Under Construction
“Human
existence cannot be Silent… To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change
it. Once named, the world in its turn reappears to the namers as a problem and
requires of them a new naming. Human beings are not built in silence, but in
word, in work, in action-reflection.”
~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy
of the Oppressed
Dialogue,
the process of naming the world, happens in every country, in every language
imaginable. Art is one such
language. Each material builds a
vocabulary and each process constructs a grammatical system. Just as we name the world with words, we name
the world with art: visual art, music, and even disciplined actions. Art is the language of thought: it gets inside
your head, burrows, nests, and gives birth to and nurtures new ideas.
My art
functions to help me see and feel. It is
a way I talk with myself and with others.
I work primarily with three-dimensional objects because that is how I
see ideas; they are physical, real-world items that you can hold or get lost
in. I use many different media because
each speaks differently. An idea spoken
in clay has very different connotations from the same idea in glass.
“I am what I am, and I am what I am
afraid of,” a lyric penned by Melissa Etheridge, has been a guidepost for my
work recently because it illustrates my feelings towards how art names the
world. All art must be somewhat
conventional in order to be legible as art, but it must also be original and
personal. My art is who I am, but I do
not exist neatly in traditional labels and neither does my work. My life and my art are evolving and it feels
like scaling a mountain without a harness system: frightening. I realize that while I have the ability and
resources to name the world, the responsibility to do so is terrifying.
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