Art can be an intimidating word, institutionalized and vaunted as it is.
But art doesn't have to be the exclusive realm of people with what is commonly viewed as artistic talent, according to the two women who set up the traveling community art event called Artsee House.
"The event is about getting art out into society and getting average people into making art," said Karin Parmelee, an American expat living in Taichung, who with fellow expat Cathy Godwin from Australia has organized eight events since June last year.
Artsee House occurs once a month, unless Parmelee and Godwin are too tied up with their day jobs as English teachers, and travels to different spots around the country with a new theme each time. There are no admission fees, no rules or registrations to go through -- people are simply expected to show up with a few materials and the motivation to create.
The idea for Artsee House was first hatched at last year's Spring Scream music festival, where Godwin, who was in charge of the small art section, collected e-mails from people interested in joining an art-oriented party and followed up with Parmelee by creating a plan for the artistic outreach program.
"We'd felt sort of alienated from the art world in Taiwan and we thought this would be a good way to bridge the gap," Parmelee said. "It's about finding a space to be art-oriented." "There was a lot of information we couldn't get about the art world here in Taiwan, and we thought by doing this we could meet other non-established artists with similar interests," Godwin said.
The spaces they have found have included formal art locations like Taipei's Huashan Arts District, but Parmelee and Godwin say they prefer spots that have less of an overt artistic function to avoid scaring off people. Instead, they have aimed more toward spaces like Papa's Pizzeria in Taichung, which is where the last Artsee House took place.
"It's more relaxed in a restaurant or bar setting. People can talk and mingle more freely as they normally would," Godwin said.
As a result, the art aspect of the event can often take a backseat to its social side, making the event seem like an expat party masquerading as an art class.
But art does get created even in Artsee House's informal atmosphere, and some of it can be surprisingly good, said Godwin.
At the second event, which bore the theme "textures," one participant used steel wire to make four flowers and placed them around a clock. The four flowers represented the four years since the death of the artist's brother, while the clock reinforced the symbolism of passing time.
"The piece had so many meanings, with the number four representing death in Chinese, and the clock and the flowers. Everyone was really touched by that piece," Parmelee said.
At the Artsee House in March, which was themed "recycle," a participant created a topographical map using discarded bottles. Tiny yakult bottles made up the country's coastal plains, while the Central Mountain Range moved up to towering two liter Coke bottles. The pressing issues of waste, conspicuous consumption and environmental degradation in Taiwan were immediately perceptible in the image of the country as a heap of discarded plastic bottles.
Not all art at Artsee House events is as widely relevant or touching as the two pieces just mentioned, however. A lot of it is light-hearted, and intentionally so. The most recent event was themed "edible art," and featured a series of pieces using food-related plays-on-words. A line of three Barbie dolls was called Barbie-queue. Bags of potato chips were laid out for people to snag using an impromptu fishing pole in a piece called fish `n' chips. Less appetizing, was a pile of peanut butter and cookies with chocolate on top with an invitation to people to dig in. The pile was titled eat shit and it was actually quite tasty.
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