Dimensions: 20” tall x 9’ in length x 20” wide approximately
Materials: white oak, steel and concrete.
This piece began as a bench form and resolved itself as a sculpture. A wedged shaped concrete base is used for an actual and visual counter-weight. Anchored to this base are two black steel springboard type forms that conform to the wedge base and curves and extends to find a horizontal resolve. A white oak wedge structures a double-wedge that is a transition piece and source of origination to anchor white oak strips that springs out to replicate and reply to the base steel forms. These strips link with the horizontal portion of the steel and are attached with spacers to and extend beyond the steel base.
I asked myself a question, what constitutes a bench form? I need a flat plane for sitting at the appropriate height and it needs to have a structure to maintain this position. The breaking down of the issues to its essential forces for an interplay that constitutes an intertwine of diverse manifestations is an aspect of the DRI research and my workings as an architect and artist. I wanted this piece to spring forth and have a counter (contradict/ oppose)_rhythm (cadence/ measure) expressing potentialities.
A Deleuzian concept of ‘repetition’. “ …repetition is connected to the power of difference in terms of productive process that produces variation in and through every repetition… repetition is best understood in terms of discovery and experimentation; it allows new experiences, affects of the new and the unforeseeable.“
The base concrete wedge sets up a counter-plane from the ground surface that sets new parameters for growth by varying the degrees from the ground plane commencing the spring forth of steel plane. Another wedge made of white oak counter-wedges acting as a source that germinates the white oak planks that takes its own course as it resides into a common anchor point/ line. The oak planks are in repetition yet create a rhythm within their innate nature.
This piece began as a bench but ended up as a sculpture. I submitted the images of the model to a Public Art competition in Champagne- Urbana, IL and it was chosen. So, as I embarked on the build of this piece, I was not concerned with the function of having someone sit on the horizontal plane. There is an ongoing debate about what constitutes a design and what is art? The aspect of function seems to be a cornerstone of the debate. I will not go into this debate for now. However, I am going to touch upon the insertion of a supposed functionality as a primary premise for the conception of the piece in the genre of ‘studio furniture’, architecture/ interior design, etc. “What is the essence of human necessity? The complications arise with the layers of perceived needs, meanings and expectations that we place on this question.” Many times when we assign a function, the given definition is not the essence of that function. Friedrich Nietzsche states, “There are only facts. I would say: no, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations… In so far as the word ‘knowledge’ has any meaning, the world is knowable, but it is interpretable otherwise, it has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings.”
The stated function, I assert is laced with interpretations. Thus, this function has been polluted with value judgments and ideologies at the very least. I try to distill the needs of a project down to its essence and build anew, de-centering the structure of what we think we know.
I decided to create a double hull for the steel base, designed and created a working set of drawings for the manufacturer. I had the steel powder coated and set if on floor after delivery. I began to notice that the steel was not shaped according to my design. The plane stood parallel to the floor, yet was supposed to be parallel after it stood on the canted concrete base. It was interesting. My conjecture was that the craftsman used his own sensibilities that it needed to be parallel to the floor and disregarded the drawing. After contemplation, I decided to adjust the cant of the concrete base and go forth with the steel as manufactured.
The most prominent aspect of the piece was the curved wood that emerged from the crevice between the concrete and the steel. I used a wedge form to nestle the gap to act as a source or an interval for the curved white oak planks as they emerged.
Several forms were used to coax the steam planks to the perceived forms. They were fetched one at a time and slowly bent over the form and clamped overnight. Transition bars were placed on the steel to act much like frets on a guitar neck. The curved planks found its connection to the frets and reached its determined termination points beyond the steel springboard. This act was strategized and planned yet informed by the process of attachment and the intuitively driven rhythmic arrangement of the white oak planks.
A problem began to divulge itself as the additional weight of the connectors and planks made the springboard sag. I had previously conceived that the space between the steel hulls needed a solid web for additional strength. So this problem created an opportunity to infill space using rigid foam and white oak veneer which made the overall form visually solid to add contrast to the lace of the flowing planks.
Dimensions: 20’ tall x 5’ in length x 30” wide approximately
Materials: Arkansas air dried walnut, Xtreme concrete.
The wedge table is a bent charcoal colored concrete of irregular augment ‘U’ form. Arkansas air dried walnut with a natural Danish Oil finish that is placed as a horizontal plane to function as a table. Due to its size and scale, it could be used and function as a coffee table. The concrete form functions as the legs of the table and with the ‘U’ form’s natural unstable shape, wooden wedges are placed on either end to stabilize the table. The walnut planks are random in width and length. They are mulled together in width with mechanical mortis/ tenon devices and glued while allowing the length to remain random. One edge of the width is thicker by gluing together two planks and it is joined on one end to a angled double width plank with a rough finish that is friction and gravity joined as a ‘dry fit’ to the upward thrusting concrete form on the inside of the ‘U’ form. The walnut plane rests on the other leg of the concrete ‘U’ form and is stabilized in place by use of wedge forms below the surface.
Wabi; is a Japanese idea of aesthetics meaning ‘beautiful poverty’. The intention of the wedge table piece was not wabi, yet it was trying to find a fluid ‘sweet spot’ in the conceptualizing, ideation, sketching, and working of the actual piece along with interaction of a full mind and body relationship.
The concrete that I used for the piece was found while searching for concrete to be used for another piece. I was trying to find concrete for a project for a slip casting piece that was lightweight.
I started sketching a form and stayed with a table ‘function.’ I decided to use the concrete as the ‘legs’ in lieu of conventionally minded four columns near the edges of the tabletop. A horizontal plane was conceptualized to rest on atop or be penetrated through the plane and be wedged to the curved concrete piece. In order for the half ellipse or ‘U’ concrete form not rock and be unstable, I used wedges on either side. The idea was simple which fit my criteria for the journey.
With my loose sketches and ideas in mind along with a tone of wabi as a premise, I set out for the creation of this piece. I must now encounter the material aspects of the work. The physical potentials and limitations of the concrete were met with a rational mindset yet left to open to embrace with an intuitive integration of all my senses and emotional capacities.
A group of people assisted in the bending procedure and we tied off the form so the concrete will retain an arch form for the remainder of the curing time. As an intuitive gesture, I let one of the string tie off slack so the end that penetrated the table top will have a slight torque.
The concrete now has its own ‘presence’ born out of the material’s nature and embedded potentials, a gesture through a realization of sketches of intent, a set rationalized methodology of process and an intuitive dialogue with the immanence of timeless beats within moments. Now it is a question of how the walnut plane that functions as a table top interacts with its own ‘presence’ with the concrete form. My desire was for this relationship to be a conversation between the two forms and materials that has a respect for their own identity that manifests a cohesive ‘presence’ steeped in character of wabi. This cannot be achieved with a goal in mind; it has its own rhythm and interaction.
I wanted no mechanical attachment devices. I visualized the table top to rest on one end of the concrete form and penetrate through the other end. As per the process of creating the concrete form the bottom side was smooth with texture of the plastic which was in contrast to the inner texture that was rough. With this revelation, I wanted to allow this portion of the form to express its own natural evolution. I formed a thickened walnut piece and set it at an angle as an intersection of joinery for the table top form. This angle also reveals and frames the inside-curve of the concrete. A wedged form is fit as a transition between this piece and the concrete form to create a friction fit. To hold this position level, wedges were inserted below the table top on the other end of the curved form to counteract the force and exert pressure for gravity to practice its laws of physics. The final piece of joinery occurs at the intersection of the thickened edge of the table top and the angled walnut wedge. A floating tenon was devised to join and act as a visual transition for two individual and dispirit pieces of walnut which conjoins and retains their inherent character.
Finally, two wedges are inserted on either end of the concrete base to act as a stabilizing force and poise the ‘presence’ of the wedge table as a whole.
Dimensions: 14’ tall x 5’ x 5” wide approximately
Materials: steel pipes, cable, burned cedar.
This column is built in three segments. The structure is made out of steel plumbing pipes with two surfaces are flanked with burned cedar planks; Shou-sugi-ban and finished with Danish Oil. Wedges and are used as connectors to the structure. The other two surfaces are open to reveal the steel pipe structure. The column is hung from the ceiling and hovers a few inches from the floor.
This piece was designed to be the organizing or more accurately the de-organizing element of a defined space. The floating column would act as on corner of the square or box, when extended into the Z coordinate. The other three corners were eventually not marked in the actual space but I felt that the inference was enough. The box ultimately dissolved the existing wall to extend into the adjacent space.
The three segmented column was joined by wedges and hung from the ceiling by an internal cable within the pipe structure and floated a few inches from the ground. The column moved slightly depending on the existing atmospherics. This slight movement was intentioned to create a sense of instability of the piece, the space that surrounded it and within our subconscious need for a Cartesian orientation of our physical being and psyche. Steve Odin describes Jacques Derrida’s concept of de-centering. ”The project of critical deconstruction is itself expressed in terms of what Derrida calls the language of ‘de-centering’. In this context a ‘center’ is any sign which has been absolutized as having self identity. His plemic here is that any sign thought to be an absolute ‘center’ with self identity can itself be fractured into diffẻrance… “the stated abandonment of all reference to a center, to a subject, to a privileged reference, to an origin, or to an absolute archia.” He further asserts that his project of de-centering emerged as the development of a major ‘rupture’ in the history of structure…“
A Shou-sugi-ban burning of the cedar for the planks was used to give the column a darkness, a black that returns the material to nature, the anti-Cartesian or the ‘black BOX’. This aspect in the treatment of the material has tradition in Japan pragmatically to retard insects and fire from decaying destroying the material. MA like elements are exemplified in Japanese Shinto by its sacred spaces for the anticipation of the coming and going of kami; spirits and natural forces marked by a tree, rock or pillar. According to Richard Pilgrim, “…Shinto affirms sacred intervals in space as those places into and within which the presence of kami is experienced. Kami has no physical body; its body and essence exist in a vacuum, ‘a place entirely void of matter’. But the void does not mean ‘nothing is there’. Rather to the Japanese, ‘there is a hollow there’, as ‘nothing; mu exists there’. This concept of kami as the kehai; atmosphere of ki which fills a void has given the entire Japanese culture its striking quality.”
Dimensions: 7’ tall x 5’ wide approximately
Materials: cherry and painted poplar wood, glass, mirror.
This piece has augmented forms of two doors upon initial confrontation. Both doors are of a blunted wedge form that is counter posed to one another. The larger door stands in the foreground with a stout built up black frame and is somewhat unstable in form due to a smaller footprint versus the larger shoulder. Inserted within the frame are two black shelves that function as display of personal belongings. The background material is a translucent sandblasted glass that partially reveals the second door beyond. The door to the background is smaller in proportion and has a more stable form yet is somewhat disproportioned and is angled out in relation to the former door. The infill material is glass with an abstract pattern of traditional stained glass methodology. This panel has a capability of sliding that reveals mirror material that can function as a full length viewing for personal reflection.
The black door in the foreground acts as a door that depicts a more rationally oriented framework of the world loosely associated with transcendental Western paradigm. The function of a niche shelf unit is a metaphor for a platform to place aspects of a person’s life that describe who they are. The receding cherry framed door is crafted with mortise and tenon and carved sumptuously with a natural finish for the intuitive touch of human hands that is generally associated with an immanent understanding from an Eastern perspective. This door functions as a full length mirror with a vertically oriented fractured set of mirror squares in the foreground of a stained glass composition inset. This glass was composed with a poem that I had written as an intuitive guide throughout the making of the piece.
rain falling
up to the sky
casting shadows
of itself…
in the Night’s thin air.
A series of oil pastel crayon drawings were executed and a sketch to get a flow, rhythm and scale of the piece was drawn on brown butcher block paper and then I proceeded to cut glass intuitively listening to the poem in my mind’s eye.
I have used poetry to unlock the potentialities of architectural and art projects since my early college days at Ball State University. I was introduced to phenomenology as a branch of philosophy recently at the University of Cincinnati. It was jokingly stated that we would have our ‘official phenomenology card’ after we completed this course since the thoughts in this genre of philosophy were liberally tossed about in the professional architectural program without any real academic knowledge about the ideas. Martin Heidegger in ‘Poetry, Language, Thought’ described art as the ‘act of truth-ing’. He is quoted,
Art then is the becoming and happening of truth… Truth, as the clearing and concealing of what is, happens in being composed, as a poet composes a poem. All art, as the letting happen of the advent of the truth of what is, is, as such essentially poetry… Poetry, however, is not aimless imagining of whimsicalities and not a flight of mere notions and fancies into the realm of the unreal. What poetry, as illuminating projection, unfolds of unconcealedness and projects ahead into the design of the figure, is the Open which poetry lets happen, and indeed in such a way that only now, in the midst of beings, the Open brings beings to shine and ring out.
The dualistic conception postulated earlier began to divulge itself in my childhood. ‘remaining child’ in Japan: I will revert to my cultural and social background to reveal underpinnings for my understanding of the world. I was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. My mother is Japanese and my father is American and they worked as civilians with the United States government. I was immersed with the Japanese culture due to family on my mother’s side and I spoke Japanese natively and learned to speak English later. My inner consciousness was etched with the sights, tastes, rhythm and sounds of the Japanese landscape and urban fabric. We usually lived in traditionally designed Japanese styled houses near the U.S. Army bases for convenience of access to amenities.
As a child, I did not understand the duality and contrast of my cultures. I just enjoyed being a child in all of its wonderment. It was only later in life, as others pointed out the ‘differences’ in lieu of what we all have in common did I become cognizant of the Eastern and Western hemispherical split of on so many levels. This crevice was further enlarged when I moved to the United States at the age of twelve. It seemed as if all the instincts that I embraced were being challenged. This was further amplified when I was accepted to Architecture school a couple of years after graduating high school.
Another childhood event possibly explains the use of a door as a metaphor. I saw the door: What is beyond the door? Why was it closed? Is it important to open the door to expose the unknown beyond? I was ten years old. I was an active young boy with many friends and was very curious. I played many sports and engaged in the physical and mental strategies involved. I explored my surroundings with a probing eye and wonder. That particular day was filled with unencumbered sights and sounds of childhood. After a long day of unbridled play, I laid my head on my pillow in the security of home with my loving parents and a sister. I replayed in my mind the particulars of the day, playing with Dave and his dog; discovering that Judy was ‘kind of’ pretty; the persimmon tree was hard to climb but I got to the top anyway. I felt a wave of happiness that was unexplainable. Yet, I began to wonder what it meant to be happy. What if I only made it half way up the persimmon tree? Would I still be happy? Is being happy important? How would I feel if I wasn’t happy? Would I be sad? There are other emotions. Why am I thinking about these things? What is thinking? Is happiness, sadness and other feelings connected to thinking? If I weren’t thinking would I still be here? Would that be death? I closed my eyes tighter, turned around and quickly came back to my warm and safe home.
Another metaphor for a door appears. I was in my early college days when I stumbled upon a book written by Aldous Huxley, ‘Doors of Perception.’ He quotes the poet William Blake, “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite,” Aldous Huxley embarks upon a hallucinogenic journey via the use of mescalin, an active drug in peyote in search of the ‘Is-ness’ beyond the boundaries of empirical science and systematic reasoning.
This dualism of empirical science and the ‘Is-ness’ that was described by Aldous Huxley came to be the crevice or the divide for my early explorations. How do I create a bridge so that I can be connected with and be nondualistic in my approach to life as well as my work? I decided to clean the slate of my understanding: Due to my father’s occupation, we moved around quite often after coming to the United States at the age of twelve. I went to three high schools in three states; Indianapolis, Indiana; St. Louis, Missouri; near Louisville, Kentucky. We moved back to Indianapolis after my high school graduation. I initially enrolled at a local college; Indiana and Purdue University in Indianapolis, Indiana and started to study what was called Architectural Technology. I remember my first teacher, who was an architect in a drafting class telling me “It is hard to make a living in architecture, you should do something else”. I was discouraged and told my father. He told me that I should become a banker and study business. So, I took an accounting class but spent most of my time at the philosophy stack of books in the library.
During this period, I made friends with Bill, Jeff and Greg. I met Greg while working at a T-shirt shop. Greg and his brother Jeff were musicians and played locally. Greg was a natural. He just felt the music and was a bit quirky and unpredictable in a friendly way. He played the guitar, harmonica and sang. Jeff was very calculated, with an odd sense of humor and was very friendly like his brother. Jeff played the drums and sang. I met Bill a friend of Greg and Jeff, later and he was learning to play the guitar. Bill was a unique character. He was very intelligent and seemed to have a hard time connecting to his emotions. His play on the guitar reflected his character, much like Greg and Jeff with their instruments. I was the odd one out since I didn’t play a musical instrument though I began to write poetry as a creative outlet. Bill and I talked about many things including the ‘essence of our being’. ‘The door’ made its reappearance.
He introduced me to books by Carlos Castaneda, ‘The Teachings of Don Juan’ and other books of the series. As I immersed myself with these books and partook in ‘a way of life’ with my musician friends as I began to shake loose my accumulated conceptions to date and began to pull my thinking apart. I decided to clean the slate of my formulated knowledge by questioning all that I understood and to rebuild ‘this world’ by concentrating on keeping the windows of my perception clean and experimenting with meditative techniques ‘du jour.’ I began to investigate through reading many western philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, Rene Descartes, and others along with eastern philosophers such as Alan Watts, Lao Tsu and J. Krishnamurti.
My first thesis ‘MUSHIN in DP’, I referenced a book by Carlos Castaneda titled, ‘The Second Ring of Power’ for my last chapter named ‘Reflections’. Don Juan is Carlos’s spiritual teacher or sorcerer. Don Juan speaks of the tonal-nagual dichotomy. He says,
…the tonal was the order that we are aware of in our daily world and also the personal order that we carry through life on our shoulders… a tiny island filled with the things we are familiar with. The Nagual on the other hand was an inexplicable source… and was like the vastness of a deserted valley.
In the ‘2 door’ piece, the black door functioning as the shelf niche represents the tonal as described by don Juan. And the cherry framed door functioning as the full length mirror is the Nagual as we begin to deconstruct our ego.
Dimensions: 8’ tall x 2’ x 4’ wide approximately
Materials: concrete, steel pipes, wood, raku ceramic.
A six foot high concrete wall in three 2’x 2’ segments anchors the background with steel pipes to a 8’ vertical wooden structure which locates seven tree bark embossed raku ceramic pieces.
My desire was an austere piece contrasting the perceived coldness of concrete and warmth of an abstract tree made of clay. I pressed the clay slab into the mold and slumped it over three different molds which caused slightly different configurations. Once going through an initial firing, I put the log forms through a Japanese raku firing process. Raku is associated with the Japanese Tea Ceremony and the aesthetic of wabi. Intuition was my guide as I brushed on glaze and tried to loose my intent and desire for the piece. The process of raku is somewhat unpredictable. It is an oxidation reduction process. After the pieces are fired quickly in the kiln, they are taken out and put in a metal trash can with newspaper and sawdust.
Sen no Rikyū, refined the Japanese Tea Ceremony and he found the essence of wabi embodied in a verse by Fujiwara no Letaka:
To those who wait
Only for flowers
Show them a spring
Of grass amid the snow
In a mountain village
Beauty is not only the vivid beauty, in the ‘spring of grass amid snow,’ it can be the lonely, cold, and desolate world, a world that is even more deeply steeped in the emptiness of non-being than that of “a bayside reed hovel in the autumn dusk.” In Rikyū’s view of wabi, the external may be impoverished, cold and withered like a faded beauty of ‘old age’ but the internal is filled vitality, a latent with ‘unlimited energy and change’.
Dimensions: 20” tall x 10’ in length x 20” wide approximately
Materials: white oak, burned white oak, walnut, steel.
This bench form has horizontally placed white oak strips approximately 3-5” in width X ¼”- 1 ½” thick that are stacked together and bunched near the center with steel bands. Random wedges confront the bundle from both ends to interact and split the planks creating a casual relationship. Four wedges are burned according to a Japanese tradition called Shou-sugi-ban with a Danish Oil finish form the legs for the piece. Walnut wedges counter play with the legs and the horizontal oak strips.
As with Counter Rhythm, I was asking myself a question about what constitutes a bench form. I visualized a solid plank or plane that is usually used for a bench surface. I asked, what constitutes this form? I distilled this down to a series of beams that are mulled together. I conceptually drove wedges between the beams to diversify the relationships altering the degrees of sitting positions of people so potentials for interaction could be heightened.
I am using strips of white oak and bundling and bunching them or constraining the various strands. The simple concept is the tensioning of the dynamics and the release through our ‘will’ that is personified by the wedges. As in a stream of water, it takes a path of least resistance as gravity initiates and nurtures the flow. The water is interacting with the earth as restraints of friction occur. Intermittently, some rocks intervene thus water reacts creating a new path of reaction along the mutual flow. In this piece, a simple analogy of water= white oak strips and rocks= wedges can be made. Or, ‘becoming’= white oaks strips and ‘force’= wedges is implied.
Cliff Stagoll elaborates on the Deleuzian concept of ‘becoming’. “… the primacy of identity is what defines the world of re-representation, then ‘becoming’ defines the world of presentation anew… the continual production of difference immanent within the constitution of events… is the pure movement evident in changes between particular events.” The white oak strips are gathered in an attempt for homogeny as tension entraps for a moment and is released. Differentiation of the white oak strands diversifies yet is amplified upon interaction with the force of the intervention by the wedges. Stagoll goes on to state, “each change or ‘becoming’ has its own duration, a measure of relative stability of the construct, and the relationship between ‘forces’ at work in defining it.” Stagoll goes on to explain ‘force’; … means any capacity to produce a change or ‘becoming’… all of reality is an expression and consequence of interactions between forces, with each interaction revealed an ‘event.’ Every event, body or other phenomenon is, then, the net result of a hierarchical pattern of interactions between forces, colliding in some particular and unpredictable way.
The wedges in the piece is not a ‘representation of force’ but is actually a physical phenomena that causes a reaction that causes a change in constitution of the white oak strips creating an interface of relationships anew.
An aspect of the challenge of the ‘making’ of this piece was not to blatantly copy the conception of the piece, the existing model of the concept. Thus, it is not to fall into the trap of interpretation of my own conception and falling into to Platonic order or repetition to create order through mimesis. I tried to stay in the state of mushin; no mind.
I decided to burn the white oak wedge shaped planks that constituted the legs in the Japanese method, Shou-sugi-ban. To contrast the darkness of the burnt wood, I band sawed parts of an air dried walnut tree trunk given to me from Professor Corey Jefferson into wedge shapes. During the build, I decided to burn few of the horizontal white oak planks as well. I trusted my intuitive knowledge on how many and where to compose the pieces.
The final challenge was how to bind the forces of the middle part of the piece? In the model, I used three metal wires but how do I contain the forces of the actual piece? I conceived of a steel ‘U’ shaped harness since it was the simplest shape to build. Yet, the forces would push against the legs of the ‘U’. I decided to use tensile member, a black fiberglass rope that was not much more in diameter than a shoe lace. The overall piece was built in two vertical parts mostly for mobility and transport. This device was used to harness the forces for the two parts and two overall ‘U’ shaped saddles were used to hold the two sections together as one piece.
As an architect, I enjoy the interplay of natural light on the forms that I create. I began my relationship with glass in college at Ball State University; Muncie IN. I was walking past a stained glass studio in a converted gas station and immediately was drawn to the shapes and colors… maybe it began before that moment in time… I grew up near Tokyo, Japan. The glow of light coming through the shoji screens gave me a warmth of feeling that resonates even today in my soul.
I started designing and building glass panels right away. I learned a few techniques and started cutting images that was against all the rules… partly because I was naïve and I also needed to find my own expressions.
I worked for Fox Studios in Indianapolis, IN for a short time and spent time cutting glass and learned how to work and feel the various glass types. I also worked for a short time at a retail stained glass shop and spent a summer working on 'sun glass catchers'… rainbows, cute animals, etc… but you learn from many experiences in unexpected ways and I used some of the techniques learned there on some of my pieces…
I returned to Ball State University after a short stint of trying to crystallize my commitment with architecture… and was given an opportunity to restore stained glass windows in a church. I learned many aspects of glass from a historical perspective.
Fast forward 20+ years… I was talking to a fellow studio mate at the Pendleton Arts Center in Cincinnati, OH and she saw some of my stained glass work in the corner. I have not been working with the material due to my busy day to day work as an architect. She asked me if I would teach her how to work with glass… thus reinitiated my relationship with glass.
What continually drives my work is the 'WHY' and understanding what we truly 'ARE' as human beings. These questions are reflected in my work and process. Our interaction with life and art must be fresh and immediate thus I have been working with my own technique in these pieces… Traditionally, an artist conceives of the glass piece and does preliminary sketches and translates them into a pattern that can be used to cut the glass and adhere them together at a later time. This is the point in the process that is called 'creating a cartoon' or patterns for the glass that is cut into pieces on paper and used to trace onto glass and thus the glass is cut. This is assembled and the various pieces and are soldered together using various techniques.
I do away with the cartooning portion and go straight from the concept sketch to cutting of the glass. I do a rough sketch to the size of the final piece so I can study proportion and relationships. As I do away with the intermediate cartooning portion, I am making direct decisions with the glass and make adaptations based on the material and my changing vision…
The act of throwing clay on a potter’s wheel to make a vessel is an exercise in an effort to unpack some ideas that come to play in my work as an artist and designer.
A vessel can be used as a metaphor of our habitat… where we live, play, work, meet, worship… This vessel thrown on a circular metal wheel is an object that we use every day to feed ourselves, to quench our thirst…
Knead the clay, work it with your hands, your body and senses become engaged, the texture of the clay becomes familiar to you, a rhythm is established creating a uniformity of substance…
Take a breath, relax the shoulders, place the clay on the wheel… the wheel begins to spin; the cadence is established as I reestablish my hands on the mound of clay. This initial engagement with the clay as the wheel turns is a rough transition… I resort to my physical structure. My core remains steady as my hands establish a framework in unison with my body and breath. The process of centering institutes a relationship, a connection of the material, to the spinning tool and to the maker. The spinning wheel establishes a force of nature, a centrifugal force.
We live within and observe the world through a lens of personal vision, a tool of interpretation. There are many forces that act, react, fuse, collide and we somehow want, need and desire to make sense of these random acts in our life. We try to quantify, rectify and solve the myriad of issues that seem not to have a rational order. We try to place an organizational system that takes similar characteristics into a pattern of efficiency, beauty, and function within our mind’s eye of problem solution as an act of design… a resolution of chaotic events into boundaries of reason.
William McDonough in his book ‘Cradle to Cradle says, “The Western view saw nature as a dangerous, brutish force to be civilized and subdued. Humans perceive natural forces as hostile, so they attack back to exert control… If brute force doesn't work, you’re not using enough of it.”
I must resort to my technique and structure, a control born of natural processes. My right hand stays at the 5 o’clock position, elbow is tight to the body. I like to rest it to the inside of my hip bone. This hand remains steady, like a mechanical device; it is emotionless. The left hand cradles the clay and feels as it guides my ‘will’, letting the breath control the movement as the wheel spins. The movement of the wheel and my ‘intent’ is in unison. Bring all the inner strength into the hands while remembering to keep the shoulders relaxed to open up channels of movement to my emotions. It is beginning to become quiet… I can hear myself again.
I will return to my early years at Ball State University, in my undergraduate years.
I could not relate to an understanding of architecture as the Euclidean cube setting atop the Acropolis. I took a side step away from architecture school after my second year to spend more of my time in the art and dance department. I took more drawing classes, painting, sculpture, discovered art glass and began to throw clay on the potter’s wheel.
My most profound moment about my fundamental question came during my experience with ceramics and the act of ‘throwing a vessel.’
I walked to the studio from my house off campus on a cool, sunny autumn Saturday afternoon. I was alone in the studio, enjoying the peace of the spinning wheel. I was attempting to center the clay formed by my hands. The act of centering was a challenge. The more I tried to form it with my mind and brawn, the less successful I was in finding the equilibrium that the clay wanted in the centrifugal pull of our mutual conditions. As I let go of myself, I was able to allow the clay and the wheel to do the work for me.
Now I was ready to build this object of clay that my mind imagined. Yes, I created vessels that I had formed to my liking or ‘not’… yet I really didn't understand. I gradually began to realize that it was not the vessel wall that was the form. It was the void within that I was throwing and the walls became ‘what it was’… the energy within the vessel is contained and expanded.
I was actually creating space and the walls are; what is left over.
It was not the object I needed to move, it was the space from the inside/ out. As my hands worked the clay, my body engaged with the tactility of the material and transposed myself into that space. My body expanded while my hands molded the shape thus the inside and outside communion without a dualistic divide. The clay thirsts for some water to maintain its plasticity, knowing without justifying the equilibrium of its own certainty.
The wheel is a tool that revolutionized man’s ability to build, transport and is used in machines for more complex functions. The clay is a product of earth interacting with water to form the vessel… not too much, just enough at the appropriate time. Intuition is engaged so the vessel can be formed into a structure that must hold its own weight within the context of gravity… just enough structure for the shape to maximize its efficiency as the centrifugal force informs us of a process. The making of the vessel has its inherent method that is revealed and hidden within its resultant form.
This act of forming the clay into a vessel is not without struggles. These can be technical or artistic. Along the path, the process may have its inherent flaws. Adaptations may be calculated, reactive or intuitive. As we adapt, new potentials evolve. We must remain quiet and observant for portals of serendipity to evolve. A flaw, an imperfection can be hidden or discarded or possibly embellished for its individualistic character. In repetitive aspects of our process, there are innate differences. The wheel is a tool, a piece of technology yet the material of clay and our hands are a tools of our intent that is not of a homogeneous source. This is an intrinsic beauty that unfolds our relationship to an individual’s daily life.
This vessel is used to quench our thirst, contain food for our sustenance... house a flock of flowers as a vase… It has an essential function. It has an intimate quality. The aspect of function as it does its work effortlessly, many times fades the object seamlessly into the fabric of our routines.
We pour coffee into this vessel, nestle the cup with our hands to find conformity, a comfort on a personal level. As we bring the cup to our lips, we can smell the coffee and taste it before it reaches our lips. The brim of the cup touches our mouth as we relish and consume the coffee. The concert of senses that become engaged with this connection with the cup can be taken for granted, as a mundane aspect of life or a fundamental revelation of our dignity. This is where design, art and craft is integrated.