11/29/2005: Dollhouses of vacuum cleaner dust

via Boing Boing. What was I saying yesterday about art of the commoner? Here's another example, from another direction. Artist Maria A. Lopez creates dust houses, motivated by her time cleaning houses while she studied art. As put so well by Art MoCo, an online contemporary art magazine:

When Colombian Maria Adelaida Lopez moved to Philadelphia do a Master’s degree in art, she cleaned houses to help support herself, as she says, the way many other Marias do. Her series of Dust Houses are toy doll houses covered over in vacuum cleaner lint, representing the themes of domesticity and the other, the ideas of cleaning up after oneself and putting one’s house in order. Now an artist and educator in Miami, Lopez no longer cleans for others, but has filled vacuum cleaner bags given to her.

Nothing to sneeze at.

I thought this was super-cool when I believed it to be hoover-bag dust somehow sculpted. Reading on & discovering it it a proper dolls' house covered in dust somehow just seems unclean. My mind seems to class the former as art and the latter as a dirty toy.

It's an interesting idea though.

I made the same wrong assumption, Sundae Girl. If I want to see dusty toys, I can just walk into my kid's rooms.

Statement, yeah, art, :shrugs:.

I thought it was a house made completely of dust, too.

Now I'm all disenchanted.

Thread should be: dollhouses covered in vacuum cleaner dust.

I was also fooled. I saw this on Boing Boing first and assumed it was a dust house, not a dust covered house.

Still, it might be kind of fun to make. I can imagine (without following any of the links to find out for sure) that she took a little spray on adhesive, like 3M Super 77, and then used a reversable shop vac to blow dust onto the now-sticky house. It would be dusty, and you would want to do it outside, but it could be really quick. I bet you could do a house in 5 minutes. Go into production.

looks like most everything in my office. and I never called it art....until today.

I'm trying to imagine a market for this sort of artwork...and I can't.

Market, shmarket, it's ART, you philistine! ;)

Sundae Girl wrote:

My mind seems to class the former as art and the latter as a dirty toy.

I once knew a "Maria" that spoke Spanish and cleaned houses. She was a dirty toy. ;)

This "artist" also does doll house sized funniture, some is lint covered and some is charred with a torch.

:vomit: Do you know what is IN vacuum cleaner 'dust'? I'm filing this puppy under WTF. Egads.

LabRat wrote:

Do you know what is IN vacuum cleaner 'dust'?

Everything in your house, but in smaller pieces.

including a fair bit of expired pieces of you...

beavis wrote:

including a fair bit of expired pieces of you...

...that have been digested and then excreted by dust mites.

That's a lot of mite poo for the sake of art.

That would make it Mighty Mite Poo. ;)

She should drop by my house since Katrina! Boy she could get a load of @##$, all might not be dust.

It's a dustmite mansion. :X

Kitsune wrote:

...that have been digested and then excreted by dust mites.

Meh, honey has been digested and then excreted by a buggy creature too.

No one I know puts dust on their toast, however.

dar512 wrote:

No one I know puts dust on their toast, however.

Marjorie Dawes might....

my cat does Gothic furballs... or are they Rococco revival?