Random Tentacle

Let's lead in with this repost from the Modern Energy Art group Nov 2020:

Art & Humour - that's a funny topic.

Although I used to make funny drawings, always, I used to think of "real art" as very serious.

Not funny at all. Like, I'd have an idea for a largish painting and it would be all meaningful and definitely not funny.

This persisted until I had my first solo exhibition in 1996, and the little local gallery where it took place had walls, obviously, for paintings; but it also came with empty white square plinths in the middle of varying heights and sizes.

"We can take them away if you don't do sculpture," said the gallery person, and my aspect started to giggle immediately. Went home and made funny sculptures.

One derived from setting fire to a number of plastic coke bottles, then painting the result partially in gold, putting a tiny man next to it and entitling it, "Tiny Man Emotionally Overcome By Giant Meaningful Sculpture."

Another was a plastercast thumb, painted metallic green and opalescent, sticking out of a flowerpot entitled "Green Thumb."

And then there was "Random Tentacle No. 1" (depicted below). (The idea being, you could spend an entire artistic career making random tentacles, up to No 232123881123, and each one would be "unique," highly collectable, and oh! so mysterious ...).

Random Tentacle No. 1 1996 :-)

Me and my artist friends at the time were laughing our asses off over these "sculptures" and had such fun making them as well. Real high energy, as we would say today ...

Well ... there's that thing ... if it's funny, can it be "art"???

Do we have "fun" in mind when we make MEA set ups, or is there still this gravitas pulling our artworks down? It must do. And conversely, if your art is actually funny or amusing or makes people laugh, or even smile, does that then equate to "you're not a real artist, because if you were, your work would have GRAVITAS ..."? and, importantly, ONLY gravitas in every single piece so it's all coherent and people can recognise your gravitas and start collecting your "great art"?

Well, my fun experiences with the 1996 exhibition "sculptures" was a personal breakthrough on the topic for me, long before Art Solutions came along and opened the door to be doing WHATEVER creates an evolution for you.

Hehe and my energy mind just flashed me a scene of me standing before some blood soaked hideous thing and saying to the gallery owner, "Well, where's the fun in THAT???"

The reason the Random Tentacles weren't on this website is because they came from 1996 and I didn't have an art site until a few years later. However, they came up as a Star Memory in Star Matrix, and they have amused me greatly over the years so they deserve their own place :-)

The above was Random Tentacle No. 1, which was present at the 1996 exhibition (giggle) and I'm not entirely sure what happened to No. 2, 3, and 4 (they may still be found in the loft, in which case I will add them later) but Random Tentacle No. 5 has been with me and on public display ever since it was made.

Random Tentacle No. 5 ca 1997

Photographed for the "Silvia's Magic Toys" exhibition :-)

I haven't made a Random Tentacle in many years, decades, in fact, but I thought it might be fun to make one from resin and link it to the Zauberwelt objects. Well, it's Saturday so let's find out if that will happen!

Random Tentacles are a lot of fun. Give it a go sometime and find out if they also make you smile.

Silvia Hartmann, Jan 2021

Random Tentacle No. 6 arrived shortly afterwards ...

Random Tentacle No. 6 2021 by Silvia Hartmann :-)