CONSIDERING.
..
ESSAY BY
Akiko Busch
Left:
Stephen Kent’s green
cloud ceramic bookcnds.
Opposite:
A page from
A L ittle
W h ite Shadow ,
one of
Mary Rueflc’s “erased”
books.
Thinking
about Nothing
So much o f what we do is informed by absence, and
as fhe makers o f Jhings, we need to recognize and
appreciate the value o f loss, w hat’s missing, what
we no longer have or w ill have.
When an object is lost, a subject is found we
learned from Freud over a century ago, but
it is an observation that seems to have par-
ticular relevance today. Absence, as well as
presence, I find myself thinking, figures
increasingly into the experience of making
things in the first decade of the 21st century.
Our ability to engage with objects has as
much to do with things we don’t have as
with those we do have; sometimes it is even
the absence and loss of things that most
defines our connection to them.
The subject seems to resonate in the
work of assorted contemporary artists,
craftspeople, writers and designers, anyone,
that is, who uses material things as a means
of expression. Consider the work of poet
Mary Ruefle. If most writers have an inter-
est in how words are strung together, how
they add up, how one comes after the other,
she is more engaged by how they come apart.
For the past decade, she has been pro-
ducing “erasures,” a series of altered books
in which text is blotted out with Wite-Out,
pen or gouache-erased, that is—leaving only
fragments of words, thoughts, sentences.
But because this is done on the printed page
rather than with the delete key, the result
is an investigation on the texture of silence,
the imprint of the unsaid, the unknown,
the forgotten. The volume erased becomes
a layering of silence, a study of how some
words fade while others remain; how mean-
ing can be reconfigured by time; how words
can sometimes reposition themselves in
memory; and, finally, how the unspoken
and the retracted can establish a rhythm
of their own.
But absence need not always be so fugi-
tive. Ever contrary, it can itself materialize
as it does in the work of ceramist Stephen
Kent, who has constructed bookends as
green ceramic clouds with a lacquer finish.
These are found billowing across the shelf
or mantle where the books themselves are
meant to be. Rather than serving as a struc-
ture to support the books, they occupy the
space that is traditionally meant for them.
And in doing so, the bookends suggest the
weight of unread books: what we have not
yet studied and do not yet know takes up its
own space. In an odd way, the green cloud
is a study of absence as an object itself.
The work of this writer and this ceramist
lingers in my imagination because I think
that they, along with those legions of artists
who work in recycled goods and materials,
are on to something. We are surrounded by
signs that our culture of consumer extrava-
gance may be winding down—the economic
collapse, entire neighborhoods reduced
by foreclosure and abandonment, overbur-
dened landfills. For generations, we have
defined ourselves as consumers, but our
identity now seems increasingly defined by
how we reduce that consumption. It may be
by conscience and choice-the reduced ex-
ploitation of resources, say, or efforts to get
by using less. Or it may be by economic
dictate—the loss of a job, a house, a retire-
ment account. Either way, our relationship
to the material world today has as much to
do with de-acquisition as with acquisition.
Last year, Habitat for Humanity began
to demolish houses in Saginaw, MI, north-
west of Detroit. A wave of foreclosures had
emptied the homes of their occupants, and
the buildings, now deteriorating, were pos-
ing safety hazards. The volunteers, then,
were dismantling the houses, relegating
some materials to landfill, others for recy-
cling. It was the first time the humanitarian
organization addressed deconstruction
over construction. Not that the process
didn’t demand a certain degree of skill, in-
vention, creativity. As one Habitat volun-
teer told the
New 'York Times,
“It’s more
challenging than building, where you go
in linear steps. With deconstruction, you
don’t know what you’re getting into until
you tear that panel off the wall.”
You can’t argue with that. All of which
makes me wonder if the art and design of
the early 21st century is going to be as much
about taking things apart as putting them
together. Disassembly—its possibility, its
eventuality, its inevitability—is part of the
equation in any kind of contemporary pro-
duction. And it requires a like degree of
imagination. Probably more.
So much of what we do is informed by
absence, and as the makers of things, we
need to recognize and appreciate the value
of loss, what’s missing, what we no longer
have or will have. A green cloud that has
settled on a mantle, a book that has been
erased, or a house that is being deconstruct-
ed—these are some of the assorted forms
absence can take, and all of them give us a
new way to think about something. Or may-
be just a new way to think about nothing. +
Akiko Busch is the author o f
Nine Ways to
Cross a River
and
The Uncommon Life
of Common Objects.
038 american craft feb/mario
www.journal-plaza.net & www.freedowns.net
