Studio Notes · Sept 2024
Child’s sock dating from 300AD, Egypt.
ON MY MIND
Perhaps a Birthday Gift?
Every fall for the last five or so years, I begin my teaching semester with the image of the object above — a 1700-year old sock housed in the British Museum.
I use it as an entry point to discuss with my architecture students an expansive idea of craft, borrowed from the sociologist Richard Sennett, who defines it as “an innate desire to do a job well for its own sake.” Sennett regards this as an attitude toward anything and everything we contribute to the world, and I like that.
Examining the ancient artifact, what is readily apparent is that it is a knitted sock for a child. What latest imaging technology revealed only recently, however, is that the maker of the sock had access to only three natural dyes and created four additional hues by mixing dyes or twisting fibers of different colors. And we also know that the sock was made in a period of major upheaval and limited access to resources in Egypt. Yet the maker (who? for what occasion?) gathered the plants for the dyes, mixed colors, twisted yarns, and made a joyous, colorful striped sock for a child.
The conversation with my students expands and contracts, and often lands on a question along these lines: Why put so much intricate labor, resources and attention into something as fragile and modest as a child’s sock? What compels us?
Recent work on the Devotions series.
WITH MY HANDS
My Gift.
The Devotion drawing series - something I started in my sketchbook earlier this year as a ritual to mark my arrival in studio - has recently taken a new life in color.
Eager to make something special for a dear friend’s birthday, I created several unique patterns using oil pastels, following a process that feels akin to how I work in ceramic. I apply a thick layer of pastel onto printmaking paper and then I carve into this top layer with the aid of a grid template, masking tape, and needle tool. Once I establish the structure of the pattern, the hundreds of little grooves fill up slowly but surely. While the line drawings in my sketchbook take about 20 minutes each, these carved patterns near two intensive hours.
When time spent in the studio feels so precious still, would I have devoted this amount of energy and space to explore a new medium if it weren’t for the inspiration to make a gift? What compelled me? (Oh the audacity of making something not only for its own sake but for someone else to receive!)
Since the first carved pattern I made for my friend, I have been inspired to make more in different colors, now working toward a small collection. My hands keep carving a version of this Devotion motif even though my mind had different plans for the body of work I wanted to build this fall. Perhaps the physical act of making these drawings also shifted my frame of mind. And I somehow found myself able and willing to receive the gifts of this practice.
First Laugh.
FROM THE HEART
The Gift.
I learned from the postcard above that in traditional Navajo culture, a child’s first laugh marks their birth as a social being and is memorialized in the First Laugh ceremony, hosted by the member of the tribe who made the baby laugh.
Poet Andrea Gibson suggests this question as a “wellness check”: is my attention on loving, or is my attention on who isn’t loving me? When my wellness check comes short, I turn to the First Laugh picture and the world it conjures up.
I imagine myself as the elder person holding the baby, welcoming them as part of the family. I then envision myself as the child in the woman’s solid embrace. Then I become the child’s parent, feeling both delight and relief. Maybe I am the older sibling that swaddled the little body with care. Oh do I get to be the talented maker of the beautiful jewelry adorning the bodies for the occasion? Maybe I am the photographer swept up in the warmth of the moment. I am the recent college graduate who picked out this card in 2004 at a bookstore in New York. And I am the one writing these words.
As my mind’s eye skips from one body to another, I feel thankful to have a body. First Laugh is my medicine - a departure and a return - the gift of life.
Until next month, hoşçakalın!