Sculpture, It's What You Make It

Reflections on materials, making, memory, and the relationships between things.

“First I started thinking about me, then I started thinking about me and another person.” — Vito Acconci

How much can you learn about yourself just by being with yourself?

Perhaps not as much as you can through your relationships with other people. I think something similar is true of sculpture. Sculptures are kind of like people. You want to be around some, even live with them, but some less so. You can become attached to something without knowing exactly why, and you can lose interest in something you've spent a great deal of time with. There's a human element to sculpture in this regard. Some works attract people, others are ignored, and some are actively disliked. But even rejection is a relationship. In his 1967 essay Art and Objecthood, Michael Fried compared the experience of encountering certain sculptural objects to the “silent presence of another person.” He wasn't necessarily suggesting this was a good thing, but I find the comparison interesting. An object can occupy a room, demand attention, and change our experience of the space simply by being there. What happens between the object and the person encountering it becomes part of the experience.

Sculpture is what you make it. I mean this quite literally. It's what you make from the materials you choose to put together, but it's also what you make of the relationships between those materials, and what others might make of the resulting object. This doesn't suggest that sculpture can be anything we want it to be, although there are plenty of examples that make the possibility seem reasonable. It suggests that what we recognize in things, and what we do with that recognition, matters. In this way, sculpture is fundamentally about relationships between materials, objects, people, and so on. Materials are brought together because they have some interdependence that satisfies a degree of expectation, like paint on wood, but also because there may be some new territory to explore through their combination. Of course, there are other considerations, like form, but it's primarily about expanding on qualities already recognized as having potential.

The artist doesn't necessarily invent the relationship between things. Sometimes the artist recognizes a relationship that already exists and makes something more of it. Josef Albers understood this particularly well. His color studies demonstrate how the appearance of one color can change depending on the colors surrounding it. The color itself hasn't necessarily changed, but our experience of it has. And it's not just the interaction of color that interests me, but the interaction of things more generally. What interests me isn't simply the perceptual effect but how much can happen through such a modest arrangement. Put one thing next to another, change their relationship, and something new becomes possible. It's an appealing proposition because it doesn't require extraordinary materials. The potential is already there. What matters is recognizing it and knowing what to do with it.

Jessica Stockholder brings together recognizable objects, manufactured materials, paint, and architectural space in ways that can make it difficult to determine where the artwork ends and the room begins. Things retain some of their familiar qualities while becoming part of something larger. Color connects otherwise unrelated materials, and an ordinary object can become important because of where it is placed, what it's touching, or what's happening around it. There's a playfulness in Stockholder's work that I find particularly compelling. Objects seem to have been brought together through a combination of familiarity, curiosity, experimentation, and the possibility that something unexpected might happen. A table can remain a table while becoming part of a larger composition. Paint can unify objects that otherwise have little in common. Materials might be stacked, suspended, leaned against one another, or allowed to extend into the surrounding architecture. These relationships can seem temporary, even when the resulting work is carefully considered.

Her sculptures suggest that what we're seeing is just one of countless possible arrangements, each capable of producing a different experience. That's part of the pleasure of looking at them. The individual objects retain something of their original identities, while their new relationships create qualities that weren't previously apparent. Play becomes a way of discovering possibilities rather than merely entertaining them.

Sculpture is never entirely separate from its surroundings. Where it is matters, and so does everything around it. Rosalind Krauss helped establish a broader understanding of sculpture in her 1979 essay Sculpture in the Expanded Field. Since then, much of the field has been plowed, seeded, harvested, turned over, and seeded again. Some things thrive, others disappear, and traces of the past remain along the edges. Occasionally the tiller pulls up a stone.

I like the possibility that something unfamiliar might emerge from working with familiar materials. Chance, as I understand it, is a possibility established through experimentation. The artist sets up the experiment, but it doesn't need a predetermined outcome. Maybe a seed. You plant something with an expectation of what might grow, but the soil, weather, and surrounding conditions have something to say about it, too. I don't see much risk in trying things out. There's always some experience to draw from, and new questions can be considered alongside the results of previous work. Some are practical, others conceptual, and some are ideas that have been around so long their origins are difficult to recall.

Arranging French fries according to length. Making a small dam in a ditch. Tracing faces. Constructing a painting that resembles a snowflake's chance in hell. Making a sculpture called Magna Mater. Making another titled To Join Two Halves of Two Worlds, even though the two worlds have nothing in common except their proximity. Making a circle out of broken pretzels. Making a photograph of two shopping carts pushed together with the handwritten caption They Mate for Life. Holding up a sign that says Be Funny, and then soon after, another that says Be Funnier.

Some of these ideas could become artworks, others probably not. Some are little more than observations or textual possibilities, but I don't think that diminishes their potential. An idea can remain interesting without becoming an object, and the possibility of making something can be satisfying in itself. They aren't necessarily ideas that began with an intention to produce artwork. Sometimes the thought of doing something is enough to get started, and the questions come later. Better yet, the questions are what make the activity worth pursuing.

I used to think the thing that made art was the idea. I believe it's mainly our energy. The energy put into thinking and making. Attention, effort, experimentation, and everything that happens along the way, whether successful or not, is the work. A finished object might not reveal much about what went into making it, but that doesn't mean those experiences have disappeared.

Richard Serra's early works involving lead, rubber, and other industrial materials come to mind. The materials are manipulated through relatively direct actions such as lifting, folding, rolling, balancing, and arranging. The resulting forms retain evidence of those actions, but there's more to them than a record of physical activity. Material, gravity, weight, and the conditions of display all contribute to what we encounter. A sheet of metal leaning against a wall can be an ordinary thing, but it also establishes a relationship between the wall, the floor, the material, and the person standing nearby. Change one of those conditions and the work changes, too. This is old news now. Or is it?

Consider building a floor around a box that cannot be moved. The box presents a condition, and the floor must accommodate it. There are questions of scale, material, construction, and how the two might relate to one another. Does the floor meet the box, surround it, or leave a space between them? Is the box incorporated into the construction, or does it remain an obstacle? Would the arrangement seem intentional, or would it appear that someone simply forgot to move the box? Like Serra's leaning pieces of metal, the relationship between the objects and their surroundings becomes inseparable from what has been made. These are questions that become more interesting through the possibility of making the work. The box doesn't necessarily need to be moved, altered, or even understood as something particularly important. It establishes a condition, and that condition becomes an opportunity to make something else.

Materials offer resistance. They have weight, strength, flexibility, texture, and other qualities that affect what can be done with them. Some relationships are predictable, while others become apparent only through working. The artist brings experience and intention to the activity, but the materials always have something to contribute, too. By making something, you learn how it's made. And by making enough things, you begin to recognize what might be possible before you've made them. That doesn't mean you know what the result will be; familiarity can establish expectations, but it can also make those expectations easier to challenge.

I suspect an artist who has spent a lifetime working primarily with one material, method, or idea would recognize enormous differences between works that might appear nearly identical to someone else. The distinctions become increasingly significant through experience, even when they're almost invisible to others. What might appear to be repetition can involve considerable change. There's something bittersweet about developing a sensitivity to differences that become increasingly meaningful to you but remain difficult for others to recognize. Of course, there's a certain privilege in being able to spend so much time considering these distinctions. It might even seem selfish, especially when the differences mean considerably more to the artist than to anyone else. But there's also something important about reflection. Looking closely at what you've done, recognizing how your thinking has changed, and understanding what remains unresolved are part of developing a practice. The work is a reflection of that experience, too, whether or not anyone else can see it.

A new work doesn't necessarily begin when you start making it. It may begin in something you made years ago, or in a question you didn't recognize as a question at the time. Finishing previous projects can reveal new possibilities in thought and form. The completed work provides something to evaluate, something tangible that represents the activity that produced it. The work might be successful or unsuccessful, but either way, it becomes evidence. Practice becomes evidence, and evidence becomes a new beginning. I once titled an exhibition of small, broken-looking sculptures Some Things Start by Never Ending. I still think there's something to that. A sculpture can be finished without the thinking that produced it being finished. Some questions continue into other works. Some go unanswered for years. Others disappear until something unrelated brings them back. The work is finished, but something of its making continues.

The circumstances surrounding the making of something can remain associated with it long afterward. Sometimes it's difficult to make something during a period of pain, conflict, or unease. It's true for moments of sheer joy or bliss. There may be little desire to make anything during those moments, either. But when the work does happen, those experiences can become part of it, regardless of whether they're visible in the finished object. The work becomes a container holding the memories and attention of its maker.

After completing a project, I'll sweep up and photograph the sweepings. I've accumulated more than a hundred photographs this way, and each holds a trace, as the artworks do, of the activity and intention that produced it. I'm interested in preservation and aesthetics. The work and its remnants are evidence of what happened. The sweepings are also arrangements of materials with their own visual interest. I photograph them, and then sweep them away. There's something peculiar about preserving the evidence of an activity while disposing of the physical material that produced it. The photograph remains, the sweepings disappear, and the work continues elsewhere. One thing has become several things, each with a different relationship to the original activity. The remnants are no longer part of the finished sculpture, but they still belong to its history.

History is a physical attribute of every object. An ordinary object can carry a remarkable amount of personal history without giving any indication of it. A cup, a chair, an old tool, a leather case made to protect something more valuable. Sometimes the thing that holds another thing becomes more interesting than whatever it was intended to protect. Like a well-designed home owned by a jerk.

A sculpture can operate in a similar way. It might be a container for something that isn't physically present, including memories, experiences, and intentions that were never meant to be communicated directly. Provenance comes to mind. But it also has to be something. There are materials, dimensions, proportions, colors, textures, and relationships that exist independently of whatever the artist remembers about making it. And you can't learn everything about an artwork just by looking at the artwork, either.

That doesn't mean looking is insufficient. There's a great deal to discover through sustained attention, and an artwork should provide opportunities for that. But the artist knows things about the work that will never be apparent to someone else. The viewer, meanwhile, brings experiences and associations the artist could never fully anticipate. What we make of an artwork can correspond to what the artist intended, depart from it, or introduce possibilities that neither could have recognized beforehand. A sculpture can be finished, but it changes over time in relation to its environment, acquiring new associations, contexts, energies, and memories. An artwork might have at least two histories: the history of its making and the history of its being seen. The first belongs largely to the artist, although it may involve others. The second continues to develop through the people who encounter it. Perhaps this is another way of considering the opening question. How much can we understand about something, including ourselves, without considering its relationships with other things?

I suspect that the softness we see in the Mona Lisa is the result of millions of eyes gazing at it and softly eroding the image. Leonardo's painting technique certainly accounts for its appearance, but I like the possibility that all that looking has contributed something, too. That the attention of millions of people, accumulated over centuries, might somehow become part of the object. I have no way of proving this, of course. But I've wondered whether anything we give our attention to stores some of that energy, even momentarily, and whether the longer we look at something, the more memory it might hold.

Maybe looking is a kind of maintenance, staying aware of the things that require or deserve our attention. Things break and life is maintenance. That's been a working thought of mine, more of a mantra, for decades. It began with housework, parenthood, and teaching. I have a hole in the soffit of my home that's been growing for some time. I know it's there even if I don't look at it. I consciously avoid looking at it when I'm outside so that I don't know how bad it's gotten. It's the opposite of looking. Anti-interest, maybe. I know the problem exists, and my decision not to look at it doesn't make it any smaller. If anything, it allows the problem to become more substantial, at least in my imagination.

So perhaps looking doesn't wear things down. Maybe it helps preserve them. Or maybe it does both. What we recognize in something, and what we choose to ignore, can change our relationship to it without changing the thing itself. There are things we look at because we want to, things we look at because we have to, and things we'd rather not look at at all.

A rock and a gumdrop can look remarkably similar under certain circumstances. A small hill can resemble both. They're made of different things, occupy different scales, and have entirely different purposes, assuming a hill has a purpose. But something about their forms allows us to recognize a relationship. Making a drawing of a gumdrop that looks like a hill, making another of a hill that looks like a gumdrop, and then making one that looks like neither. From a distance, two or three things that are different can appear to be the same.

Attraction and insignificance. Unattraction and significance. Attraction and significance. Unattraction and insignificance. I don't know what this proves, except that recognizing something and understanding it aren't necessarily the same activity. We bring expectations to what we see, and those expectations influence what we make of it. Scale, context, appearance, and prior experience all contribute. A familiar form can become unfamiliar through a change in material, placement, title, and so on.

Giving a thing a name gives it value. It lets others know what it is and, in doing so, allows them to connect over it. Bringing people together is the real value. A title can establish an expectation before anyone has seen the work. It might clarify something, complicate something, or introduce an entirely new relationship. The object doesn't necessarily change, but the circumstances under which we encounter it do.

Apart. A Part.

One space makes the difference.

Hole Saws. Hole Sauce. Whole Saws. Whole Sauce.

These words have their own materials, too. Letters, sounds, spaces, arrangements, and associations. Sometimes changing one is enough to produce something else. All lower cases, no spaces.

alllowercasesnospaces

Writing and making sculpture aren't entirely different activities. Both involve bringing things together, recognizing relationships, and considering how the resulting arrangement might function. In writing, the materials are thoughts and words, but they still have qualities, histories, and established relationships. Some naturally belong together, and others become interesting precisely because they don't. Serra's Verb List, a series of actions and conditions that informed his sculptural practice, comes to mind. The words themselves suggest activities, but writing them down is also an act of arranging possibilities. Writing allows things to exist together that might be difficult to reconcile physically. A rock can become a gumdrop, a memory can become an object, and an arrangement of words can establish a relationship between things that have never occupied the same place. Some of these relationships might eventually become sculptures. Others might be more interesting as writing. There's also the possibility that the writing itself becomes something worth looking at.

When I was a younger teacher at another school, I invited Vito Acconci to speak. He was an interesting person, to say the least. As we were leaving the auditorium for the after-party, he left his pen on the table. It wasn't anything fancy, just a white plastic Bic ballpoint pen. I had made a lot of drawings with pens like his, even sculptural work using them, so I kept it.

Decades later, the pen remains hidden in an envelope I labeled Love Letter Written with Vito Acconci's Pen. There's no letter inside, only the pen and the possibility of a letter that has never been written. I think about that artwork often, even though it hasn't physically been made or exhibited. In some ways, the envelope and its contents have become the artwork, although that's not what I originally intended. I think I'm afraid to make the work because the thought of writing the letter hurts. Maybe it's many love letters that I need to write.

In this case, the possibility of making something has become something I've lived with for decades. The materials are already there, the title exists along with the sentiment, and I know what the activity would involve. Yet the work remains unfinished, or perhaps it hasn't begun. It's difficult to say. The pen was once an ordinary object left behind after a lecture. It acquired another meaning simply because I recognized it, kept it, and imagined something I might do with it. Whether that possibility is enough to make it an artwork is another question.

What interests me about all these relationships is that they don't end with the materials or the artist's decisions. Once something has been made, other people encounter it under circumstances that are entirely their own. They recognize different qualities, establish different associations, and sometimes remember things that have little apparent relationship to the work itself. Perhaps it reminds them of another object, a place, or an experience they can't quite recall. What they make of it might have little to do with what went into making it.

Thinking broadly, I don't know exactly what I make. Heirlooms, maybe. Things I think my children might remember, even if they don't want to own or take care of them. That thought gives me a strange comfort, compelling me to make more. Is that selfish? I know that one day some old memories will come flooding back to them unexpectedly. Maybe they'll recognize something familiar in a photograph, a building or old home, a note I wrote, or a song I sang in the kitchen. Something that reminds them of an object I made, or of me making it. It's indirect but connected. Ultimately, I hope it reminds them of me.

What remains with someone isn't necessarily the thing itself. An object might be lost, broken, sold, given away, or simply forgotten, while something about the experience of knowing it continues. If it brings back memories, it's still working. I wonder whether the reverse might also be true, whether the objects we've spent time with somehow retain something of us. Not necessarily something measurable, and perhaps nothing that another person could recognize. But some trace of the attention we've given them.

The work doesn't have to be remembered exactly as it was made, and the people who encounter it won't necessarily recognize everything or anything the artist intended. That's part of the relationship, too. What we recognize in something can change, even when the thing itself remains more or less the same.

All sculpture is contingent upon its materials. A dear friend once said that to me, and I've recognized it ever since. But the materials are only part of what we make of it. There's the activity of making, the thinking that precedes and accompanies it, and the attention we give the finished work. There are also the relationships it establishes with other things and with other people, some of which may continue long after the artist has stopped working. I don't think all these relationships have to be apparent or even understood for the work to matter. Sometimes you recognize them later. Sometimes someone else recognizes them. And sometimes the relationship is simply the one that made you want to put two things together in the first place.

There is no need to reinvent a relationship that already exists. Sometimes recognizing it is enough. Sometimes it takes years to make something more of it. Some relationships are fine the way they are, and some things are better left apart.

I keep thinking about that white plastic pen and the envelope I've carried with me for decades. There's still no letter inside. The title says one has been written, but it hasn't, at least not with that pen. I wonder if I've made the artwork without recognizing it, or if I've avoided making it because I already know something about what writing the letter would require of me. The thought of writing a love letter still hurts. Maybe it's many love letters that I need to write. Maybe I've already written some of them without realizing it. I don't know. The pen is still there, and so is the possibility of making something with it. Now I've written this, too. I suppose it could be a love letter, although I didn't use the pen. Maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe this is the love letter I wrote with Vito Acconci's pen.