Oh Christmas Thing 2015

 Christmas Thing 2015, cement, newspaper, organic material.

The weather here in South Florida is decidedly not Christmasy, but as it has turned out, that's something the entire eastern half of the US is facing this year.

This year's Xmas Thing is a decidedly unfussy and low key affair, consisting of cast cement cones and a little flourish of color I found lying around in the yard.

Oh Christmas Thing 2014

Christmas Thing 2014, twigs, plastic ornaments

This year's Christmas Thing is small, measuring just over 12" tall, yet it carries a rugged elegance on those delicate legs.

Oh Christmas Thing 2013

After last year's hiatus, the Christmas Thing is back again in 2013.  As usual, it's a humble affair which entails some found elements, an unresolved sculpture and some xmas lights.

The two lighted components join Angelika's previously installed sculpture of a fragmented and skewered angel (photo just above, lower left of center; a detail from 2012 below) in covering a bit more iconographic turf for this holiday.

Oh Christmas (no)Thing 2012: B-E-A-S-T-(IE), Find out what it means to me

For the first time in five years, the KAMP MAYKR household was not outfitted with its customary  Christmas Thing.  With my return from Geneva coming so close to the holiday, and my attention drawn to reflecting on that experience,  I simply couldn't get the job done.
However, to make up for the lack of a xmas assemblage, I want to share a discovery I made which I think may have an impact on current Christmas scholarship.

In the days leading up to - or immediately following Christmas this year, I was at the gym, working up a sweat on the stair step-py machine while watching a 2009 rerun of SNL.  During the Weekend Update segment, a photo of a fur-wrapped Aretha Franklin was shown, accompanied by a punchline about her being eaten by a bear. 

I recognized the image immediately as being directly related to the mural restauration-gone-awry that has come to be known as Beast Jesus.  Last Summer in Zaragosa, Spain, Cecilia Gimenez, in an effort which would bring the issue of art restoration and conservation to the consciousness of much of the world, sought to "repair" the damaged mural of Christ entitled Ecco Homo painted by Elias Garcia Martinez in around 1930.
There must be something mysterious and magical afoot.  The uncanny likeness between the two images, the relation to the sacred in both (the mural's depiction of Christ in a church, Aretha's appearance occurring at that most sacred of Christmas observations; the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, in 2009).  Aside from the conscious internet memes, might we inadvertently see more images of this nature?  It all makes me think that something greater was at work when Mrs Gimenez put brush to mural last year.
Perhaps the one of the greatest painterly fuck ups in history might really be the primitive stirrings (channeled through an 80 yr old Spanish woman) of a more profound vision/message of the divine. 

A cursory search online makes me believe that this connection has gone unnoticed until now, and that's why I've decided to publish my finding now.  I don't know what it means, but I leave it to those so inclined to pursue the trail which may well advance the quest for the elusive true meaning of Christmas.  

Oh Christmas Thing 2011

This year's Christmas Thing was late in developing, but alas, it has come.  Inspired by the depiction of the holiday classic Hollywood films, this piece is silvery black and white....save for a string of paper balls that feature the hints of hues from the weekly store inserts which clog our mailbox every Wednesday.  The original versions of films like Christmas in Connecticut, The Bishop's Wife, and Meet John Doe embody such a warmth and lushness of the xmas moment in their monochromatic renditions that the colors of the greenery, ornaments and baubles are realized in the viewer's own perception of the scene.

I'm not claiming that this monochromatic Thing has any of those powers....it's really just an homage.

One thing that it does have going for it is that it has a kinetic potential, as is demonstrated in the video below:

Another thing that this year's Thing has going, is an audio component - in the form of a special Christmas Thing/Holiday Special Episode of the Dead Hare Radio Hour, which will be airing on WVKR in Poughkeepsie, NY on Dec. 27th. The podcast version should release on the 28th.

Oh Christmas Thing 2010

 To aggrandize the Christmas Thing with a plethora of photos from multiple angles goes against the existenstial raison d'etre that rests at its core. Poorly lit, blurry snaps of the piece leaving one unsure of what one is seeing, has been de rigeur in past years which seems to be the way it should be.

 But since the image quality of the online feed is even more indistinct, I thought I'd throw some bones for anyone who wanted to get the gist of what they're seeing. 

 So my plan is to stream the Christmas Thing Feed every evening (as long as I'm home to do it) until 10pm through Christmas Day. 

Oh Holy Mother of all Christmas Things!

Your Christmas season just got a little more wonderful:  I am hereby officially announcing The online broadcast of the Official Lighting of the 2010 Christmas Thing strait to your living room - or where ever else you can access it.  This momentous event which will be happening here at Kamp Maykr in Beacon, NY will be streamed LIVE online to the furthest corners of the globe at www.christopheralbert.com .
For the last few years at Christmas, I've been creating these assemblage/sculpture/holiday decoration contraptions that I've affectionately named the Christmas Things. 
If in looking at these things you don't quite get the spirit of the thing, let me explain this way: the Christmas Thing embodies my undying fondness of the season which has been informed by my mom's unmitigated passion for all things Christmas.  It also entails my perplexity at the fixation we have of very specific, visual traditions......Mix those aspects with an ambition to out-mundane and out-banal that televised yule log, and you've got yourself a Christmas Thing.
And now we're sharing the experience of the Christmas Thing with living rooms around the world.  This online broadcast will provide an added shot of good cheer, good neighborliness, and hopefully some good banter.  Be sure to tune in to www.christopheralbert.com at 7pm Eastern Standard Time on Sunday December 19 to share in the making of memories and maybe a little history.

I vow not to waste your time - for too long.
Stay tuned for details as they develop.

Oh Christmas Thing 2009

Christmas decorating came early and inadvertently this year.  Shortly after my open studio in Sept, I did some shuffling here, a little shifting there and before I knew it, voila!, this year's Christmas Thing was very magically born.  It's a good thing too.  I knew after last year that I needed to step away from the crutch of garland and lights to formulate my annual yuletide alter of the mundane.  Although I adore the scent of real garland, and real Christmas trees, I needed to go deeper to formulate the emblems of my Christmases to come.  This year's specimen is a real contender in my mind.
As you can gather from this and previous years' Christmas Things, I don't necessarily strain myself in the fabrication of these yuletide alters. I'm no Clark Griswold. 
But as with any other expression of seasonal cheer, these pieces elevate some designated niche filled with any ordained collection of items to a position that is worthy of gazing upon and projecting upon, any personally held notions of peace, family, giving, or crass commercialization that one attributes to this festive season. 

These amalgamations and the spirit with which I view their creation are as dear to me as any of those memories of the natural or artificial, flocked or not Christmas trees, garlands, tangles of lights and copious amounts of baked goodness of my Christmases past.

There's much about the Christmas season from which I have worked to sequester myself, but those aspects that I do relish; the atmosphere (physical, ethereal, and nostalgic), the taint of expectation, the sense of specialness that is attributed to certain gestures be they grand or not are the things I respond to.  Those are the abstractions (the good things)  formed at the fringe of this massive stress-filled hustle-bustle, overindulged merchandised moment.  And for me, for this moment, these Ritz boxes, that flattened Miller Lite 6 pack carrier, that polka dot sunglass case I found on the street, that stack of cardboard pallet feet from the packaging of our Ikea sofa and that spiral of Astroturf scrap are all imbued with those wonderful notions that waft in on gentle holiday currents.

Oh Christmas Thing 2008

The Christmas season is waning. Though not at home right now, before leaving I snapped a few photos of this year's version of the Christmas Thing(s).

Not particularly adventurous, these quick contraptions were destined for more development......which never happened......exhibit the ad hoc sloppiness inherint in so much of the Christmas aesthetic. I fully expect next year's Christmas Thing to be distinguished in its removal from the typical seasonal look. Studio 360 solicited a proposal for a redesign of xmas which illuminated some of my original, and has me thinking of a much more concious and provocative offering for next year.

Oh Christmas Thing, Oh Christmas Thing.

Since I've been on my own, I've never had a Christmas tree. I love the season and my nostalgia for it seems to grow every year, but my experience of it is pretty internalized, and this has continued since I've been living with Angelika. We don't do much for Christmas generally, and usually drop out of the broader xmas machinations whirling around us, finding a serene corner in which to pass the holiday.

I love the smell that xmas trees and garland bring into the home, and the most that we've done consistantly decorating-wise is stringing up some natural garland, and trying to keep the cat from constantly eating and puking up the stuff.
I very nearly bought a tree, and I was envisioning the compositional potential of christmas lights. But putting all that together from scratch on short notice was more than I wanted to commit to, so I improvised and utilized what was on hand.

Thereby was born, The Christmas thing.


I strung the garland and colored lights around a contraption that I had built to support a sculpture that is in progress, and was originally intended for possible inclusion in the SOTT exhibit in November. Unfinished, the plaster sculpture, which is inspired by the graceful tendrils of ligament, blood and flesh flowing from Medusa's decapitated head in Benevenuto Cellini's sculpture, has assumed the mantle of holiday significance.
I think I've discovered my special holiday tradition. Look ahead for future renditions of new and varied Christmas Things in the years to come.