Hard Rain - My Mini world
I received the opportunity to do my first installation piece, Hard Rain, presented by Storefronts, a program of Shunpike. It is on view from September 14th and into January 2022 in a window of the Amazon-Wainwright Building on Mercer Street at Terry Avenue N in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood. It offered a wonderful challenge for me to bring my sculptures together in a mini world of my own making.
The concept came easily from absorbing and responding to what is going on in my - our - social and natural environment. I knew generally where I was headed and the specifics were refined through sketching, sculpting and thinking in the quiet of the night. Altogether, this piece is my reflection on the ethical, moral, spiritual and worldly questions I harbor about who “we” are.
Ark needed to be a larger piece than would fit into my kiln. The decisions I made in dividing her became who she is. Ark is suggestive of a reconstructed archeological find and a form I think of as a “stele.” A stele is a marker of important things such as deaths, laws and boundaries and a threshold. In this case, perhaps, it is the threshold between loss and grief and hope and love. We see her standing there, powerful yet vulnerable, and reconstructed. We become aware of the potential of her being deconstructed as our rights to our own bodies are currently being dismantled or our values are being undermined that give us our voice.
Collapse came from pondering our human landscape – who are we as creatures of this earth? Our connection to and reliance on nature were in my thoughts as I worked, as were the continuous, cyclical rise and fall of many civilizations. This rocky form was inspired by my tendency to see faces and figures in other things such as a reclining figure in a mountain range. It’s a perception called pareidolia that many people experience.
Enfold began with a clay form first as is my current practice, then finding a figure with emotional connection within it; playing with pareidolia again. By working form as a starting place, seeing the figure with emotional connection second and discovering layers of meanings third, I arrive somewhere without forcing it. It, too, stems from human emotion and a state of mind - a stele, too. It is expressive of our stable and grounded foundational values of love and nurturing that sustain us through whatever conditions we face in our important relationships.
The Cloud We’re Under means much more than I had anticipated. I’ve felt the strong pull of the spike form for some time and chicken wire has intrigued me as a sculptural medium. These came together in Cloud as a menacing embodiment of my internalizing the reality of who we are during these past months and years. In fact, it contains a duality of meaning. Not only somber and oppressive, but as rain falls from the clouds to sustain life, the spike offers the possibility of renewal and hope for humanity’s ability to rebuild.
I lost some sleep over how to thread the spike strings through the chicken wire. On the very last night, I found a satisfying technique by making a long plastic-coated-wire hook: necessity is the mother of invention! The slippery hook pulled the kite line through the tangle of wire like a hot knife through butter. Kite line was generously given to me by my sculptor and kite designer friend, Kathy Goodwind. (Thank you!)
With a background in theater, a jack-of-many-trades and a strong inclination for the arts, Mark Bocek, my brother, helped me design and build the environment for my sculptures. We constructed it at his house, dismantled it for transport and fit it to the vitrine making onsite adjustments. Mark likened it to building a ship in a bottle. We both and a ladder just fit into the space together. It must have been good amusement for the construction workers taking their cig breaks on the sidewalk. I can’t thank Mark enough. An interesting aside: Mark has taken up the luthier craft and rebuilds intriguing, but sad-case guitars. Check out the Corvid Guitar Workshop on Facebook.
I truly appreciate the opportunity provided by Shunpike’s Storefronts Program. Creating this tiny world has helped me dig deeper and plow new ground.
Ark back and side views