Profusion. Repetition. Delightful.

This image is one that stuck in my mind ever since I first saw it, so the other day, I decided to figure out who on earth made these things and what their deal was. :) It didn't take long to find Sandy Skoglund and a whole series of other fairly famous images of profuse repetition of clay animals. I remember seeing an installation somewhere. . . maybe at the Des Moines Art Center, though her work is both the installation and color photographs.

Then there is this photo, which I came across the other day while looking up an artist who has had an exhibit at the Memorial Union in Ames, Iowa, named Mark Kochen. According to a postcard, "Mark Kochen is a self described “serial artist” living in Sioux City, Iowa. His works focus on everyday objects presented in a whimsical and repetitious manner. Brains, televisions, mice, blenders, sheep and many others are painted by the hundreds, exposing minute variations in a seemingly identical array of similar objects." The rest of his work is paintings, but he had a handful of images on his website, this being one of them, referred to as a serial photo.

And then this:

Chris Van Allsburg's book Jumanji. I couldn't find the pictures of all the animals in kitchen, but I have this memory of a room where there are a whole bunch. Not to mention the mysterious magical quality of his illustrations.

And now to point out the obvious. I see a visual intersection here that I am really interested in and want to explore.

I am extremely interested in these types of images for a few reasons. One is that I think excess is on the one hand delightful - repetition and profusion are inherently a little funny to me, though probably less so if the profusion was a hoard of cockroaches or something. Also, excess is so related to American-ness. It seems gross and a little out of control to have a whole bunch of something, even a whole bunch of tiny somethings, and yet having a whole bunch is really secure and safe, like you can just loose them or break them and no matter, you always have more. It decreses the value of the individual things to you, but increases your value by having so many.

Rats.

So . . . maybe all my life, or at least since I read the Rats of NIMH, I have been sort of enamored and delighted by rats. Admittedly, this is perhaps because I have grown up in the place where rats are part of a clean, scientific, laboratory environment, where they demonstrate their bright intelligence and resemblance to other adorable mammals such as dogs, and not in the place where the rats harbor diseases, run across your face while you are sleeping, and destroy your only food. I keep returning to the subject of rats as something I'd to use in my artwork, though my rationale is still hazy.

For one thing, rats are smart. I love that. They are pioneers - the first to test out practically every biologically-related study that we try. This may or may not be true, but it at least seems that way . . . that it is easy to associate rats with science and with being on the cutting edge of scientific advancement, whether or not we want them to be. I just recently came to the realization that the NIHM in "Rats of NIMH" stands for the National Institute of Mental Health, and that explains the whole premise of those books. This news, by the way, blew my mind and was the source of great thrill and excitement for several days.

There is, of course, the ethical issue of rats being kept in cages, running around in mazes, and being killed through painful or horrifying scientific testing.

Not sure just yet what I might want to do with this.