Your such a TOOL!

OK, here is a little project which asks you to find, see, understand, make, feel, a ‘particular significance’ between you and an animate object. ..a Thing, an it… not a Who, whom, he or she.

To be honest with you all, this project is all about my childhood… for me tools, grease, working with my dad are some of my earliest and most vivid memories. … and today, my most enjoyable alone time is spent in my basement workshop making, fixing, and building things.. mostly guitar related. I covet tools… truly. I LOVE A GOOD TOOL! Even if it is old and i have know idea what it was used for.

Guess what these were used for!

Here is a guy I can rel;ate to…

Jim Dine (American, 1935)

Jim Dine (American, b.1935) is an artist affiliated with the Pop Art movement of the early 1960s, though his work draws significantly from Abstract Expressionism and Dada assemblage and collage techniques. But Dine’s association with Pop Art is problematic, and the artist prefers to emphasize the hands-on, gestural, and expressive in his work, rather than the mechanical and impersonal characteristics of Pop Art. Dine graduated from Ohio University in 1957, before pursuing his artistic career in New York.

He gained public recognition for his work on five Happenings in the early 1960s, performing alongside Claes Oldenburg (American, b.1929) More info on C.O. can be found Here and Allan Kaprow (American, 1927–2006) at the Judson and Reuben Galleries. Dine returned to painting, however, creating mixed-media works and assemblages. He often affixed personal items, such as his own clothing, shoes, and tools, to his canvases. The artist also began undergoing psychoanalysis in 1962, stirring a strong interest in his own memories and the construction of identity, leading him to create works with series of repeating objects possessing particular significance to him, such as hearts, palettes, and robes. Dine is known for his ability to combine the iconic and the personal in ways that evoke the expressive role of the artist as individual. He works in several mediums, ranging from painting, drawing, and mixed media, to sculpture, photography, book illustration, and printmaking. The artist lives and works in New York and Vermont. [http://www.artnet.com/artists/jim-dine/]