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Wrecking ball blogo5/9/2023 I am confident that if he takes it upon himself to learn, he could develop an artistic practice into a formidable contribution to the DC art scene. But he's already demonstrated an enormous amount of tenacity just to get this far with his technique. He's never received much education in art. But without an understanding of artistic practice, of how the use of his technique might contribute to the greater conversation in which contemporary art occurs, his art is really only so many pretty images. ![]() ![]() ![]() He has been honing his technique, largely through trial and error, and is getting really quite good in terms of raw execution. He's not so young, and has come to the pursuit of art as a new endeavor, one that he is very passionate about. The second was also with an artist, who has been experimenting with a number of media including drawing. Almost all of them involve having a day job of one kind or another. But selling his work doesn't pay his bills and it's unlikely to in the near future. He's got what it takes - wonderful technique, an art school education, and plenty of DIY spirit. Because it's not easy to support yourself by art alone. He's having to make some hard choices about what it means to be an artist. He's part of an artists' collective of some note. Although he's young, he's doing a great job of establishing himself in the local art scene. The first is an artist, working largely in drawing as a medium. But their allure might also just be that they are such a simple shape, which can still cause plenty of destruction.So I had drinks with two people recently. For Atlas Obscura, Byles cites the wrecking ball as a symbol of progress and optimism because of their use in an era that prided itself on an “out with the old and in with the new” mentality. Though wrecking balls on the job site are now rare, their power in metaphor remains strong. When a building needs to come down quickly, explosives have now become the best option for taking down modern skyscrapers. Wrecking balls fell out of favor as experts started using attachments and machines that could “nibble away” at buildings. New equipment, Grundhauser reports, also made for more precise work. Growing recognition that some building materials, such as asbestos, were toxic to the workers handling them helped push the industry toward less dramatic, more contained methods of destruction. “That combination of factors, saving on labor costs, and the advent of technology really transformed the industry."īut the work was also messy. “ You no longer had to pay a crew of barmen to spend all this time taking apart a structure piece by piece,” Byles tells Grundhauser. Grundhauser writes that wrecking balls reached “peak ubiquity” in the 1950s and '60s, primarily because they were so cost-effective. While the wrecking really began with sledgehammers that smashed through fixtures and windowpanes in the 1930s, wrecking balls, heavy steel spheres suspended from cranes, came soon after. Demolition at the time was a skilled trade, Byles, who wrote a book on the subject, adds:ĭemolition was construction in reverse: fixtures and appliances were sold wood studs and flooring pried up, studiously denailed, and tied in bundles for reuse and bricks cleaned by fiendish characters who could knock the mortar off 5,000 bricks a day. ![]() But it also might be thanks to the wrecking ball's history.ĭemolition has always made a great spectacle. In the early 1900s, the New Yorker profiled Jacob Volk, a prominent wrecker in the city, stating that he had “pulled down the best places, and was proud of it,” and that “e never passed a tall building without an appraising glance and a sigh,” reports Jeff Byles in a 2006 New York Times article. Their remaining popularity in song and cultural consciousness might just be due to people's fascination with destruction. Yet when people think demolition, most still imagine the ubiquitous wrecking ball, despite the fact that this tools is becoming increasingly rare, writes Eric Grundhauser for Atlas Obscura. When most buildings reach the end of their usefulness, they are taken apart and their parts are reclaimed.
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