Heather Anacker and Krista Feld are artists from our very own Cal State Long Beach. Krista Feld is pursuing a career in the field of fine arts and art academia. According to her Linkedin page, she enjoys educating her peers and sharing her passion for creativity via hosting workshops. Heather Anacker, her partner for their exhibition, was also a student at CSULB during the time of the exhibition and shared similar interests in art with Krista. Together they created the exhibition for their BFA thesis titled, Dwelling. At the exhibit, before entering they ask visitors to take off their shoes because they want people to feel more vulnerable and more aware of the exhibit. The exhibit essentially explores the value of art in commonly used tools and materials.
First of all, their exhibition didn’t exactly have a form. Rather the exhibition is a wide space for all their tools and materials for their work. There’s a lot of stuff in the room. First of all, there is a shelf of random byproduct materials such as sawdust of several different colors and herbs all organized and lined up on a shelf to the side of the exhibition. Next, on the wall are all the tools used in their work. Ranging from rulers, paint brushes, and other essential tools for creating dyes for yarn. Krista also has her apron hanging on the wall which is dirtied and splattered with faded colors from the dyes. On the table is an array of other tools used in their work, such as a sewing machine and their sewing kit. On the stove next to the table are the work in progress dyes including carrot tops, purple cabbage, brown onions, and ebony sawdust. All of them are soaking or boiling away to get the color from the materials. Heather shows us their tapestry loom next which they received through a donation. Next in the exhibition, is a little room created with wood and drapes. This “room” is created for the purpose of always having what she wants in a little transportable room. Since Heather no longer uses a bed, her portable room has a tatami mat layed out next to her book shelf of her personal belongings. Similar to Heather’s “room”, Krista has her own little room with her pod, which is a chair hanging from the ceiling, her desk which has photos and objects of her inspirations, and her hanging closet which has pieces she created and wears. She also has a portable kitchen with ceramic bowls and utensils and even offered lunch for visitors. Overall, the space has a wide variety of different objects and items, but they all are representative of Krista and Heather’s defined space and exhibition.
As they are, these seemingly random collections of objects don’t seem like they have any real meaning, but once you explore the artist’s ideas with them, you begin to understand it a lot better. For example, all the used tools and the apron on the wall just seem like a whole bunch of items dirtied from their repeated use. However, what Krista and Heather’s art is really showing the visitors is the value of those used items since they help contribute to the creation of fine art. Krista’s apron is a perfect representation of this idea because she uses the apron during her work and it is dirtied from all the dyes. Additionally, the exhibition explores the idea of being at home. For example, Heather has a little room she uses which contains her favorite crucial items for daily use including the items she knitted, ceramic mugs, and plants. Krista on the other hand, had a desk with photos and objects that inspire her, her favorite comfy ceiling-hanging pod chair, and other items she knitted. All of these things represent the minimal amount required to call something “home”, hence the name of the exhibition, Dwelling.
To conclude, the idea of the intrinsic value of used tools and objects resonates with me the most purely because I love the idea itself. All the blood and sweat you produce working on something is painted on a three dimensional canvas: your tools. In Krista’s case, her efforts were being displayed via the wear and the dye marks all over her apron. In my case, I can relate it to something somewhat similar. When I work on my assignments and projects for programming, I use a tool called GitHub to control versions of my code and to have an area to access it on all devices. As a result, all changes are recorded on my repositories for each project. My hard work could be the amount of code I write that gets uploaded to GitHub.
