WK 12- Artist OTW- Heather Anacker & Krista Feld

Artists: Heather Anacker and Krista Feld

Media: Fiber and Ceramics

Website: Heather Anacker — Artist — freelance

Krista Feld — Crater — Art Crating Los Angeles

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD1O6jUMXlY&t=374s&ab_channel=GlennZucman

About the Artist:

• Heather Anacker and Krista Feld are both former students of CSULB. Their interests involve handcrafting objects ranging from chairs to utensils. Anacker and Feld’s works, in this case, Dwelling revolves around the hidden potential of raw materials like wood or fiber and the importance of handmade objects over mass-produced ones.

Formal Analysis:

• Dwelling is an art exhibit featuring a large variety of displays. One of the most notable displays in this exhibit consists of a set of jars, some being filled with herbs or sawdust. While seemingly useless to most people, these jars do have some noticeable traits to them. For instance, when looking at one of the jars of sawdust, it has a unique yellow color due to it being made from pine wood. In addition, the jar of herbs also has a particular aroma to it, which they note is good for relaxing. Another display that was shown was the fact that served food to guests using bowls and utensils they made. These bowls either had certain names written in them to help add a sense of uniqueness to them.

Content Analysis:

• The main goals of this exhibit were to explore the importance of objects that most would ignore and the prevalence of handcrafted objects. In the case of the jars, it demonstrates that though most would consider herbs and sawdust to have no particular importance, they actually do serve some uses. For instance, Anacker and Feld later mentioned that they used the sawdust in helping dye their fiber projects. Furthermore, they also demonstrate the importance of handcrafted objects with the bowls and spoons they gave out. To be more specific, they managed to make them more unique by adding their own quirks to them; they don’t have a regular bowl shape or have certain names inscribed on them. These unique traits help separate the bowls from ones you may find from any normal store.

Synthesis/My Experience:

• To me, this project was pretty interesting. Namely, I enjoyed the fact that this exhibit allowed both Anacker and Feld to express their particular interests and beliefs. The importance of handcrafted objects versus the mass-produced and manufactured ones also resonated with me. In my own opinion, I understand the feeling of accomplishment that comes to making things with your own hands. For example, when I managed to make my own omelet, I was proud of the fact that I managed to create something on my own.