Objet d’Art: Nap Time

We all know that birthdays are really birth-weeks when it comes to celebrating, but Rob Pruitt has gone a step further and claimed an entire birthday summer. Not that we’re complaining—his celebrations have taken the form of a wave of creativity, from a blow-out birthday party to May’s Objet d’Art selection to “Rob Pruitt’s 50th Birthday Bash,” a summer-long exhibition at The Brant Foundation Art Study Center in Greenwich, CT.

So it should come as no surprise that Pruitt’s work has caught our fancy yet again. As an expansion of his ongoing series “101 Art Ideas You Can Do Yourself,” the artist has created unique ombre pillows with line drawn caricature faces scrawled across their fronts. (Perhaps he’s taken a hint from #73: “Draw faces on Styrofoam wig heads, lightbulbs, and eggs.”) Of “101 Art Ideas,” Pruitt says he initially conceived the project “as a way to explain conceptual art to my parents,” though he eventually realized that the work has a wider resonance and deeper significance. “What it really suggests is developing a heightened sensitivity to your environment—to see and think differently about the world you’re living in and to comment on it in an astute and personal way.”

The pillows are certainly a tie-in to “101 Art Ideas,” but borrow more directly from Pruitt’s pieces Father and Son and Bright Eyes, which are currently on display at the Brant Foundation Art Study Center. This month, you have the chance to get your hands on the face pillows through Pruitt’s “101 Art Ideas You Can Do Yourself” contest. From now until September 26, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram users can post images of themselves reenacting one of Pruitt’s tips using the hashtag #ArtIdeasYouCanDoYourself. Pruitt himself will compile and judge the results, and the winners will receive a pillow as well as a signed “50th Birthday Bash” catalogue. 

Objet d’Art runs every month. For more, click here.