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"The sound suits hide gender, race, class and they force you to look at work without judgement." The artist Nick Cave makes beautiful, full body outfits to cover his models. We are entranced by their lively beauty. We have not knowledge of the person underneath..neither their race nor gender, nor their class or background. We are oblivious to all of these attributes and revel in the beauty of the costumes. His art is a reaction to the racism he has experienced.

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Virginia
"If I'm not here I want to be here and I want to work"  Canadian Artist Liz Major makes realistic casts of objects.  She takes a pink baby liner from the 1960s and repurposes it in a cement cast with close pins.  This is from the era when women had traditional expectations to have babies but probably not a career.  She is recasting this object to have us look at it and study it..pinned and fitted into a certain shape.  It is inflexible and rigid.  She is a feminist artist, yet honors women's handiwork as in the cement bag containing beautiful handmade doilies.  Yet, here, they are confined in a bag as if womanhood is/was confined in a paper bag.

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Kammy
Stretch & Explore
Develop Craft
Engage & Persist
Observe

Observe not just the subject of your art making but your own process and self. What do you need? "Everyone should have a studio as a matter of public health," says artist Liz Magor. A place well suited to committing to several of the Habits of Mind. Flexibilty to take risks. Showing up. Meditative space to engage in creating.

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Everyone Should Have a Studio, Liz Magor — Art21

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While working on a cast sculpture of a paper bag, Liz Magor describes her Vancouver studio as a place for pleasure as well as productivity. “If I’m not here,” says the artist, “I want to be here and I want to work.”

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Kelly
Nick started creating his sound suits,  which are a blending of fashion and sculpture, in response to the 1992 beating of Rodney King. After that event Nick felt a sense of dismissal and discard from society for the individual. He found a twig on the ground and decided to build a suit out of twigs. It became a suit of armor, a shield for the individual from society. He also realized that the suit made noise and it moved.  Some of his sound suits are now used in performance pieces as well as being sculptures.

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Joanie
Diana is an artist whose work focuses on improving the lives of animals through art and activism. Her work focuses on anti captivity for all animals, giving voice for better conditions of animals and as a result all of humanity.

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Camilla
Do Ho Shu  understands his life as a "movement through different spaces"  He memorializes his space (apartment of 18 years) by rubbing, which brings memories associated with details. SHoM= express and reflect. At the end of his landlord's life the artist has a meaningful/reflective encounter with him.

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Express
Aileen
In 2010, Cuevas painted a "bridge" across the Rio Grande on the riverbed to connect Mexico and the United States. She reflects on it 7 years late in response to President Trump's pledge to build a wall. She uses art to express her belief that it is more important to unite the communities. Even though the piece was done in 2010, it seems more powerful in light of the current climate by some to isolate and divide us from our neighbors.

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Buffy Y.
Joan Jonas is an artist who draws with many materials (chalk, ink, paint) and has done collaboration with performance artists. She sketches anything she feels or is interested in (her dog, an insect, an owl). They are simple line drawings and she does the same subject matter over and over until it becomes something more interesting. I found it interesting that the video starts with her talking about how no one really can see an artist in their true work process but then it ends with showing her performing her art creations on stages.

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Avery Singer - Envision, Stretch and Explore, Expression, Developing Craft

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Avery Singer - Envision, Stretch and Explore, Expression, Developing Craft

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Jen K.
This woman is a young artist who envisions (SHoM) on the computer and then takes that  envisionment and enlarges it to reproduce on canvas with paint. Her parents were artists as well (they only used Golden brand paint and so she calls herself a "second generation Golden painter"). Interesting (but predictable) that a child of artists whose bed was a loft above her mom's studio would turn out to be an innovator in art technique. I'm sure it has something to do with the values and modeling of expansive thinking (as well as possibly some genetically inherited talent). She also Stretches and Explores by using a medium in a new way and Develops her Craft. As she says, "“You can take traditional tools and employ them in the way that they’ve been intended to be employed for five-hundred years, and then in the next hour incorporate some kind of new technology,”
She likes the idea of putting things together that have never been seen side by side to "produce a new visual reality"

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Vicki R
Nick Cove talks about his exhibit of sound suits. He creates amazing, colorful suits that hide the body completely. He says this is his way of confronting (or not confronting) issues of race and gender bias. As a black male, he has had to contend with racial profiling and other negative aspects of his race and his art is his outlet and focus.

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Artist Nick Cave discusses the experiences that force him to confront his identity as a Black man-including being racially profiled by police-and how they fuel his impulse to create. Cave explains that in these moments he gets quiet and avoids lashing out in rage. "And if I do, lashing out for me is creating this," he says in reference to his intricately constructed Soundsuits.

"The Soundsuits hide gender, race, class and they force you to look at the work without judgment." The exhibition Here Hear, which included a large-scale community performance, was installed at Detroit's Cranbrook Art Museum in 2015. The museum is associated with the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where Nick Cave attended graduate school in the 1980s and was the only minority student at the time.

More information and credits

Credits

Producer: Ian Forster & Nick Ravich. Consulting Producer: Wesley Miller. Editor: Morgan Riles. Camera: Jamin Townsley. Sound: Richard K. Pooler. Artwork Courtesy: Nick Cave. Special Thanks: Cranbrook Art Museum, Robert Faust, William Gill & Laura Mott.

Art21 Exclusive is supported, in part, by 21c Museum Hotel, and by individual contributors.

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Licensing

Interested in showing this film in an exhibition or public screening? To license this video please visit Licensing & Reproduction.

Nick Cave creates "Soundsuits"-surreally majestic objects blending fashion and sculpture-that originated as metaphorical suits of armor in response to the Rodney King beatings and have evolved into vehicles for empowerment. Fully concealing the body, the "Soundsuits" serve as an alien second skin that obscures race, gender, and class, allowing viewers to look without bias towards the wearer's identity. Cave regularly performs in the sculptures himself, dancing either before the public or for the camera, activating their full potential as costume, musical instrument, and living icon. Cave's sculptures also include non-figurative assemblages, intricate accumulations of found objects that project out from the wall, and installations enveloping entire rooms.

"I don't ever see the Soundsuits as 'fun,' they're really coming from a very dark place."

Jacquelyn Gleisner speaks with artist Nick Cave about his immersive installation Until, on view at MASS MoCA through September 2017.

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Nick Cave discusses the experiences that force him to confront his identity as a Black man-including being racially profiled by police-and how they fuel his impulse to create.

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Michelle G.
I watched "Liz Magor: Everyone Should Have a Studio". Liz describes the space she has made exclusively for creating art. Her studio allows her a single focus for creation of her sculptures. She doesn't have any distractions there, nor does she invite friends to visit her studio so that it remains a place just for making art.

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Everyone Should Have a Studio, Liz Magor — Art21

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
While working on a cast sculpture of a paper bag, Liz Magor describes her Vancouver studio as a place for pleasure as well as productivity. “If I’m not here,” says the artist, “I want to be here and I want to work.”

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(your name)
Name of, or link to video (or segment) watched plus a short description of how the artist exhibits that habit.