ART REVIEW : Creativity Amid the Kitchenware

Born of necessity, folk art is a living, organic tradition; styles and motifs die off, and others spring up to replace them. Given that, what are the folk-art forms of the ‘80s? What do people make for themselves these days besides phone calls, quick pasta dishes and appointments? Customized skateboards? Crack pipes? Compilation cassette tapes?

These are the sorts of questions that the Craft and Folk Art Museum raises in “Hands On!” the debut exhibition at its newly opened temporary location in the May Co. store at Wilshire and Fairfax. Tucked away behind the household-goods department on the fourth floor, the museum’s new digs aren’t particularly grandiose but they’re oddly appropriate. Among other things, folk is an art of essential objects so it’s fitting that the museum is now sharing floor space with beige sectional sofas and dinette sets; these are, after all, modern utilitarian goods.

The most provocative question that comes up in this survey of pieces from the museum’s permanent collection is whether folk art can continue to thrive in a global village where everything is for sale. Handcrafting was once the primary method for producing objects for daily living, but mass production put an end to that; moreover, the small subcultures and communities that have traditionally turned out folk art have been radically altered by media and the international marketplace.

Central to the folk tradition is a certain innocence, a lack of self-consciousness and vaulting ambition. How do present-day folk artists feel about being hailed as artists, and that the humble objects they learned to make from their ancestors are coveted as quaint oddities by wealthy collectors? These are the sorts of issues that prompted Edith Wyle to found the museum in 1973. Originally located across the street from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in a gallery known as the Egg and the I, the Craft and Folk Art Museum has presented more than 100 exhibitions over the past 16 years and attracted a museum membership of 2,000. In June, the musuem closed its doors and began the five-month process of relocating to the May Co., where it will remain until 1992, when it will return permanently to a 55,000-square-foot building under construction at its original site.

The museum has presented several brilliantly curated shows over the years, but “Hands On!” (which runs through May) is a scattershot affair. Divided into three sections--craft, folk art and design--the show focuses for the most part on 20th-Century American folk art, but a few pieces from Japan, India, Finland, Mexico, Czechoslovakia and Guatemala are thrown in to confuse things. The show has a smattering of so many different traditions that you don’t come away feeling as though you learned anything of much substance--you feel as though you’ve had a pleasant browse.

Moreover, several of the curatorial choices are rather baffling. In light of the incredible riches that come under the heading of folk art, why are we being shown Day of the Dead skeletons from Mexico, Sam Maloof rocking chairs, and quilts? These objects have been so thoroughly examined by the folk art world that at this point they’ve been drained of power and would look more at home in a May Co. display than a museum.

“Hands On!” doesn’t entirely disappoint however. Particularly intriguing are two Nuutti masks from Finland.

Part of a tradition of Finnish folk drama, Nuutti is a day during the Christmas season when people disguise themselves and go visiting. The two Nuutti masks on view here are made of lamb fur, cardboard, paint--and the crotches of nylon panty hose! The panty hose lend these masks an air of strange familiarity--they seem like figures you remember seeing running out of a convenience store clutching a sack of money and a gun. A processional flower saint from Mexico made of flowers, is also lovely. Part of a genre known as ephemeral art--which means it was made to be used in a specific ceremony, then destroyed--this piece has a sweet simplicity that’s quite touching.

Where the show is to be most commended, however, is in its attempt to bring wider recognition to folk artists currently working in Los Angeles. With large immigrant communities from Mexico, Central America, Korea and Japan, the city is home to several folk traditions that go largely unheralded--in other words, now’s the time to buy this stuff. Ruben Delgado, for instance, learned hand engraving silver in Guadalajara, Mexico, where he was born. Adapting to life in the United States, he now applies that skill to making saddles, horsegear and bridles for rodeos. One of his dazzling bridles is on view here.

Also of note is a set of wedding accessories made by Maria Torres employing a Mexican technique known as migajon . Migajon is sculpture fashioned out of bread dough and Elmer’s Glue; from these crude raw materials, Torres creates a crown and matching chain of flowers of incredible delicacy.

Spotlighting artists such as Delgado and Torres is exactly the sort of thing one would hope to see at the museum. We already know about quilts, and it’s time for the keepers of the flame of folk to adopt an aggressive curatorial policy that will make this form a living thing, rather than a scavenger hunt through the past.