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Fire Hydrants-See the Beauty!
Sleek lines, sexy curves....and OH, when they get turned on...Look Out!
PURCHASE, N.Y. (AP) - There are fire hydrants bedecked with
roses. There are fire hydrants having sex. There's a tower of seven
red fire hydrants, 11 feet high.
It looks like a city dog's fantasy, but there are no pooches
permitted. This is art.
Ran Young Kim, who grew up in South Korea and spent five years
in a Pennsylvania convent, has put together a free exhibit called
"Fire Hydrant" as part of her thesis for a master's degree in
fine arts at Purchase College. The work is on view at the Visual
Arts Building on campus through Nov. 7.
Kim, 39, says her goal was to take an everyday object and
transform it in her studio.
"People associate the hydrant with fighting fires, or maybe
with parking spaces - you can't park there," she said in an
interview at the gallery.
"But when it's nonfunctional, people can interpret its meaning
for themselves. To me, a fire hydrant is humorous. I was giggling
because it seemed to me it was a penis."
Kim found her matching female symbol in a certain form of
standpipe with two round openings that reminded her of breasts.
Several of the pieces in the exhibit - which are untitled - show
various forms of male-female interplay.
One piece, she said, was inspired by the Ross and Rachel
characters on TV's "Friends."
Her professor, artist Murray Zimiles, says Kim's work invokes
Constantin Brancusi's "Endless Tower" in Romania and the fanciful
creations of Claes Oldenburg, who makes giant sculptures of such
commonplace items as baseball mitts and sandwiches.
"It's humorous, obviously, and it obviously has sexual
overtones," he said. "The hydrants become almost anthropomorphic.
When something like that works on so many levels, it becomes a very
novel, amusing experience, which is what art is supposed to do."
"I know I'll never look at a fire hydrant the same way again,"
Zimiles said.
Kim said she was inspired last winter by a fireplug near the
Manhattan flower shop where she was working. It had apparently been
damaged when the water inside froze and it was marked with a yellow
ring so firefighters would know it wasn't working.
"It became nonfunctional and I could see it as something
else," she said.
The only real fire hydrants in the show are in photographs she
took on campus, near her home and near the flower shop on the Upper
West Side, and a pair she calls her "Country Couple" that she
spotted among flowers and weeds in upstate Swan Lake.
Once, while Kim was taking a picture of a hydrant in Manhattan,
a passerby, apparently figuring she was gathering evidence, said,
"You got a parking ticket, didn't you?"
The bulk of the gallery is taken up with the fireplugs Kim has
constructed of a stiff, plastered paper and various adornments
including the roses, noodles, chains, tubing, an extension cord and
a clear gooey substance that looks wet but isn't.
Kim came to America at age 20 and spent five years with the
Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary before she "realized it
was not to be" and began working 70 hours a week at a garment
factory in Manhattan. She worked her way through Purchase, which is
part of the State University of New York, and decided to make art
her career - if she can.
"I'm not expecting a lot of money," she said. "I'd love to
find some free studio space somewhere so I can keep working."
She's already working five nights a week as a waitress at a
restaurant in Hewlett.
Zimiles said he'd love "to get some galleries interested in her
work. If that happens, I have a feeling she'll do quite well. It's
been an incredible struggle; she lives very frugally, barely
survives. I admire her. I admire anyone who's so dedicated that
they'll do anything to make their art."
Kim's father, who she says had artistic leanings, died in 1995.
Her mother and brother, she said, "don't really get" her art. As
for the nuns, she hasn't stayed in contact and they probably
wouldn't be able to get beyond the sexual content of her work to
see that it's about love, she said.
"Recently, I realized that there is a desire to love and to be
loved throughout the work and I was very much surprised to find
it," she said.
---
On the Net:
Purchase College, http://www.purchase.edu
PURCHASE, N.Y. (AP) - There are fire hydrants bedecked with
roses. There are fire hydrants having sex. There's a tower of seven
red fire hydrants, 11 feet high.
It looks like a city dog's fantasy, but there are no pooches
permitted. This is art.
Ran Young Kim, who grew up in South Korea and spent five years
in a Pennsylvania convent, has put together a free exhibit called
"Fire Hydrant" as part of her thesis for a master's degree in
fine arts at Purchase College. The work is on view at the Visual
Arts Building on campus through Nov. 7.
Kim, 39, says her goal was to take an everyday object and
transform it in her studio.
"People associate the hydrant with fighting fires, or maybe
with parking spaces - you can't park there," she said in an
interview at the gallery.
"But when it's nonfunctional, people can interpret its meaning
for themselves. To me, a fire hydrant is humorous. I was giggling
because it seemed to me it was a penis."
Kim found her matching female symbol in a certain form of
standpipe with two round openings that reminded her of breasts.
Several of the pieces in the exhibit - which are untitled - show
various forms of male-female interplay.
One piece, she said, was inspired by the Ross and Rachel
characters on TV's "Friends."
Her professor, artist Murray Zimiles, says Kim's work invokes
Constantin Brancusi's "Endless Tower" in Romania and the fanciful
creations of Claes Oldenburg, who makes giant sculptures of such
commonplace items as baseball mitts and sandwiches.
"It's humorous, obviously, and it obviously has sexual
overtones," he said. "The hydrants become almost anthropomorphic.
When something like that works on so many levels, it becomes a very
novel, amusing experience, which is what art is supposed to do."
"I know I'll never look at a fire hydrant the same way again,"
Zimiles said.
Kim said she was inspired last winter by a fireplug near the
Manhattan flower shop where she was working. It had apparently been
damaged when the water inside froze and it was marked with a yellow
ring so firefighters would know it wasn't working.
"It became nonfunctional and I could see it as something
else," she said.
The only real fire hydrants in the show are in photographs she
took on campus, near her home and near the flower shop on the Upper
West Side, and a pair she calls her "Country Couple" that she
spotted among flowers and weeds in upstate Swan Lake.
Once, while Kim was taking a picture of a hydrant in Manhattan,
a passerby, apparently figuring she was gathering evidence, said,
"You got a parking ticket, didn't you?"
The bulk of the gallery is taken up with the fireplugs Kim has
constructed of a stiff, plastered paper and various adornments
including the roses, noodles, chains, tubing, an extension cord and
a clear gooey substance that looks wet but isn't.
Kim came to America at age 20 and spent five years with the
Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary before she "realized it
was not to be" and began working 70 hours a week at a garment
factory in Manhattan. She worked her way through Purchase, which is
part of the State University of New York, and decided to make art
her career - if she can.
"I'm not expecting a lot of money," she said. "I'd love to
find some free studio space somewhere so I can keep working."
She's already working five nights a week as a waitress at a
restaurant in Hewlett.
Zimiles said he'd love "to get some galleries interested in her
work. If that happens, I have a feeling she'll do quite well. It's
been an incredible struggle; she lives very frugally, barely
survives. I admire her. I admire anyone who's so dedicated that
they'll do anything to make their art."
Kim's father, who she says had artistic leanings, died in 1995.
Her mother and brother, she said, "don't really get" her art. As
for the nuns, she hasn't stayed in contact and they probably
wouldn't be able to get beyond the sexual content of her work to
see that it's about love, she said.
"Recently, I realized that there is a desire to love and to be
loved throughout the work and I was very much surprised to find
it," she said.
---
On the Net:
Purchase College, http://www.purchase.edu
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