We're in Indianapolis today.
And we're actually filming in the very same location
we did a while back for Sopheap Pich imprint assignment.
But this time, we're filming with Brian McCutcheon, who's
a master fabricator whose studio helps
build an artwork for Sopheap Pich,
but who's also an artist in its own right.
Brian's work explores play, notions of masculinity,
and the intersection of the everyday and the extraordinary.
And while he works in a range of media,
his starting point is often the common materials around us.
Past works have seen him reimagine charcoal grills, lawn
chairs, and the iconography of suburban American life.
His work has been heavily informed
by his interest in cars, speed, and flight.
And a recent series of works engaged
he and his sons' fascination with the phenomenon and forms
of space exploration.
We are surrounded by things, mostly mass-produced things.
And Brian has the uncanny ability
to find the potential for resonance in them.
So let's go talk to see what kind of assignment
he has for us.
Hi, I'm Brian McCutcheon.
And this is your art assignment.
I spent a lot of time with my mother's brother, my uncle.
And he is an obsessive maker of cars.
And so if I wanted to find my uncle,
I would go to his garage, or the garage
he was working in at the time.
And then, so I look back at my first sculptural experiences
of fixing up my first car when I was 16.
I had a $400 beater.
And I made it nice by doing the body work and stuff to it.
Yeah.
I think that's definitely when I discovered
I like to make things.
I am of the opinion-- and I might
get in trouble for this a little bit--
but I think the purpose of art is not about functionality.
I think the purpose of art is about ideas,
about conveying attitudes.
And so I don't have a problem if the thing still works.
And certainly, there's lots of artwork out there that works.
But the work that I make, I think of them as sculptures.
When I was at the Beamis and I was
working on abstracted sculpture but using automotive materials,
I was reading "Hot Rod" magazines at night.
And because I grew up in Michigan,
and the history of Detroit auto, and my relationship a lot
with my uncle, and that ability to apply identity
to the vehicle, I decided that I should not
step around the issue of art as abstraction
and apply it to the things around me
that I thought had something to do with maleness.
I guess this was really when I started
thinking more about male Americana was in Omaha.
Everybody there, every time you turn around,
hey, you want to do a barbecue?
And of course, I was thinking at the time, well,
barbecue is something that has a male identity associated
with it.
But there's also this weird feminine or cooking aspect.
I thought about guys in their aprons
with the naked lady on it.
That kind of facade.
At the time, I was also looking at Baroque artwork.
And men in the Baroque period, through dress.
And so how do we, as contemporary man,
ornate ourselves?
And it's through our automobile, a lot of the time.
And so I was trying to mash those ideas together-- maleness
of work, of automotive, and decorative, to make this thing.
So your assignment is to customize a common object.
Find a common object that you find interesting.
Make a list of identifying traits of that object.
And then, customize the object while thinking about
and playing with one of those traits.
So Sarah, this art assignment is
pretty similar to a previous one-- Brandon Odom's
artistic alchemy, where you take an old object
and re-purpose it while thinking about its history.
Yeah.
It's similar in ways.
But the thinking behind it is actually really different.
This time, you're looking at that object.
You're thinking about its use value, its intended function.
And then, you're focusing on one of those things
and upending it.
Right.
OK.
So you know how we have that cup that we
put around the kids' head when we're shampooing them?
I put a bunch of holes in that cup
so that Henry could see it come down like rain.
But then, it stopped performing its function
of being their shampoo cup, because it didn't hold water
anymore.
Like that.
But in the context of this assignment,
I think there are more interesting things
you can do with a cup.
Really?
Yeah, actually.
I'm thinking of one particular thing
that's been done with a cup.
And that's this work by Merritt Oppenheim,
one of the key artists behind surrealism.
And she did something extremely interesting with a cup.
I would like to hear about this extremely interesting cup.
I will tell you.
The story goes that in the 1930s,
young Merritt Oppenheim was having lunch with Picasso
and Dora Maher at a Paris cafe.
Picasso admired the fur-covered bracelet she was wearing,
and remarked that you could cover anything with fur.
Oppenheim shot back, even this cup and saucer.
Soon after, Andre Breton asked her
to participate in the first exhibition
of surrealist objects.
And so she went out and bought a teacup, saucer, and spoon
at a department store and covered them
in the fur of a Chinese gazelle.
At the time, there were a number of artists taking found objects
and arranging them in unexpected, irrational
combinations with the aim of summoning
our unconscious thoughts and desires.
With the fur-lined teacup, Oppenheim pretty much
did this assignment.
A teacup is common, inanimate, washable, appropriate
to drink tea from.
It's ladylike and proper.
Lining it with fur transformed it
into a bizarre, animal-like things,
more appropriate to touch than place
to your lips, more sensuous than genteel.
While the surrealists' goals may have been different
from yours or mine, their use of unexpected juxtaposition
is instructive in approaching any common object,
be it a pair of shoes, a telephone, or a forklift.
The thing that I feel like would
be critical about the assignment is that it's not just
about decorating.
It's about trying to change our opinion about the thing
that we're looking at, whether it functions or not.
For my art assignment, I decided that I would
customize the shop's forklift.
Fork truck is a tool in the shop that gets thoroughly abused
and no one thinks about.
And so I felt like if I applied the customizing to it,
it would change our perspective of what it is.
What I've done, or what we've done as a collective,
we've disassembled it.
We've dissembled the forklift.
It was pretty battered.
And it's one then we got used, although it
was in pretty good condition.
So I ended up stripping off all this terrible body work on it.
And then so we body worked all of the panels
and put them into primer, and then put a base coat of color
on it.
Then, I started striping and paneling and prepping it
for the custom paint aspect of it.
You do it because it should enrich the environment
in which you live in.
And if it's great work, maybe it'll
change or enrich the life of somebody else who sees it.
Hi, I'm Brian McCutcheon.
And this is your art assignment.
Ah, got to do it again.
That will be the cut out at the end, right?