Processing my thoughts:

When I look at the big picture, all of the sculptural ‘prop’ pieces I have been making all serve a certain function through which a specific action must be performed for each. I have never considered my interaction with these objects as a ‘performance art’ because to me, I see myself as having to bring ‘life’ into these objects by using it and touching it with my own hands.

‘Action’, and ‘space’ are the two common themes I keep referring back to. In a sense, I’m interested by the Inuit and their unique relationship with the environment: which is so barren and harsh. When you can no longer distinguish between the sky and earth, and your world becomes informed by one dominant color (white), a need to rely on other physical senses besides ‘sight’ to define one’s world grows.

“…Theirs is a world which has to be conquered with each statement and act, but which, with each act accomplished, is as quickly lost (Carpenter, 41).”

There is no system set in the Eskimo language to name things as they exist -but instead things (noun + verbs) are brought into existence. Everything is in a state of ‘being’/becoming. Edmund Carpenter describes their language as:

“…Words are like the knife of the carver: they free the idea, the thing, from the general formlessness of the outside. As a man speaks, not only is his language in a state of birth, but also the very thing about which he is talking (Carpenter, 43).”

So how does all of this information come into play in my own practice? What I know is that I resonate with the Eskimo’s relationship between the sense of ‘self’ and the environment. Their world consists of bringing things into existence because of a physical void that they encounter- and I find that very much similar to the way artists in the contemporary world (and myself included) bring creativity into this physical realm from what was once a ‘thought’. The mould and deckle I’ve been creating, the metal-ceramic coil infrastructure- all of this seems to become stationary pieces waiting for me to use, to realize an ‘action’. The moment I interact with these objects, an environment becomes to come into existence; one where which I become a central part to bringing these objects to life, to ‘being’. A space for me empty my thoughts and to reflect back upon the objects as I roll and unravel what I put through the coils, tear and wash to put through the deckle, and to physically release what was once in the deckle out to dry.