While research­ing and read­ing Levi Strauss, hav­ing a lit­tle of The Sav­age Mind here and there in my evening dia­log with self, I came to real­ize the term “brico­lage” should be applied to much of my work. Rather than my main con­cept of assem­blage, where per­haps dis­parate objects exist adja­cent to or upon each other, mod­i­fied and yet remain­ing indi­vid­ual and unique,

brico­lage

would be a term more rep­re­sen­ta­tive of my artis­tic actions. Just as the play fort I built for the grand­punks with an old quilt and my stu­dio table, so are my objects com­bined from mul­ti­ples into a dis­tinct other. A whole from many wholes. Not parts or the sum of the parts but still parts and par­tici­ples. One intrigu­ing pos­si­bil­ity is in the nomen­cla­ture of the arti­cle and those who cre­ate it or them. The bricoleur. Amaz­ing word, is it not?

As we must use what­ever resources nec­es­sary to sur­vive (wouldn’t you say Levi Strauss would tell us that is true) we must uti­lize what­ever resources nec­es­sary to sur­vive the artis­tic process and to create

ART.

Obvi­ously this must be dis­cussed more fully, per­haps at a time of either induced men­tal aber­ra­tions, ie: caf­feine con­sump­tion or like­wise phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal imple­men­ta­tion of nec­es­sary quan­ti­ties, and the philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sion ensues. What this means, is, I think… that as philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sion and dis­course always occu­pies the major­ity of my men­tal processes, now I must apply more of the philo­soph­i­cal to the artis­tic. And admit it.

loudly

that I am

indeed

a

bricoleur.

So was MacIver. So is a banana and thusly, so, my friend, are you when you make a sand­wich or a bed.

In all truth, the research orig­i­nally engaged herein was of Maria Montes­sori and how to teach them lit­tle ‘uns what doesn’t want to learn. From Maria to Levi and then, not to blue jeans but instead to brico­lage - the ulti­mate assemblage.

*a brico­lage layer once worked for my father. a mason he was not.

c