Cleaning Peter Kowlaski’s NOW and it’s surrounding area showed me how important it is to take care of art. It made me feel appreciative of little things and reminded me how nice it is to enjoy a clean area. Art comes in many different forms. For example, art can be as simple and calming as cleaning the steps outside of an art museum like Mierle Laderman Ukeles did, and art can also be as dangerous and exciting as flinging molten lead against walls as Richard Serra did. While both of these acts are art, they each place different emotions inside me. Richard Serra’s work is more thrilling to me, while Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ work is more soothing to me, personally. While the two acts are very different for the more obvious reasons, there are some similarities. Both of these acts show what kind of person their respective artists was, I believe. From an outsider’s point of view, Richard Serra is a manly man that is trying to show how tough he is by flinging molten lava. On the other hand, Mierle Laderman Ukeles is a more down to Earth, feminine person, doing what she thinks is the right thing to do and showing the beauty in it. While this may be the deepest similarity that I can see, it is not the only one. Both of these works took place at an art museum, which is a surface similarity. I wanted to bring this very shallow similarity up, however, to talk about how both of these works should be considered art anywhere, and not just at an art museum. In my opinion, art is what the the artist intends it to be. For example, I work for the Athletic Department at CSULB, and a responsibility that I occasionally have is to clean the basketball floors. When I am doing this task, I am doing it as my job, and not as art. However, if I intended it to be art, it could be. I think that if Mierle Laderman Ukeles decided to get a janitorial job for a few months and intended for her tasks to be art, it would have been considered art. The canvas or whatever medium is being used does not have a certain power to make something art. It is solely the intentions of the artist that makes a work art. From a painting on a canvas, to painting a house, to throwing molten lead at walls, and to cleaning steps, anything can be art if that is what it is intended to be.
Mierle Laderman Ukeles and Jennifer Lopez have not made me think differently about “Women’s Work”. I think that all work is work, and that if it’s intended to be art, than it is art. Art doesn’t need to be Napoleon on a horse, it can be anything that it’s creator wants it to be.
If I were to go to Hollywood Boulevard to clean a star, I would clean the Los Angeles Dodger’s star. Not only are the Dodgers my favorite sports team, but they also do all kinds of charity work around Los Angeles and help out people in need.
Cade Middaugh 