'The Jars' is an ongoing work in progress that is now over 40 years old. There are over 1,200 glass gallon jars that are filled with things, and topped with sculptural headdresses.

Having worked in San Francisco restaurants for 45 years, I've always asked the bartenders to save for me the gallon jars from martini olives and maraschino cherries.

The jars are my personal histories, stories, memories, time-capsules, and familiars. A particular focus these days is to label and catalogue each jar. To date, I've now labeled 479 jars, out of the 1,200 that I've collected.

The 1915 Underwood typewriter that I am using to create the jar's labels. The catalog number on each label refers to more information about the jar in a Microsoft word document on my computer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every normal human being (and not merely the 'artist') has an inexhaustible store of buried images in his subconscious, it is merely a matter of courage or liberating procedures ... of voyages into the unconscious, to bring pure and unadulterated found objects to light. 

Max Ernst

 

 

 

 

 

Dada is not modern at all, it is rather a return to a quasi-Buddhist religion of indifference. Dada puts an artificial sweetness onto things, a snow of butterflies coming out of a conjurer's skull. Dada is stillness and does not understand the passions. 

Tristan Tzara

 

 

 

The artist is a spectator, indifferent or impassioned, at the birth of his work, and observes the phases of its development. 

Max Ernst

 

 

 

In 2017, I was interviewed by Heide Betz about the collection of glass gallon jars, an artwork in progress that is now over 40 years old. 

The interview was published in the March 2017 issue of Gentry Magazine.

Here is the link to the interview in Gentry.

http://editiondigital.net/publication/?i=387596#%7B%22issue_id%22:387596,%22page%22:90%7D

 

Everything has two aspects; the current aspect, which we see nearly always and which ordinary men see, and the ghostly and metaphysical aspect, which only rare individuals may see in moments of clairvoyance and metaphysical abstraction. 

Giorgio de Chirico

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The artist performs only one part of the creative process. The onlooker completes it, and it is the onlooker who has the last word. 

Marcel Duchamp

 

 

 

 

 

 

To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams. 

Giorgio de Chirico

 

 

 

 

 

Nature does not create works of art. It is we, and the faculty of interpretation peculiar to the human mind, that see art. 

Man Ray

 

 

 

 

 

One must picture everything in the world as an enigma, and live in the world as if in a vast museum of strangeness. 

Giorgio de Chirico

 

 

All good ideas arrive by chance. 

Max Ernst

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Color is the fruit of life. 

Guillaume Apollinaire

 

 

 

 

 

I succeeded in simply attending at the birth of all my works. 

Max Ernst

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. 

Marcel Duchamp

 

 

 

Memories are hunting horns whose sound dies on the wind. 

Guillaume Apollinaire

I have been accused of being a joker. But the most successful art to me involves humor. 

Man Ray

 

The bear on this headdress holds a piece of marble from the original San Francisco City Hall that was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake.

It's the viewer that makes the work. 

Marcel Duchamp

 

 

 

 

 

 

Creativity is that marvelous capacity to grasp mutually distinct realities and draw a spark from their juxtaposition. 

Max Ernst

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My works were designed to amuse, annoy, bewilder, mystify and inspire reflection.

Man Ray

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A certain amount of contempt for the material employed to express an idea is indispensable to the purest realization of this idea. 

Man Ray

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Collage is a supersensitive and scrupulously accurate instrument, similar to a seismograph, which is able to record the exact amount of the possibility of human happiness at any period. 

Max Ernst

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For more about the jars, click here: http://www.ronhenggeler.com/Newsletters/2018/6.21/Newsletter%20-%20Copy%20[5].html

http://www.ronhenggeler.com/Newsletters/2017/3.1/Newsletter.html