I recently had the pleasure of interviewing San Jose artist Charlotte Kruk and I must say, this was one of my favorite interviews and articles. Kruk is funny, charming, insightful and doing amazing things. This was a print-only piece, so here it is in its entirety:
Charlotte Kruk
by Cat Johnson
No good packaging gets thrown away at Charlotte Kruk’s house. As we sit down for a cup of tea, the artist grabs an exacto knife and opens our purple tea packets with surgical precision. She then turns the blade on the teabag tabs, carefully removing the staples and setting her salvageables aside. Later, they will be added to her ever-growing wrapper collection and at some point, those little tea packs just might be made into a dress.
Kruk, who is a sculpture-arts teacher at Lynbrook High School during the day, is an artist extraordinaire who has spent the better part of 20 years taking on the tangled psycho-cultural web of consumerism, packaging, femininity and marketing. Her weapon of choice? Wrappers. From the labels of candy, soup, toothpaste and more Kruk creates clothing. And I don’t mean some easy-to-throw-together hippie skirt; I mean tucked, tapered and darted, fine-fitting dress ensembles. Out of wrappers. And while the pieces are wearable, Kruk does not consider them fashion. “It’s sculpture,” says Kruk of her creations. “It does have a wear-ability factor to it but that’s not its intent.”
The intent, according to Kruk, is to draw attention to the omnipresence of packaging and the close correlation between marketing and language. “Different words on the wrappers relate to not only the candy, but how we talk about women,” she explains. “Words like creamy, smooth, sweet, juicy and cupcake.”
From Junior Mints and Reese’s to Godiva, sugar packets and Dum Dums to name just a few, nothing is off-limits for a little cultural criticism. Kruk’s pieces are so thought-provoking, playful, eye-catching and impeccably designed that there’s really nothing not to like about them. Unless, that is, you’re in the business of selling candy and Kruk is putting you in the hot-seat.
In 2001, after making several candy wrapper dresses, Kruk received a cease & desist notice from the candy giant, M&M/Mars. They ordered her to “immediately turn over for destruction” the pieces she had made from their packaging. The letter prompted concern and some fear from the artist but it also brought some questions to the surface. “I started asking, ‘Am I not the owner of my trash,’” Kruk recalls. “I’m legitimately using my trash here.”
A few letters went back and forth between lawyers, including a demand that Kruk not show the work outside of her private collection. Unwilling to comply with what seemed to be unreasonable demands however, Kruk continued to create her candy wrapper sculptures and questioned other artists about her rights. The conversation always circled around to the fact that she’s not mass-marketing her creations and she’s making them from her own trash.
Several years after the initial letter, Kruk decided to create an artistic response to M&M/Mars. She knew that it would have to be big, bold and elaborate. “I had been working up my bravado,” she says, “and when I came upon the matador outfit I thought, ‘That’s exactly what it has to be.’”
Kruk spent the next three years creating an elegant, mind-bogglingly-crafted matador outfit out of M&M wrappers. She accented the piece with a staggering amount of bead-work. “I didn’t do anything but bead for years,” she says.
But Kruk’s response wasn’t yet complete. “The piece is very masculine and I wanted a female counterpoint” she explains. “When I saw Anton Ohno dancing the Paso Doble I invented the flamenco dancer,” she says of the corresponding M&M dress. “It’s taken about a year to make it,” she continues, “but I feel done. I feel like my response is finally conjured up.”
Her response to the company complete, Kruk continues to do what she does best: create thoughtful, illuminating art. “I align myself with artists not fashion designers,” says Kruk. “I’m not trying to create next year’s wearable phenomenon, I’m asking people to take a look at our trash and what we’re all about.”
Charlotte Kruk’s M&Matador and FlaM&Menco pieces are on display at the Montalvo Arts Center as part of the center’s Cease & Desist show through April 17.
Posted on March 12, 2011
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