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Sadie Barnette Biography
I’m 21 years old. I want a perfect boyfriend and a revolution. I
make art for 21-year-old kids who want perfect love and a peaceful
revolution, for girls who paint their fingernails and paint on walls, for
the kids who plan on fighting life’s battles in style, for girls
who laugh and cry more than is normal. I am exhibiting relating to
various aspects of my eclectic concerns. This series is works made of
shoelaces and named for songs and other small but life-changing moments.
I love fat shoelaces. In updating the formalist abstract painting of
yesteryear, it seemed appropriate to use fat laces, and that’s what
I have done in this series. Proclaiming fat laces as an art material is
to acknowledge the communicative and aesthetic properties of the laces themselves.
Us kids have agreed upon these shoelaces as a significant tool of
expression. These little 99-cent items have become ammo that can be used
in the battle of style and originality vs. the commercial appropriation
of that very style. There are times when style is inconsequential, but
the ransacking of youth culture and styles by monster brand names and
couture labels is not. Fat laces have no brand.
And although style is just one of my many concerns, I clearly see its
strong relationship to art. I think our chosen devices of expression are
important and valid, whether they are spray paint, oil paint or
shoelaces. And if while looking at these pieces you are suddenly reminded
of weaving potholders in the third grade, you should remember that that
was also important – simply because you were creating. These
objects and styles to not represent us, but rather serve as weapons that
we use in the struggle to represent ourselves. As we plot our revolution
you can be we are armed.
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