Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Peter Callesen's one sheet & beyond

A friend sent me a forward about a cool contest the Hirshhorn had had requiring a work be cut or otherwise fabricated from a single sheet of paper.

I really liked the works presented in the forward.

But I had some nagging doubt about the Hirshhorn's part in such a contest.

Indeed, I could find no mention of it beyond the blog entries of other people who'd received the same email (& who also couldn't find any reference to the contest).

I lucked onto someone saying that all this cool cutout work is by one Peter Callesen.

So, no contest, this Peter's a talented artist. Check it out.

UPDATE: Here's another blog, If It's Hip, It's Here, setting things straight in detail. And though I tried snopes.com early on, I only just found this.

Anyhow, thanks to my friend for sending me the cool art and to these folks in the know for clueing us in.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm the guilty party, unwittingly spreading the hoax. I found it strange that multiple artists would interpret the rules in the same way, but I was too lazy to check it out on www.snopes.com. Mea culpa. ;-)

K. R. Seward said...

Don't sweat it. Yet another friend had sent it to me before you had.

And while one could find it in the snopes.com message boards, I couldn't find anything in snopes proper.

One day I'll learn me how to use this here interweb . . .

laura l. sweet said...

And I'm the "folk" in the know who clued you in. Glad I could set the record straight.

Enjoy my blog,
If It's Hip, It's Here.

laura :)
www.ifitshipitshere.com

K. R. Seward said...

Thank you for your in-depth entry on Callesen. I had already linked it to "setting things straight". And now my entry update mentions If It's Hip, It's Here directly with a hyperlink for folks to check out your cool blog.

I was too clueless to be clued in by your entry (or the snopes.com message board). I had (finally) found a casual allusion/link to Callesen's site on the lemmingtrail board (the "someone saying" link). From there I could go see Callesen's work and realize it was all his.

I very much wish I'd seen your entry and the snopes board early on, before all that digging (searching the Hirshhorn website for the contest, composing an ultimately unsent email query to the Hirshhorn, finding zip at snopes.com proper, reading the several blog entries that quoted the email--albeit with reservations). A testament to the truth of "work smart, not hard". ;-)

I esp. wished to have found your entry as it's a well considered homage to the artist.

Mine is simply a quick and dirty pathway to Callesen's own site for curious passers-by.

If I'd seen yours first, I'd have passed it along for others in two sentences. Boom. Answer found and relayed.

Ironically, Callesen's performance and installation work (like the floating castle in Hamburg harbor) seems a better match for the Hirshhorn than his paper work. IMHO, that is.

Anyway, thank you again for your blog entry.

And thanks again to these other more casual fact-checkers who are getting the word out too.

Esp. for Google-challenged folk like me who need the scatter shot of many voices speaking the truth.