Sandy Plotnikoff doesn’t know how many clothing snaps he’s made into art over the past few years, but I would venture it must be in the millions by now. It all started as a project of microscopic proportions, when Plotnikoff, an artist of extreme subtleties, bought himself a snap machine.
At first he would go around town discreetly snapping a colourful snap onto people’s undone snap-up coats when they weren’t looking. He would stick a new top half of a snap onto the coat’s snap bottom, like a wayward burr clinging to fleece. He never stayed around to witness the response when the coat owners tried to snap up their jackets and discovered the extra snaps. Plotnikoff saw his tiny interventions as a spontaneous performance between the snap and the snapee, a work of art that could spark reactions of bafflement and confusion from those who had become inadvertent owners to an original work of art. And who knows if anyone besides Plotnikoff saw these small gifts as art at all.
Since those subtler times, Plotnikoff’s snaps have become a local cottage industry. He is now Sandyplot the snap artist, and his hugely popular Sandyplot bracelets, a leather strap with colourful snaps all around it, is standard uniform on the wrists of artists on Queen West. He has made thousands of them, every one a different combination of snap colours and snap sizes. Up until recently they’ve been sold at art events and artist-run centres, like Art Metropole.
Two weeks ago Eileen Sommerman, an independent curator who programs a small art space in the cafe of Holt Renfrew called Headspace, took the Sandyplot snap art one degree closer to the world of fashion, and another thin layer further from art. She set up a Sandyplot snap shop on the store’s mezzanine, as one installation of a larger Headspace exhibition. At the table there’s an impressive display of Sandyplot bracelets, as well as some of his other snap art works, like the Sandyplot rubberband with snap, the Band-Aid with snap, and the Band-Aid with snap as refrigerator magnet. It’s a great display, and the salesclerk, Jessie, who has a graduate degree in art history, is quick to tell customers these bracelets aren’t just bracelets, they’re actually art.
The question that surrounds this loaded little table is whether Plotnikoff’s art, now that it has drifted into the realm of haute couture, is still art. When do snap bracelets stop being an idea and start becoming novelty bobbles for insatiable shoppers? And do these distinctions even matter?
Through her curatorial goggles, Sommerman sees Sandyplot bracelets as art no matter where they’re sold, because they’re made as art. The challenge that intrigues Sommerman is putting art in places where people don’t expect to find it, like at Holt’s. It’s very a Plotnikoff thing to do, actually, to narrow the distinguishing features of art to a point where it’s only a matter of perspective that determines its status.
Sommerman says there’s definitely "a collision of two worlds" happening at the outpost between shoppers and the art. "You want to guard it as art. We tell people, ‘It’s a bracelet, but you’re also wearing an idea.’ They can relate to that." So far, the response has ranged from very positive to mildly curious to total disinterest, which is close to how people usually react to art. As Sommerman concedes, "When you put art out into the elements, it tends to weather a bit." --co
The Sandyplot outpost remains open until (at least) Sunday. The artist will also be selling his snap art this weekend at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition at Nathan Phillips Square.
