regional context? When does the work speak for itself?
Nole’s work continues to be engaging and sincere year after year.
I am always intrigued by artists who are included in a quality regional show yet I have never heard of them. That was even more so when I was much more deeply socially involved in the local art scene. The question I always had for these folks who don’t really pursue shows yet constantly make work is: Where does your work go? Do you just have it in a big storeroom? Do folks buy it right out of your studio? Do you give it away? Usually it is through social connections that shows happen thus sales. What is their formula, if they have one?
bravo again.