Playhouse #9

By digging beneath the surface, as in Salcedo's Shibboleth, Salcedo is reconnecting the building to colonial and postcolonial histories, to power, and to the creation of a grave truth: difference, otherness and the vast gap created by exclusions. She states that the “ideal of humanity [is] so restrictedly defined that it excluded non-European peoples from the human genre,” in which “the excluded have no hope of answering correctly.”

Salcedo wants us to remember that these wounds can not be put behind us; instead, she encourages us to “confront discomforting truths about our world and about ourselves with absolute candidness and without self-deception.”

Salcedo’s sculptures are of similar content, perhaps a prelude to what I believe to be her greatest work to date.

Playhouse #13

Playhouse #12

Playhouse #11

Playhouse #10

Re-coated with paperclay and re-fired in the bisque.

Playhouse #8

Playhouse #8

Playhouse #7 with its rider

Cowboy rides the house

Playhouse #5

Playhouse #4

Playhouse #3

The Mess #9 -the last mess photo, the last photo of the term

The Mess #9

...the last mess photo, the last photo of the term, before it comes home to disintegrate and return to the earth.

"You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of our grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children - that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.
This we know. the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected.
Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself ..."

- Chief Seattle

The clay I form comes from the stones, minerals, and waters formed many millions of years ago. The clay I form contains the bones of my ancestors. How can I know what a lump of this earth should become in my humble hands? How do I ever choose amongst the infinite possibilities which exist in any given moment. This is a responsibility that I hold in my hands, to make a thing worthy of existence, well beyond the exploration of learning a technique is the questioning and then the answering, the processes, and the result that never becomes a stopping point but instead another strand.

The Mess #8 - transformation, another thing, transmutation, another thing...

The Mess #8

Transformation; another thing; transmutation; another thing...

Alchemy - defined:used by early scientists, the medieval forerunner of chemistry based on the supposed transformation of matter. Concerned particularly with attempts to convert base metals into gold or to find a universal elixir; figurative meaning: a process by which paradoxical results are achieved or incompatible elements combined with no obvious rational explanation.

"Now I hear the sea sounds about me; the night high tide is rising, swirling with a confused rush of waters against the rocks below...
Once this rocky coast beneath me was a plain of sand; then the sea rose and found a new shore line. And again in some shadowy future the surf will have ground these rocks to sand and will have returned the coast to its earlier state. And so in my mind's eye these coastal forms merge and blend in a shifting, kaleidoscopic pattern in which there is no finality, no ultimate and fixed reality - earth becoming fluid as the sea itself."

From The Edge of the Sea by Rachel Carson.

The Mess #7 about dying

The Mess #7




I have stopped watering the mess and the plants are wilting and dying. Is the mess really dying? No. Really its just changing, thank goodness change is eminent; it is the only constant I am aware of. I am feeling a bit better, every day my body changes a little. I am in less pain at least; I wish I could sleep more. I realize that i don't remember what it's like to feel physically good or rested anymore; I don't suppose I will. I feel now as though I'm in about the same stage as the mess. I'm worn out. But there is still a part of me that survives - the spirit is a powerful thing, perhaps our greatest attributes of existence as humans.

The Mess #6 - about midterm and pain

The Mess #6

I am in a big bunch of pain, not sleeping much, I won't drug myself; the pain is there to teach me - fucking thing! I have to be driven to school, drag my sorry ass around with crutches, even opening doors exacerbates the pain. This campus is not very accessible to alter-abled people, especially the ceramic studio and the things I must do in there.
Why am I here? I can't even move a bit of clay around! Will I be able to finish the term? And if not, then I have 6 months with which to get a job and start paying back my loans! What am I good for? Why was I given this fucking thing? I sense that those around me are annoyed with my limits also; as they are having to do my share of the work. I hate answering to the question, "what did you do to yourself?" I don't want to keep telling this piece of shit story! I know there is maybe some concern, but primarily curiosity, ah, people do love a drama. Or maybe it helps them to feel better about their own quandaries; that their lives really are o.k. especially since this one is not their problem.

Liquid Words project Playhouse 1

Playhouse 1

Liquid words, the title in itself is sublime - "The essence of language is to be articulated." "... for language to function, signs must be isolable one from the other or not repeatable."

When learning a new language one must use repetition on all levels, with writing, reading, speaking, but language can be taught without text. At first, this is how a baby begins learning language, by listening, the baby picks up on external clues, hearing different influxes in the voice that produce a feeling, or perhaps an object - something is named - something happens - then it repeats. Thus we are fed language and meanings are as individual as each living thing is an individual. But if something has a definition, perhaps it has the ability to change.

Doris Salcedo "Chairs"

Another work by Doris Salcedo, an installation for the 8th International Istanbul Biennial, 2003.

Doris Salcedo "Unland; Audible in the Mouth", 1998.

Unland; Audible in the Mouth, 1998. Doris Salcedo.

Wood, thread and hair, 800 x 750 x 3150 mm.
Unland: Audible in the Mouth, 1998, made of wood, thread and hair, is a series of three sculptures created after she traveled to the center of Columbia to interview children who had witnessed their parents being murdered during the civil war. In this particular sculpture, Salcedo has joined two odd table pieces together with hair and thread. Another piece in the Unland series titled Unland: Irreversible Witness, 1995-8; she has again joined two table pieces to make one, then attached to it a child’s cot and wove a delicate surface of human hair into the table top.

Doris Salcedo "Untilted" 1998

Untitled, 1998.

Wood, cement and metal. 2140 x 1495 x 570 mm. Doris Salcedo.

In the 1990’s Salcedo made a series of sculptures using furniture; in Untitled, 1998, by using wood, cement and metal, she filled and hermetically sealed a wardrobe with concrete, thus making it useless and inaccessible. In her sculptures Salcedo uses a variety of techniques, first she deconstructs an object then reconstructs it in a new way which ultimately renders the object useless. In Unland: Irreversible Witness, she drilled hundreds of holes in the table top which were woven with human hair. Casa Viuda VI, 1995, is made by fusing a cabinet with bone and clothing then forcibly attaching it to an unhinged door as an image of a widow’s house. Salcedo seems to transform ordinary, familiar, and comforting objects, into those of horror.
The resulting works suggest the violation of domestic space and the human body. Rather than an empty space waiting to be filled with worldly belongings or childish fantasies, the wardrobe becomes hermetically sealed and inaccessible. The configuration of armoire and chair is akin to that of a Pietà, the traditional depiction of the Madonna holding the body of the dead Christ on her lap.

Doris Salcedo "Shibboleth"

"Shibboleth" Doris Salcedo


Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth is the first work to intervene directly in the fabric of the Turbine Hall. Rather than fill this iconic space with a conventional sculpture or installation, Salcedo has created a subterranean chasm that stretches the length of the Turbine Hall. The concrete walls of the crevice are ruptured by a steel mesh fence, creating a tension between these elements that resist yet depend on one another. By making the floor the principal focus of her project, Salcedo dramatically shifts our perception of the Turbine Hall’s architecture, subtly subverting its claims to monumentality and grandeur. Shibboleth asks questions about the interaction of sculpture and space, about architecture and the values it enshrines, and about the shaky ideological foundations on which Western notions of modernity are built.

Text by Martin Herbert
The Unilever Series: Doris Salcedo

Shibboleth, a large installation piece by Columbian sculptor Doris Salcedo. Salcedo’s works are intense, unsettling and deeply thought provoking as is the war torn country where she is from. Shibboleth is a massive piece about people who have been exposed to the extremes of racial hatred in the “first world”. Her other sculptures share a similar theme, yet not as profound as Shibboleth. Shibboleth is Salcedo’s most recent and certainly the most remarkable of her works. It is a crack that runs the vast length of floor within the confines of the great Turbine Hall at Tate Modern.
A "shibboleth", according to the Oxford Dictionary, is ‘a word used as a test for detecting people from another district or country by their pronunciation; a word or sound very difficult for foreigners to pronounce correctly.’ There is an incident in the Bible which references the word ‘shibboleth’; in The Book of Judges, Ephraimites, attempting to flee across the river Jordan, were stopped by their enemies, the Gileadites. The Epraimites did not have a ‘sh’ sound in their dialect and those who could not say the word ‘shibboleth’ were captured and executed. A shibboleth can be thought of as a token of power: the power to judge, refuse and kill.
In Salcedo’s interview, she states that Shibboleth is about people who have experienced extreme experiences of racial hatred and their experience is hidden in the division created by the crack. She wanted a piece that intruded into the space, that it is unwelcome, like an immigrant. She did not intend Shibboleth to be viewed as an attack, but rather a reminder, a question, a disruption, “not only in the space but also in time….” By digging beneath the surface, Salcedo is reconnecting the building to colonial and postcolonial histories, to power, and to the creation of a grave truth: difference, otherness and the vast gap created by exclusions. She states that the “ideal of humanity [is] so restrictedly defined that it excluded non-European peoples from the human genre,” in which “the excluded have no hope of answering correctly.”

Judy Pfaff "Buckets of Rain" detail 4

"Buckets of Rain" detail 4, Judy Pfaff

Judy Pfaff is known as a pioneer of installation art from the 1970s. She combines sculpture, painting, two and three dimensional collage and architecture into dynamic environments in which space seems to expand and collapse. Her works are like abstract landscapes with architectural elements, and dramatic color schemes, together wrapped up simultaneously into a tense and placid whole that consume huge gallery spaces. Pfaff’s site-specific installations penetrate walls and seem to have a life of their own as they sometimes explode through the air, achieving lightness, movement, energy and a strange stillness. She uses steel, fiberglass, and plaster as well as salvaged signage and natural elements such as tree roots. She also has an interest in natural motifs and has created a series of prints which use vegetation, maps, and medical illustrations. Ms. Pfaff has expanded her sculptural work into set designs for several theatrical stage productions as well.

Judy Pfaff "Buckets of Rain" detail 3

"Buckets of Rain" detail 3, Judy Pfaff

Pfaff considers herself very romantic, which is why she creates her scrims and structures; they’re to save her from too much emotion. Pfaff feels there are not enough of the “other things” (states of being other than emotional) which she considers difficult to access. She describes her work as a way to access other levels, “to the silence, to the breath, to a sweeter sense of things.” Ms. Pfaff also feels her work is a kind of system, that allows her to “cancel” out if it gets too “one thing”, she overlays it with another so it doesn’t get “too literal, too poetic, too tough, too anything, too red.” She states that she’s always “made sculpture that relates to architecture or a whole sensation or feeling.”

Judy Pfaff "Buckets of Rain" detail 2

"Buckets of Rain" detail 2, Judy Pfaff

She’s also very concerned with structure and uses an example of walking into the woods, especially if you’re not used to the woods, there’s a tension; perhaps you’re a bit nervous about what you’ll run into or where you are or if you’ll get lost, a state of hyper-sensitivity. She likes creating these types of feelings in her viewers. She likes to have what she calls a “multivalent thing happening”, which allows the viewer to question what they’re looking at—“so that sensation takes over more than the thought”.

Judy Pfaff "Buckets of Rain" detail 1

"Buckets of Rain" detail 1, Judy Pfaff

Judy Pfaff states that her work is about form and space. She feels that before there were a couple pieces which have been emotional, but “Buckets of Rain” was specifically about a great loss or a kind of drama, and more about choices—“black and white, life and death, good and bad, and the impact of that.” She felt embarrassed about displaying such emotion but believes she didn’t have a choice, since she had recently experienced many great losses.

Judy Pfaff "Buckets of Rain" full veiw, one room

"Buckets of Rain"
2006
Wood, steel, wax, plaster, fluorescent lights, paint, black foil, expanding foam, and tape; 2 galleries, 153 x 245 1/2 x 209 inches and 153 x 228 1/2 x 165 inches. Installation view: Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, New York. Photo by Zonder Title and Jordan Tinker.
Courtesy the artist and Ameringer & Yohe Fine Art, New York.

“Before, there have been a couple pieces which have been emotional. But most of the time the work is about form and space, and I might be involved in building or architecture or a romance about being Chinese. ‘Buckets of Rain’ was directly about a great loss or a kind of drama, and more about choices—black and white, life and death, good and bad, and the impact of that. It just embarrasses me even to think that way, that I did that. But, you know, I didn’t feel I had a choice.”
— Judy Pfaff

Judy Pfaff "...all of the above"

".....all of the above"
2007
Grapes vines, Styrofoam, plaster, plywood; plastics: Polycarbonate and acrylic; steel: rod, wire and cable; lights: fluorescent light, black light, and EL light; dyes and pigment, 15 1/2 x 40 x 44 feet. Installation view: Rice University Art Gallery, Houston.
Photo by Nash Baker, © Judy Pfaff.

“I probably have a problem with ideas. Most of the art world is idea-based: this means this; this means that. But I’m really trying to get to something very emotional and murky—more sensation and emotion than idea. Black-and-white is not an idea, but it’s based on something . . . It’s life-based—what you gather and try to document. You keep in touch with who you are.”

Duration Piece 1

Here is a small lump of clay, now, take this with you and use it to journal. Think of it as a clay sketch, but most importantly, record your process though it. It's really unimportant that you produce anything, but record your experience; journal, sketch, film, photograph, however you like.

Keep this idea of recording your process throughout the entire length of the class, with whatever you do, and inform what you do through in depth research.
I held the lump of clay, I played with it for a few minutes; it's a familiar substance in my hands, yet I've felt blocked – nothing was coming through. Perhaps I could form a muse from the lump of clay, perhaps it would bring a bit of inspiration...

Muse #1

Mike came to pick me up and saw the muse – he said it looked like another I had done a few years ago, oh and kind of like two others I also made....
What felt spontaneous to me was just another movement on the same old trajectory I've been on for some time; maybe I found my stuck spot – thank you Mike!
It took 24 hours of self-defeatist hell, then I read the first of our readings - “Base Materialism” - something had shook loose.
I made “The Mess” the next day...

The Mess #1





I put four different colors of clay in separate bowls, collected some found natural objects while walking my old dog then arranged them on a board, I then stood on the kitchen table for leverage and began throwing small handfuls of clay on the board – not with any emotion, but with enough force for them to stick to the board. It was completely freeing; I would not form the clay into anything, I would just let it be. Then I thought maybe I might bless it by throwing some beans and grains on it, they might grow if I water it...
Mike awoke during the night to find me on the table with an atrocious mess extending even beyond the well covered kitchen. Povorino! His disdain for mess and disorder forced him quickly back to bed...I promised there would be no trace of it in the morning. The next day he said he was grateful he was not wearing his glasses.




The Mess #2



I left it at school to water and monitor it everyday, but never touching or manipulating it with my hands. First the wheat began to sprout...

And the Muse came home to be left outdoors throughout the cold winter days and nights...


Muse #2




It's much more interesting this way and I enjoy visiting it and watching the formed clay slake naturally .


As The Mess grew, it got a fair amount of attention in the studio – I was asked, “what was it?” “what would I do with it?” One response I had was, "I'm growing many magic bean sprouts so that I might create several different pathways to some fantastic castles in the sky and possibly find some magic treasures."


The Mess #3



and “It's my mess and I'm watering it so that it might grow and change on its own.” And how delightful it was to examine it daily, seeing all the new growth.

"Awareness is becoming acquainted with environment, no matter where one happens to be. [People] do not suddenly become aware or infused with wonder; it is something we are born with. No child need be told its secret; he keeps it until the influence of gadgetry and the indifference of teen-age satiation extinguish its intuitive joy."
From Reflections From the North Country by Sigurd Olsen.

Muse #3



Snow and ice...sun and clouds...growth and death...change...constant change...

The Mess #4




Old stories are difficult to relinquish to the untold stories; the stories which hold within them the infinite possibilities that each life holds – its greatest potential...


Muse #4




What influences that which I feel compelled to give life, that which I have the desire to bring into existence. And what of my children? I was a teenage mama with no plan to have children; did I choose for them to arrive when they did? Did they, still not conceived of also have a part in the decisive nature of existence? Is there a decisive nature to existence? And what if, what if, what if – how odd, a question about the possible future which has past and will not exist...how odd we are.


The Mess #5




So it goes, and so we grow, or perhaps perish. Do the innocent, when deprived of the many essentials to survival, wish to die? I think not, they want only to be nurtured and survive, as does the innocent, wild, indigenous self.

Muse #5



Unfortunately, this was the last shot of the Muse. I had wanted to get 1 or 2 more before the natural environment washed it away completely, but shortly after the snow and ice came a very big rain that washed it away in a day. I got to see the beginning of that; what a beautiful thing, the rain drops were making holes in the piece.
It washed away to nothing, even the ground where the clay dropped shows no trace of its ever being.

There's a magical story about St. Francis enjoying the night air one evening in the village of Assisi. When the moon came up, it was huge and luminous, bathing the entire earth in radiance. Noticing no one else was outside to enjoy this miracle, Francis ran to the bell tower and began ringing the bell enthusiastically. When the people rushed from their houses in alarm and they saw Francis at the top of tower, they called out asking him to explain what was wrong. Francis replied simply, "Lift up your eyes, my friends. Look at the moon!"
Sometimes all that is necessary for hearing the earth's voice is just to get out of our boxes.