"Daniel Birnbaum: What time is it on the sun? July: Hot-o'clock"

I caught a glimpse of one of Miranda July's sculptures on the home page of art forum a couple months ago. I thought, ok - cute. In the photograph, an indied girl stands on a stone that romantically narrates itself. Then, in June, I stumbled on the stone by itself in the sculpture garden of the Arsenale....and - it worked. July is probably best known for (2005) "Me and You and Everyone We know" which she wrote, directed, and starred in. Quirky and bittersweet, for me, July's creations are not so much offbeat as they are poignant magnifications of an offbeat world. Delicately sad, she sees the beautifully connected through our shared loneliness and misunderstanding. For seven years learningtoloveyoumore.com has issued assignments that archive these magnifications of the human condition's subtle oddities and their sometimes quite beautiful manifestations.
Assignment #30: Take a picture of strangers holding hands. or #39: Take a picture of your parents kissing. Through the complexity that is life and work and art, July strips things down and lets them be as they are: multifaceted in their receptions and in their interpretations, common only in their capacity to permeate the imagination. The rest is left up to us. To absorb it, to reflect it, to react to it, or to simply ignore it.
Miranda's vision shares an interest in acknowledging the overlooked, understanding the senseless, and embracing the delightfully futile. Her approaches slowly dip the soul in imaginative retrospection as opposed to bludgeoning it with an unsightly and monotonous reality.

"spike JONZE: Why are we here?
july: "We" meaning humans? Or just you and
me? We humans are here because nothing can
be perfect. There always have to be some liv-
ing things that are unsatisfied, itchy, trying too
hard. If it was all just animals and rocks and let-
tuce, the gods wouldn't feel like they had enough
todo."