Master of Fine Arts Thesis
[Drawing A Line from There to Here]
Meagan Daus
Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirement for the degree of Master of Fine Arts, School of Art and Design
Division of Sculpture/Dimensional Studies
New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University Alfred, New York
2017
Meagan Daus, MFA
Diane Cox, Thesis Advisor
Coral Lambert, Thesis Advisor
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations 3
Prologue: Walking 5
Introduction: An Overlapping Language 6
Part 1: Memory: The Viscerally Absorbed 8
Part 2: Place: Lines, Planes, and the Space Between 27
Part 3: Making: A Passion for Process 41
Conclusion: Pulling Threads of Detail 55
Selected Glossary 56
Bibliography 63
Further Relevant References to Explore 64
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List of Illustrations Figure 1: Pattern for Once a Home
Figure 2: Once a Home; Poly textiles, Pine; 9 x 6 x 10 feet; 2017
Figure 3: Once a Home, detail; Poly textiles, Pine; 9 x 6 x 10 feet; 2017 Figure 4: Once a Home; Poly textiles, Pine; 9 x 6 x 10 feet; 2017
Figure 5: Drawing a Line; Video Stills; 2015
Figure 6: Forward/Backward Walking Again; Video Stills; 2015
Figure 7: Dream Walk, and detail; Graphite, Acrylic Paint, Pine, Ash, Walnut, Purple Heart; 26 x 20 x 2 inches; 2015
Figure 8: A Place to Sit; Cast Iron, Cherry; Installed at Franconia Sculpture Park, Franconia, Minnesota; 48 x 32 x 36 inches; 2015
Figure 9: Pattern for Tiled Together
Figure 10: Tiled Together; Bed sheets; 16 x 11 feet; 2017
Figure 11: Tiled Together, detail; Bed sheets; 16 x 11 feet; 2017 Figure 12: Tiled Together, detail; Bed sheets; 16 x 11 feet; 2017
Figure 13: Shrouded Horizons; Cotton, Fabric Dyes, Beet Juice, Pine, Yarn, Hardware; 9 x 10 x 1.5 feet; 2017
Figure 14: Shrouded Horizons, detail; Cotton, Fabric Dyes, Beet Juice, Pine, Yarn, Hardware; 9 x 10 x 1.5 feet; 2017
Figure 15: View from Turner Gallery upper level
Figure 16: View from Turner Gallery upper level, Yarn-Scapes Figure 17: View from Turner Gallery upper level, Tiled Together Figure 18: View from Turner Gallery upper level, Once a Home
Figure 19: Installation view for the video One, Two, Repeat Everyday Figure 20: Mental Mindscape, detail; Pine, Cherry, Ash, Oak, Hemlock,
Gathered Pine Tips; 2016
Figure 21: Mental Mindscape; Pine, Cherry, Ash, Oak, Hemlock, Gathered Pine Tips; 2016
Figure 22: Mental Mindscape, above detail; Pine, Cherry, Ash, Oak, Hemlock, Gathered Pine Tips; 2016
Figure 23: One (im)Possible Way, Reclaimed Shed Siding, Copper Plumbing Pipe, Felt, Hardware; 16 x 3 x 3.5 feet; 2017
Figure 24: One (im)Possible Way, detail; Reclaimed Shed Siding, Copper Plumbing Pipe, Felt, Hardware; 16 x 3 x 3.5 feet; 2017
Figure 25: One (im)Possible Way; Reclaimed Shed Siding, Copper Plumbing Pipe, Felt, Hardware; 16 x 3 x 3.5 feet; 2017
Figure 26: Graphite sketch for the work Yarn-Scapes Figure 27: Yarn-Scapes, detail; Yarn; 2017
Figure 28: Yarn-Scapes; Yarn, Paracord, Copper Plumbing Pipe, Pine; 2017
Figure 29: Yarn-Scapes; Yarn, Paracord, Copper Plumbing Pipe, Pine; 2017 Figure 30: Yarn-Scapes; Yarn, Paracord, Copper Plumbing Pipe, Pine; 2017 Figure 31: Weaving a Place to be; Yarn, Paracord, Copper Plumbing Pipe,
Pine; 2017
Figure 32: “Trailer for Two;” Mechanix Illustrated; September 1947; Article by Hi Sibley
Figure 33: French Drawloom; Engraving from Diderot’s Encyclopédie; 18th century; Historical Pictures Service, Chicago; www.britannica.com Figure 34: One of my blueprint drawings for the teardrop trailer.
Figure 35: Inside view of loom in Weaving My Path Figure 36: Inside view of loom in Weaving My Path
Figure 37: Weaving My Path; Pine, Yarn, Copper, Poly textiles, Plaster, Hardware, Sand; 2017
Figure 38: Weaving My Path, detail; Yarn; 2017
Figure 39: Weaving My Path; Pine, Yarn, Copper, Cast Iron, Bronze, Aluminum, Poly textiles, Plaster, Hardware, Sand; 2017
Figure 40: Weaving My Path, weight detail, left front; Yarn, Cast Iron, Bronze, Aluminum; 2017
Figure 41: Weaving My Path, weight detail, right front; Yarn, Copper, Cast Iron, Bronze; 2017
Figure 42: Weaving My Path, weight detail, feet; Pine, Poly textiles, Hardware, Sand; 2017
Figure 43: Weaving My Path; Pine, Yarn, Copper, Hardware, Sand; 2017
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[Prologue: Walking…]
Walking ……….
………
Walking ……….
Walking ……….
………..
………
Standing ………...
………..
………
Working ……….
………
Walking back ………...
…………
Repeat ………..
……….
Working and moving does not leave time to rest my feet……
….
Momentary pauses and brief nights of sleep………..
Thinking, over thinking ……...
….
Walking ……….
So many subtle details I try to hold onto from the places I am.
Details make up the real.
They build the three dimensional with repetitively shifting planes covered in textures and colors.
Everywhere is the same but
singularly everywhere is like nowhere else
So many methods of making construct the world.
Thousands of formations made by nature.
Thousands constructed by human hands.
Every item constructing our daily lives has many forms and material possibilities.
…… …… ………… ………
.. ……… ……… ……..
While seemingly everything has been, why make anything?
………
[Introduction: An Overlapping Language]
Everywhere I have been, locality has shaped the subtle details of tradition, culture, design, and art. These aspects are engrained in the forms, styles, decorations (or lack there of), and materials of the bits and pieces that make up the everyday. Objects are linked historically to generational, cultural, and societal ideas. However, they do not solely live in the time in which they physically exist. Exploring time and memory through making processes allows me to draw parallels between the material and conceptual.
Physicalizing memories through drawings and sculptures that utilize the vocabulary of the everyday creates entry points into my transformed landscapes.
Objects from other places transport themselves to find a new area to live through my works. The reconfiguration of lived and visited places, objects, stored knowledge, and textural surfaces of my memory create a new sense of place. I hope to raise new questions and awareness about the objects that surround the everyday, as well as be a catalyst for the viewer to further explore and question their own spaces of passage and habitation.
Exploring how memories continue to transform and overlap with my present location, I reconstruct environments based on elements that are significant in my memory of the objects’ original homes. I pull the threads to connect how my memory and personal timeline consist of overlapping places that make up my own sense of space and place. I am looking for balance through
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a material sensibility, evoking the spirit of the past and present, through the relocation of the natural and man made environment.
Subtle details in each work blend, tie, and weave together everyday materials in a minimal yet repetitive manner that bring together traditional and contemporary ideologies of art, craft, and design. The elements come together to inform new ways of creating multi-dimensional works that demonstrate breaking individual boundaries. Works that are physically and subconsciously embedded with repetitive moments that express emotion, gesture, and tactility have the ability to link the viewer to the maker as well as to the past, present, and future.
[Part One: Memory: The Viscerally Absorbed]
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One section of the dense strip of forest along the east side of the Farm House had a circular opening cut high into the trees allowing tall wild grasses to grow. Beside the small meadow was a cluster of tall bush trees, one natural shelter, and place of play. The trees started from one-foot wide clustered bases of at least twenty smooth barked branches, shooting out – bursting to capture the form of fireworks.
My brother, Ricky, and I were inside getting snacks. I was kneeling on the counter, reaching for the top shelf, when we heard our names echoing from the woods. It was my sister, Angi. Her yells were vibrating through the bones of the house so loudly they sounded as if she was running through the porch to the mudroom.
Looking to one another puzzled by the sudden chaos, Ricky and I rushed to the closest window, but we could not see Angi. Yells continuing, we ran towards the woods. We could see glimpses of Angi through the line of trees and brush that naturally fenced in a parallel grass pathway for tractors along the wood line.
As we caught up, she was not stopping but warning us to run as well;
she was being chased by a slender, fluffy tailed, autumn-flame painted fox.
All running together now, we followed each other single-file, weaving throughout the front yard until the fox ran back into the woods.
I have held this memory close, unsure if it was real or a dream. Twenty- two years later, while driving with Angi and Lucy1 in California, from Big Sur State Park to Yosemite National Park, I asked Angi about the memory. Angi said that in a moment of stillness, she looked up to see a fluffy tail bouncing with the tips of the wild grass. Unsure of who or what he was, she began running.
1 Lucy is a fox doppelganger, as she is a Red Heeler2 mixed what Angi thinks would be a Corgi3. Angi adopted Lucy when she was three.
2 A Red Heeler is one name specifying the type of an Australian Cattle Dog (ACD). “ACD is a breed of herding dog originally developed in Australia for droving cattle over long distances across rough terrain. The ACD is a medium-sized, short-coated dog that occurs in two main color forms. It has either brown or black hair distributed fairly evenly through a white coat, which gives the appearance of a ‘red’ or ‘blue’ dog.” (“Australian Cattle Dog,” Last modified December, 2016. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Cattle_Dog.)
3 “There are two breeds of Welsh Corgis, the Cardigan and Pembroke. Their coats are water resistant. Both appear fox-like. They are the smallest of the Herding Dogs. (“Australian Cattle Dog.”)
Thinking about it now, the fox probably wanted to play with us.2 Depicted as an anthropomorphic God, cunning trickster, or teacher and giver of their wisdom, the fox is a main character in the folklore of many cultures.3 The burst of energy brought by the spirit of the fox is felt and absorbed in the encounter. Continually appearing through out my life, the fox is one of the animals whose spirit has guided my path4.
Memories are infused with conscious and subconscious absorptions of the aspects of the spaces that surround us. One has to actively work to hold onto and remember. The recollection is not truly of the original moment, but of the last
2 “Fox spirit guide is a fascinating power animal… being both very keen in all that he does and balancing it beautifully with the love to have fun while working! … Fox loves to romp through the fields and the snow, he reminds us to enjoy our life and to play in the outdoors as much as possible. While not hunting, the Fox is adventuring and ever so curious – thoroughly enjoying his day.” (Presley Love, “Symbolic Meaning of Fox,” Last modified April 2017, universeofsybmolism.com.)
3 Creation Myth (Atsugewi) (Sacred Texts, “Creation Myth (Atsugewi),” Accessed April 8, 2017, http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/ca/aat/aat12.htm.), Fox Plays a Trick (Indian Country: Menominee Oral Tradition,
“Fox Plays a Trick,” Accessed April 8, 2017, https://www.mpm.edu/wirp/ICW-138.html#_top.), The Wolf, the Fox, the Bobcat and the Cougar (Outdoor Idaho: A Trip to the Moon, “The Wolf, the Fox, the Bobcat and the Cougar,”
2017, Idaho Public Television, Idaho State Board of Education, an agency of the State of Idaho, http://idahoptv.org/outdoors/shows/triptothemoon/wolffox.cfm.).
4 GOLDEN LINES - By Gérard de Nerval, 1854, translated by Robert Bly
“Astonishing! Everything is intelligent!”
Pythagoras
Free thinker! Do you think you are the only thinker on this earth in which life blazes inside all things?
Your liberty does what it wishes with the powers it controls, but when you gather to plan, the universe is not there.
Look carefully in an animal at a spirit alive;
every flower is a soul opening out into nature;
a mystery touching love is asleep inside metal.
“Everything is intelligent!” And everything moves you.
In that blind wall, look out for the eyes that pierce you:
the substance of creation cannot be separated from a word . . . Do not force it to labor in some low phrase!
Often a Holy Thing is living hidden in a dark creature;
and like an eye which is born covered by its lids, a pure spirit is growing strong under the bark of stones!
(News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness, Chosen and introduced by Robert Bly, (San Francisco:
Sierra Club Books, 1980), 38.)
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time you remembered it. Memories continuously become infused with new aspects of one’s current state of being, physically and mentally. The details that are often unnoticed are what I hold onto to signify my place in space. It is the subtle details that become housed amongst my memories.
The Farm House near Plymouth, Wisconsin that I lived in for four years5 and the surrounding land hold many of the beginning threads to a narrative interweaving into its own mental plane. Often left to our own devices, and absorbed by nature’s embrace, my sister, brother and I were close to being wild children. We ran swiftly through thickened brush without snapping a twig;
swung and jumped from barn rafter beams into the once neatly piled golden pastel hay; went on Antarctic blizzard expeditions and sled the wavy fields when blanketed white. Everything was possible. While there were boundaries to the property and the land itself was not truly ours, we explored with a sense of wanderlust everyday, returning to our home each night. Every inch of land and barn were known, but each day it was new again6.
5 Age 3 to 7.
6 MILKWEED - By James Wright
While I stood here, in the open, lost in myself, I must have looked a long time
Down the corn rows, beyond grass, The small house,
White walls, animals lumbering toward the barn.
I look down now. It is all changed.
Whatever it was I lost, whatever I wept for Was a wild, gentle thing, the small dark eyes Loving me in secret.
It is here. At the touch of my hand, The air fills with delicate creatures From the other world.
(News of the Universe, Bly, 163.)
The design of Once a Home has a simplified pattern to emphasize the planar lines of the house’s form (figs. 1-4). Primarily block quilted in white, blue, green, and grey fabrics, the geometric shapes define a sense of depth to the seemingly flat surface. The translucent white woven fabric vibrates where the seams are stitched in coral thread. The reverse stitch is a light grey, creating cooler reflections where there is less coral. A sense of perspective and depth are further emphasized by the direction in which the seams were ironed down. The blue, green, and grey fabrics sourced for this work are used for outdoor clothing, camping packs, and tents and link to the idea of the home as a place of protection from the natural elements.
Figure 1: Pattern for Once a Home
13 Figure 2: Once a Home
Poly textiles, Pine 9 x 6 x 10 feet 2017
Figure 4: Once a Home Poly textiles, Pine 9 x 6 x 10 feet 2017
Figure 3: Once a Home, detail Poly textiles
9 x 6 x 10 feet 2017
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During my first year of graduate school I began exploring the use of textiles to draw, outline, and connect work spatially. Drawing a Line retraces the steps and elevation from a 35mm black and white, double exposed self-portrait taken in the woods near Mildred’s Lane7 (fig. 5). While the suspended braided rope holds the path from the portrait, the video stills trace my undocumented movements navigating the space around and back to my tripod.
7 “Mildred’s Lane is a rustic, 96-acre site deep in the wood of rural northeastern Pennsylvania, in the upper Delaware River Valley, which borders New York state. It is an ongoing collaboration between J. Morgan Puett, Mark Dion, their son Grey Rabbit Puett, and their friends and colleagues. It is a home and an experiment in living. Mildred’s Lane attempts to coevolve a rigorous pedagogical strategy, where working-living-researching environment has been developed to foster engagement with every aspect of life.” (Mildred’s Lane: a contemporary art complex(ity), “A New Age of Curiosity,” Accessed April 12, 2017, mildredslane.com.)
I spent one week with classmates at Mildred’s Lane in 2011 for a May travel class. I did a series of self-portraits in the woods surrounding Mildred’s Lane. We also spent two weeks working at studios in Manhattan. I took the course while an undergraduate student at the University of Minnesota.
Figure 5: Drawing a Line Video Stills 2015
Drawing a Path Video Stills 2015
After retracing paths from photographs and from my memory in the studio, I went into the woods to trace a current path. Generally, when I am walking through the woods, that do not have dirt or paved paths, I do not leave a trail to trace back. I create a mental map from unique vegetation growths and fallen timbers that make patterns. While using the braided rope my pathway felt controlled in some ways. I was stopped with the end of the line, and when I pulled on the fiber braid its stretch pulled back at me.
While I was walking to and from a tethered beginning point, unrolling and rewinding the line of braided fabric, I began thinking about the various holds and ties that bring me back (fig. 6). While many of my most significant moments of understanding have revealed themselves in locations off the grid – where my surroundings were draped in the imagery of nature’s vast wonders – the societal demands that pull me to the grid led me to question how I negotiate the varying
Forward/Backward Walking Again Video Stills, from Installation View 2015
Figure 6: Forward/Backward Walking Again Video Stills
2015
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panoramas I reside in8. The home (owned or rented) is a place of protection and a central station9. Once a Home becomes the unseen bond. The four windows are patterned from an open woven textile, speaking to the idea of windows being portals between spaces. The white fabrics act as a projection screen, but the window pieces can be seen more clearly on both sides. The projection is a compilation of video taken while walking through the woods with the braided
8 Society, sung by Eddie Vedder, Into the Wild Soundtrack It’s a mystery to me
We have a greed with which we have agreed And you think you have to want more than you need Until you have it all, you won’t be free
Society, you’re a crazy breed I hope you’re not lonely without me
When you want more than you have, you think you need
And when you think more than you want, your thoughts begin to bleed I think I need to find a bigger space
Cause when you have more than you think, you need more space Society, you’re a crazy breed
I hope you’re not lonely without me Society, crazy indeed
Hope you’re not lonely without me
There’s those thinking more or less, less is more But if less is more, how you keepin score?
Means for every point you make your level drops Kinda like you’re startin’ from the top
And you can’t do that
Society, you’re a crazy breed I hope you’re not lonely without me Society, crazy indeed
I hope you’re not lonely without me Society, have mercy on me
I hope you’re not angry if I disagree Society, you’re crazy indeed I hope you’re not lonely without me
(Eddie Vedder, Into the Wild, soundtrack album, J Records, 2007.)
9 “The hub for trams, buses, and the subway–as well as rail travel–is Centraal Station, a magnificent structure adorned with Baroque carvings and ornate gables at the end of Damrak.
The area immediately around Centraal Station buzzes with activity; congested with locals, backpack-toting tourists, assorted beggars, hustlers, buskers, and preachers, it’s a marvelous spot for people-watching.” (Nathaniel Rakich, ed., Let’s Go Amsterdam: On a Budget, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008), 39.) “Every day 250,000 people go through Amsterdam Central Station.” (“Amsterdam Central Station – Central Station,” Accessed April 12, 2017, www.amsterdam.info/central-station/.)
While studying abroad in Amsterdam, I was living in Funen Park, which is east of Centraal Station. The Gerrit Rietveld Academie, where I was taking classes, is south of Centraal Station.
The bus outside my flat took me to Centraal Station, from there a tram took me to Museumkwartier (I went to the Van Gogh Museum and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam multiple times a week after class), the last tram took me to the Rietveld.
rope, selected for Once a Home to emphasize the relationship between the domestic and natural worlds.
Braided rugs were placed throughout the Farm House. Walking in the back door to the mudroom led to the first rug, which we sat upon year round to prepare and declutter protective gear for the weather. Next, in the kitchen under the dining table was a full, room-sized rug. In the living room, a rug moved with the coffee table. Upstairs in my sister’s room was another large rug, where I would listen to my cassette headphones while walking the path of the braids for hours. The rugs were more than decorations, more than places to wipe our feet and catch spills. Braiding is one of my earliest memories of making.
While sitting atop the Jungfrau mountain chain outside Interlaken, Switzerland10, I began seeing the path I wished to take draped with the braided rugs from my earliest childhood memories. Tracing the mountaintops and falling into the peaks, the overall texture of the rug conformed to the ridges, becoming soft and walkable. Since my time abroad I have been exploring my connection to the braided rug through drawings and sculptures (figs. 7-8). Creating textile patterns for metal casting plays with the permanence of the original material and transforms the functionality of a regularly used everyday object into a sculptural vernacular.
10 I stayed in Interlaken, Switzerland for a week in 2008, while I had been living in Amsterdam.
Interlaken is set in the valley of two chains of mountains. The water is so cold, running down from some of the world’s tallest peaks, it is sky blue. (The ice gets so cold in Minnesota that it will turn a similar blue hue.) A friend and I walked, hiked, and took trains and cable cars every day to different mountain chains and peaks surrounding Interlaken.
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A Place to Sit 52 x 42 x 38 inches Cast Iron, Cherry 2015
Figure 8: A Place to Sit Cast Iron, Cherry 48 x 32 x 36 inches 2015
Figure 7: Dream Walk, and detail Graphite, Acrylic Paint, Pine, Ash, Walnut, Purple Heart 26 x 20 x 2 inches 2015
Tiled Together represents a merging of six places into one overall form (figs.
9-12). The six most impactful places I have lived and visited are: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and California. All of these places have multifaceted connections to the land and making traditions, while also having metropolis hubs of varying degrees. The division of land in these areas does not solely follow a grid, but is also defined by the natural landmarks already defining the landscape.
The scale of Tiled Together presents the viewer with an aerial perspective of pieced-together land and the passageways that bring us there. When standing above the volumetric braids and varying colors, paths of plowed fields begin to form. The rhythmic act of braiding can be felt as the eye travels each hump of material. Within each section the mind begins to walk and follow the braid as it winds back and forth, bending around itself. Breaking from the traditional oval, the complete pattern becomes a unique fingerprint.
Figure 9: Pattern for Tiled Together
21 Figure 10: Tiled Together
Bed sheets 16 x 11 feet 2017
Figure 11: Tiled Together, detail Bed sheets
16 x 11 feet 2017
Figure 12: Tiled Together, detail Bed sheets
16 x 11 feet 2017
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The processes and methodologies applied to making the works for my thesis exhibition, Drawing a Line from There to Here, is a fusion of my art and life practices. My earliest memories of making are braiding, cross-stitching, and woodworking (well, hammering nails into poorly cut wood or collecting branches to weave together into a fort). Ever fascinated by questions – such as what makes things soft or hard, what makes color and why do some colors stain, and how is air invisible and yet so full – I looked to the objects that surrounded me and at the materials constructing them. I sought out how and why a + b = c and how everything is created at a molecular level.
Science can explain energy transference, until the soul is factored in11. Is feeling beyond a reasonable doubt the same as knowing? The truth is in the
11 THE SIMPLE PURIFICATION - By KABIR, translated by Robert Bly
Student, do the simple purification
You know that the seed is inside the horse-chestnut tree, and inside the seed there are the horse-chestnut blossoms, and
the chestnuts, and the shade.
So inside the human body there is a the seed, and inside the seed there is the human body again.
Fire, air, earth, water, and space—if you don’t want the secret one,
you can’t have these either.
Thinkers, listen, tell me what you know of that is not inside the soul?
Take a pitcher full of water and set it down on the water—
now it has water inside and water outside.
We mustn’t give it a name, lest silly people stat talking again about the body and the soul.
If you want the truth, I’ll tell you the truth:
Listen to the secret sound, the real sound, which is inside you.
The one no one talks of speaks the secret sound to himself, and he’s the one who has made it all.
(News of the Universe, 271.)
details. I am continuously seeking how to bring this mystifying energy into the life of each work I create. Utilizing my various practices (where the physical manifests) to produce objects that are just what they need to be through clean, delicate lines forged my thesis exhibition. Together, the works expose the bone structures defining our three-dimensional world, which are tied together by delicate color waves.
Growing up in Wisconsin, living in Minnesota, and now being in New York, I have lived mostly amongst the whites, greys, and browns of bare trees, silos, and blanketed fields. Seemingly dormant, these surfaces absorb and transfer the colors of the sun’s brilliant rays. Natural moments are fleeting and can be gone in a blink. The color palette woven throughout each work in my thesis exhibition, Drawing a Line from There to Here, is a reflection of the soul and energy that goes into creating the material matter seen.
In the early morning and the hours before twilight,
the sun angularly hits, highlights, and vibrates everything it touches, playing with the perceived colors of objects and surfaces.
It transforms the world into pockets of brilliant hues, with shrouds of shadows blending into deep blues.
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Shrouded Horizons was produced using one technique within a traditional Japanese indigo dyeing method: Shibori (fig. 13-14). Itajime Shibori is a shape- resist technique, where accordion folded fabrics are sandwiched between two pieces of wood and held with string. The board stops the dyes from spreading deeper into the shape’s center. Unfolded, the dyed edges create a kaleidoscope of geometric patterns. To allow further variations to occur within each piece of fabric, I bound some bundles without boards. The outer layers soaked in more dye, changing the amount of color from the inner folds. A transition of analogous color and shape emerged. Blending together the distinct and indistinct geometric patterns builds the horizon’s natural gradient.
Figure 13: Shrouded Horizons Cotton, Fabric Dyes, Beet Juice, Pine, Yarn, Hardware 9 x 10 x 1.5 feet
2017
The cloth lines and pine holders represent the electrical wires following the roadways. Often presenting themselves as interruptions to the picturesque, the wires also create the lines upon which nature’s musical scores are written.
The blending of the sky and horizon into shrouds of blue is a magical moment where heaven is not a place divided from earth, but rather, it is in what surrounds us daily. The form of the pine holders is derived from the Latvian symbol for heaven. The vertical lines atop the mountains connect the land to the sky, as do shrouded horizons.
Figure 14: Shrouded Horizons, detail Cotton, Fabric Dyes, Beet Juice, Pine, Yarn, Hardware
9 x 10 x 1.5 feet 2017
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[Part Two: Place: Lines, Planes, and the Space Between]
Exemplifying textures and experiences of the everyday to create a new layer of language where fiction and reality overlap allows me to further direct and queue a viewer. My work seeks to engage the viewer to become a participant in the space where the artwork lives and how it can continue to mentally reside.
Allowing myself to become lost in a new environment, in order to learn its nooks and crannies, opens unexpected visceral correlations. If you do not know where you are going, any path will take you there12.
As I walk, long board, drive, or bike through new locations, I build my own mental map of how the individual spaces connect the whole place as one. I take advantage of any day or chunk of time when I do not need to be somewhere, because then I can go anywhere. Try to leave early for a specified destination to take the slightly longer, winding path, rather than the direct. Whenever possible, I take different routes to and from a location. There is so much more out there to see and learn about than I can synthesize. Go, look, and absorb this world we are a part of.
The change of perspective revealed from airplanes or the highest peaks
12 The cat grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she thought: still it had very long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt it ought to be treated with respect.
“Cheshire-Puss,” she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. “Come, it’s pleased so far,” thought Alice, and she went on. “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where––––” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“––––so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
(Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass, (New York: Signet Classic, 2000), 64-65.)
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are an extension beyond the trees and silos of my youth. There is an invigorating sense of wonder when entering the unknown and trying to piece together the parts of land below before you have felt them. The above view becomes tangible when learned, walked, and explored. Man-made passageways link together the landscape; every route is an opportunity to get further into the depths.
Sometimes, when you stare into the abyss, it stares back, echoing a yes13.
As a way of mapping the parts, I mentally pare down objects and the surrounding landscape to the contours my eyes follow. The Turner Gallery offers a unique perspective for viewing Drawing a Line from There to Here from above.
There is a second part of the gallery upstairs that is open to the back half of the downstairs gallery. When seen from above, before being explored below, the installation becomes a lure for the unknown dreamscape. From the aerial perspective, a viewer can negotiate their possible pathway around and through the works below. After exploring the exhibition, the viewer is able to go upstairs with a deeper understanding and sense of the landscape created. With the development of their own mental map of the individual pieces, they can see how theirs align (figs. 15 – 18).
13 INVITATION - By Shel Silverstein If you are a dreamer, come in, If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pay-er, a magic bean buyer…
If you’re a pretender, come sit by my fire For we have some golden-flax tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!
(Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends, (New York: HarperCollins Publisher, 1974), 9.)
Figures 15 – 18: Views from Turner Gallery upper level.
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To enhance viewer engagement, I layer multiple forms of visual information, making processes, digital drawings, and video. The explorations of memory, time, and place have led me to consider how audience interaction and mental navigation engage a viewer. Layering elements of the everyday, dreamscapes, and mediums increases the duality between the fictitious and the real to enhance the idea of the installation being a place to explore mentally.
The video work One, Two, Repeat is a collection of videos and images I took along my walk in Alfred, New York, from my house to the school studio (fig. 19).
The images and video are edited and tilted to create a pathway for a wheeled leg to follow. Scanned from an ink stamped flipbook, the legs represent two
Figure 19: Installation view for the video One, Two, Repeat Everyday.
variations on the movement of walking; one straight and one bent. The wheel appears to turn with the motion of the leg above. Digitally overlapping these images and videos helps to link the individual sculptures in Drawing a Line from There to Here as one whole dreamscape14.
Walking along, feeling the smooth rounded surface of cobble roads and paths, one feels the embedded history of others carved by their daily routes. The wooden cobble creates the textural mindscape of my memory’s floor, generating a topographical map of pathways between each ligneous piece (figs. 20 – 22).
Tiled Together’s soft material creates fluid lines that follow the contours of a natural landscape (page 19). However, Mental Mindscape’s geometric blocks produce the mapping of a city. The cobbles are the treaded surfaces I have walked
14 “I only wanted to see what the garden was like, your Majesty––––”
“That’s right,” said the Queen, patting her on the head, which Alice didn’t like at all: “though, when you say ‘garden’–– I’ve seen gardens, compared with which this would be a wilderness.”
Alice didn’t dare to argue the point, but went on: “––and I thought I’d try and find my way to the top of that hill––––”
“When you say ‘hill,’ “ the Queen interrupted, “I could show you hills, in comparison with which you’d call that a valley.”
“No, I shouldn’t,” said Alice, surprised into contradicting her at last: “a hill can’t be a valley, you know. That would be nonsense––––”
The Red Queen shook her head. “You may call it ‘nonsense’ if you like,” she said, “but I’ve heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!”
(Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, 144.)
Figure 20: Mental Mindscape, detail Pine, Cherry, Ash, Oak, Hemlock, Gathered Pine Tips 2016
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within urban landscapes, but also become the buildings and the city blocks. The map created represents the paths of my choosing, cutting back and forth, with long straights, and diagonal byways.
My own mental path is embedded into the marks and ware developed through the carved and sanded surfaces of each wooden cobble. The pine, cherry, ash, oak, and hemlock are repurposed cracked and rotten building beams.
The wood grain and rounded surface of each cobble member are accentuated by the wax finish and concrete gallery floor. By packing the space between each
Figure 21: Mental Mindscape Pine, Cherry, Ash, Oak, Hemlock, Gathered Pine Tips 2016
wooden block with pine branch needle tips, I am placing nature into the controlled city grid15. The dense mixed forests of Wisconsin and Minnesota are richly packed with pines16. The strong green needles hold their hues throughout long winters. Pine trees shed their seeded tips in early spring, and sprout lime green needles where every branch ends, growing in every direction throughout the summer. By fall, the pinecones have grown for next year’s seeding and the tips become the dark waxy green of the whole.
15 “If you live in Minneapolis, there’s a 95 percent chance you live within a 10-minute walk to a park” (Jenn Ackerman, “Why Are Minneapolis and St. Paul So Nice? Maybe It’s the Parks,” The New York Times, May 26, 2016, https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/27/science/urban-parks-ranking-minneapolis.html?_r=0eferer=). The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board has been ranked the number one Urban Park System in the United States by the Trust for Public Land since 2013. For a large city, it is quite easy to find nature because of the vast number of lakes, rivers, and creeks.
16 The glaciers that carved the landscape of Wisconsin and Minnesota also littered the land with the great pines of the north. This area of the southwestern part of New York seems to have fewer pines, but along three of my paths there are clusters of towering pines.
Figure 22: Mental Mindscape, above detail
Pine, Cherry, Ash, Oak, Hemlock, Gathered Pine Tips 2016
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One (im)Possible Way represents a lake dock, forest trail, and a farm path.
Through its materiality and color it can be placed in the countryside as siding for a barn (figs. 23 – 25). Constructed of aged pine that has been coated with years of use as shed, the material becomes a type looking glass for what the fresh pine throughout the exhibition could become.
Figure 23: One (im)Possible Way Reclaimed Shed Siding, Copper Plumbing Pipe, Felt, Hardware
16 x 3.5 x 3 feet 2017
Figure 24: One (im)Possible Way, detail Reclaimed Shed Siding, Copper Plumbing Pipe, Felt, Hardware
16 x 3.5 x 3 feet 2017
Figure 25: One (im)Possible Way Reclaimed Shed Siding, Copper Plumbing Pipe, Felt, Hardware
16 x 3.5 x 3 feet 2017
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Flying into Switzerland, in the silent space above the turbulent clouds and fog, the beams of the morning sun play their splendor against the tallest of Earth’s peaks. I had never before seen land at the elevation planes fly, and I wanted to walk between the peaks. The red is the richest rust of the iron deeply embedded into mountainous rock. The cracked white and weathered grey colors become the piercing façades and crust surfaces of mountainous landscapes. The deck of One (im)Possible Way is precariously set atop triangular supports. While stable in appearance, it would rock and slip if walked upon. This pathway is representative of those that I have taken on walks, as well as those I mentally place throughout the landscape where there is no physical path.
To draw, to sculpt, to create is not to necessarily make what the object is, but to see the intersecting points and lines that create the planes which breathe it into being when completed17. Learning to draw through representations of everyday objects was training in how surface, color, texture, and shadow define
17 On Nothing - By Lao Tzu, Translated by: Arthur Waley
We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel depends.
We turn clay to make a vessel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends.
We pierce doors and windows to make a house;
And it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends.
Therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not.
(Ronald Larsen, Wayne Higby, Charles Ferguson Binns, and Daniel Rhodes, A Potter's Companion: Imagination, Originality, and Craft, (Colchester, VT; Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 1992), 80.)
the breaks in planar structures of material matter. Distinguishing and then categorizing my surroundings seeded interests in finding ways to represent the way I contextualize information.
Yarn-scapes represent horizon lines of housetops and natural land formations. Bent copper plumbing pipes sit into a pine base to create triangular outlines (figs. 26-30). Yarn and paracord are tied with a simple double knot so that each fiber strand hangs loosely. The subdued color palette of whites and greys blend into washes of corals, teals, and blues. The length of the strings and the density of saturated color depict the atmospheric hues defining the landscape. Beginning on the ground and moving up the gallery wall, becoming smaller as they diagonally ascend to extend the depth of perspective. While each triangular form and pine base is its own unit, the fibers blend together the individual into one whole as some strands fall behind the foregrounding layer.
Figure 26, Left: Graphite sketch for the
work Yarn-Scapes Figure 27, Right: Yarn-Scapes, detail Yarn
2017
39 Figure 28: Yarn-Scapes
Yarn, Paracord, Copper Plumbing Pipe, Pine 2017
Figure 30: Yarn-Scapes
Yarn, Paracord, Copper Plumbing Pipe, Pine 2017
Figure 29: Yarn-Scapes
Yarn, Paracord, Copper Plumbing Pipe, Pine 2017
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[Part Three: Making: A Passion for Process]
All artists must find a form or subject that intrigues them…But what matters most is not the particular form or subject chosen. It is that the creators must immerse themselves completely.
Warren MacKenzie, Potter (1924 - )18
While I may not always be able to pin point why, I have a desire, a need, to make. Stemming out of a necessity to make and a yearning to learn how things are made through material and technical skills has a grounding post to childhood, and in the way I was raised. My mother and father are both makers in diverse ways - in the domestic, the natural wild world, and in the workshop - which instilled overlapping mentalities of making for oneself.19
Making for many categorical needs came first from a pinnacle of learning the possibilities and limits of materials. Traditional ways of working and finding regional resources teaches the integration of materials and techniques together.
The rich puzzling of the why and way objects are made are because of factors such as accessible resources, functionality, utilitarian need, a projection of wealth and status, necessity, or want. Making is a conversation between materials, techniques, tools, and the original intention of the maker.
When I am compelled to make I try to think of all of the different forms the object could take and the different materials I could use. The style of an
18 Warren MacKenzie, “Warren MacKenzie: September 1997,” in Clay Talks: Reflections by American Master Ceramists: Regis Masters Series 1997-2000, (Minneapolis: Northern Clay Center, 2004), 4.
19 “Five-minute jobs”, as coined by my father, are rarely that. As you are working, fixing, or cleaning, there are often more interwoven jobs associated with finishing the original. The lesson engrained in every task: If you are going to do something, do it right, the first time. Take pride in the work, enjoy solving every problem and step in the process, and when you are done look at what you did.
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object and material choice leads to the tools and techniques needed. While I am continuously drawn back to seeking knowledge to answer curiosities about material processes, I do not believe there is a single way of making that completely surpasses another. Materials can be manipulated in an unfathomable array of configurations.
Today it may seem that we are beyond needing to make out of necessity, but making is not obsolete20. There is an enticing challenge to generate objects that are functional while also expand to encompass aesthetic concerns with an aim to bring harmony between life and art. Material investigation has brought my work into many fields; all of the things I have learned have had their own lives in different ways. Tapping into the known and exposing the knowledge opens a new bridging language embedded in objects that hold their own secrets, light, and life. Objects that are mentally used, and ideologies considered, can create conversations for years to come.
I am interested in solving an unknown factor of art and an unknown factor of life. In fact, my idea is to counteract everything I’ve ever learned or been taught about those things – to find something that is inevitable that is my life, my feeling, my thoughts.
Eva Hesse, Sculptor (1936-1970)21
20 Making out of necessity with locally sourced materials is still thriving in many rural areas. Many artists and makers in urban areas such as Minneapolis, Minnesota, seek to bring sustainability into their practice and to create objects that play with the balance of aesthetic and functional concerns.
21 BlouinArtInfo, “Eva Hesse,” Accessed January 20, 2017, http://www.blouartinfo.com/artists/84 505-eva-hesse.
Reflecting on everyday objects creates conversations with and amongst viewers to aid in advancing the narrative to contemporary ideologies. In the 1960s, artists such as Eva Hesse, Kai Chan, and Robert Morris started to use unorthodox materials, those that had been deemed craft materials, in their artworks22. Some artists wanted to break down the hierarchies and elevate materials, other artists were more concerned with the meanings of the domestic and the everyday, and another group of artists truly saw raw materials to be accepting of visceral manipulations.23 I am interested in the intersection of these three concerns.
My work lives in the world where art, craft, and design interweave with the historical and contemporary cultural context of the everyday and the spaces I inhabit. Instead of viewing categories, definitions, and boundaries as negative limitations, these engrained associations to meanings open the opportunity for new conversations about the boundary between art and the everyday. Engrained associations will always exist because, down to a single thread or cottonseed, one connects to the history, no matter how decontextualized.
Working with multiple mediums expands my work. Pairing together fiber, metal, and wood creates conversations between mediums and enhances their materiality. To use a material as intended or to transform it away from its given
22 “By the nineteenth century, associations of such work with ideas of usefulness, skill, adherence to traditional form, or the use of ‘lesser’ media like wood, clay, or fiber, were commonly accepted as distinguishing craft from art.” (Elissa Auther, String Felt Thread: The Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American Art (Minneapolis and London: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2015))
23 Auther, String Felt Thread, 18.
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function and societal links can together spur questions about why and how materials can be used to ignite new questions and understandings. Through my material choices and the forms referenced, I am able to link together the domestic with the natural.
Merging together the natural and domestic realms creates a new space to consider and correspond with the world around us, as well as raise questions about the everyday and our place in it. Technical skills are at the foundation of my practice, seen as a place for continuous exploration where repetition of form, style, or method does not recreate identical works but seeds endless variations.
Experimenting with which aspects of various processes I want to use and how complete I want to make them is an area for further exploration.
Because of a semi-nomadic upbringing, my sense of place does not usually align with where I am physically located, but aspects of nature and seeking have always grounded me. I have sometimes wished for a pop-up shelter I could bring with me and crawl into at any point. As this desire increased while in Alfred, I began creating various works exploring portable shelters.
With Weaving a Place to Be, I knotted and laced a physical shelter from ephemeral materials found and purchased around Alfred, New York (fig. 31). In making a one-sided structural lean-to shelter inspired by a Navajo branch loom, its fragility is apparent in the unfinished process of weaving and precarious setting atop deer antlers. It could be moved almost anywhere, only needing
three points to be anchored. The sitting mat, geometrically woven of dried wild field foliage first appears to adapt nature to a neat, clean seat; however, large thorns, burrs, and coarse broken edges would cause discomfort if sat upon.
These elements cause the viewer to become aware of an element outside of oneself and mentally negotiate a path through and around each individual part of the whole. Through the combination of materials, a merging of the domestic and natural becomes physicalized. The subtle details representative of ideologies within my works can take time to notice and absorb. I am exploring ways to enhance viewers
engagement through the details to encapsulate the
depth of mental
absorption felt in and around the object’s presence and to consider their histories.
Figure 31:
Weaving a Place to Be Yarn, Paracord, Copper Plumbing Pipe, Pine 2017
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Being unsure of the overall, “what’s next,” with a more specifically,
“where will next be?” I continued investigating various transportable shelters.
Having helped a friend begin a teardrop trailer and previously working at a studio next to a custom builder I had been drawn to the size and ease of this type of portable home (fig. 32). I began designing plans, utilizing the language of Timber Framing. I did not want to conceal its structure with plywood, as many do, but accentuate the planar breaks in the sleek form. While simultaneously researching how to build my own wooden loom, the ideas converged with the teardrop trailer designs when I found an 18th Century French Drawloom (fig. 33).
Figure 33: French Drawloom, Engraving from Diderot’s Encyclopédie
18th century
Historical Pictures Service, Chicago www.britannica.com
Encyclopedia Britannica, “Drawloom: Weaving,” 2017, https://www.britannica.com/technology/drawloom.
Figure 32, Left: “Trailer for Two”
Mechanix Illustrated September 1947 Article by Hi Sibley
Hi Sibley, “Trailer for Two,” Mechanix Illustrated, September 1947, 112-117, http://www.doityourself rv.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/1947-Teardro p-Camper-plans-2.pdf.
The pine loom in Weaving my Path began as a half-scale model of a five by eight foot trailer (fig. 34). When completed the size seemed to fit with the scale and proportions I wanted to create throughout Drawing a Line from There to Here.
The squared pine 2x4s became the skeletal bone structure emphasizing the planar form I had been seeking.
The joinery used with the angular wall frames informed other works.
While the half-lap joint utilized on the angled edges is not traditionally used, because it leaves a triangular gap and mirroring overhang, I wanted to emphasize these points of convergence. Instead of trimming off the overhang and plugging it into the gap, I chose to keep because they create a strong break
Figure 34: One of my blueprint drawings for the teardrop trailer.
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in the planes, creating a mental line that continues through space. While few angles repeat themselves more than twice on the walls, all of the pine support bars are uniform. These straight pieces complete the planes the angles began.
The yarn begins with copper pipe spools on a base support bar, guided up the front and along the top by small steel eyehooks. The yarn creates a plaid grid as it crosses the pine bars. The taught lines inside the loom pull the eye through the to the weaving (fig. 35 – 37). I wove in the back opening, with the help of yarn shuttles, cut to the length of the loom’s width. I am able to simply pluck the structural yarn strands, pull the shuttle through, loop it around a dowel, and continue back again. (
Figure 35: Inside view of loom in Weaving My Path
Figure 36: Inside view of loom in Weaving My Path
Figure 37: Weaving My Path Pine, Yarn, Copper, Poly textiles, Plaster, Hardware, Sand
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While dreaming about the places embedded in the sculptures and objects being housed in my studio, the weather outside, and processing my current placement, I intuitively wove24. Switching colors and patterning styles before over thinking what came next. Continuously rolling the textile as it grew, I was not able to see the whole, only the
various colored tips and the end of the last two-foot section. The transitions between the sections are unapparent when unraveled, appearing organic and unrestrained by a specified pattern (fig.
38).
24 An echoing whisper stays with me from The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton, when Ponyboy Curtis spoke Robert Frost’s Nothing Gold Can Stay. Stay golden, Ponyboy.
“One morning I woke up earlier than usual…I went to sit on the steps and smoke a cigarette. The dawn was coming then. All the lower valley was covered with mist, and sometimes little pieces of it broke off and floated away in small clouds. The sky was lighter in the east, and the horizon was a thin golden line. The clouds changed from gray to pink, and the mist was touched with gold. There was a silent moment when everything held its breath, and then the sun rose. It was beautiful.
“Golly”--- Johnny’s voice beside me made me jump--- “that sure was pretty.”
“Yeah,” I sighed, wishing I had some paint to do a picture with while the sight was fresh in my mind.”
“The mist was what was pretty,” Johnny said. “All gold and silver…Too bad it couldn’t stay like that all the time.”
“Nothing gold can stay.” I was remembering a poem I’d read once.
“What?”
“Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.”
(S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders, (New York: Viking Press. 1967), 66-67.)
Figure 38: Weaving My Path, detail Yarn
2017
When a viewer enters the exhibition, they are presented with an awning, elevated by skinny freestanding supports (figs. 39 – 43). The space to enter in the front opening is very narrow, following the width of the weaving. If one wants to directly walk under the full length of the weaving, they have to be aware of the changing height and the actual width of space available to walk because of the stand’s feet and sandbags. The three swivel feet give an additional layer of motion to the overall still form.
The movement aids in activating the continual growth and expansion of the weaving. This speaks to the ever endlessly shifting landscape, as well as to the continuation of a personal path. While the sandbags slightly weigh and stall the movement, the pattern was designed from ankle sand weights used for exercise.
Figure 39: Weaving My Path Pine, Yarn, Copper, Cast Iron, Bronze, Aluminum, Poly textiles, Plaster, Hardware, Sand 2017
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Sewn with the same white, blue, green, and grey fabrics from Once a Home, the sandbags connect with the domestic. However, here the colors also become the water, vegetation, and sediment of the landscape, and the weight is the physical exertion to get you through it.
Figures 40 – 42: Weaving My Path, weight details Pine, Yarn, Copper, Cast Iron, Bronze, Aluminum, Poly textiles, Plaster, Hardware, Sand
2017
Figure 43: Weaving My Path
Pine, Yarn, Copper, Plaster, Hardware 2017
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[Conclusion: Pulling Threads of Detail]
The details that I hold onto from different places are often those overlooked25; through the merging of different textural surfaces that define places in my own memories, I hope to draw the viewer to examine the spaces they currently occupy, as well as the new spaces yet to be explored. After living in over fifteen residences, my home is not often the place I live; it is a feeling built from the memories I have kept. Wherever I am, I am able to get away and connect to fragments of nature’s natural nourishment, to find a sense of place and comfort. There is a rich symbolic and metaphoric entanglement of meanings in all aspects of nature and everyday objects. By highlighting why these facets are so important in my remembering of the original place, they may be able to connect to more viewers.
25 “The world is full of obvious things which nobody by chance ever observes.” (Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles, (United Kingdom: George Newnes, 1902).)
