Making of "Memory Loss Change"

After over 10 years of thinking and planning, I couldn’t be more excited to share Memory Loss Change. This piece was created to explore the ways in which memory and experience can become intertwined and ultimately lead to loss.

Two hollow swings move out of sync with one another. The movement is initiated by the viewer and when either swing starts to move, you can hear a voice that makes you want to lean in and listen to one side of a conversation. If the other swing is pushed, the second side of the conversation can be overheard. Two female voices, different ages with a hint of the southern United States present in their word choice and the ways in which some words can be overheard. The conversation is mundane, everyday, and nothing special. It is the kind of conversation that after it ends it would be difficult to repeat.

Modeled after a free standing bench swing that spent my lifetime on my grandmothers back patio. For me this swing was everyday. If only it held a recording device, it could recount long forgotten secrets, grocery lists, and daily interviews of every minor and major event of my childhood. Each movement came with its symphony of squeaks. Didn’t matter what the weather was doing on any given day, you could find my grandmother sitting on that swing waiting for you to take a seat beside her.

Prototype and Mold-making at Anderson Ranch Arts Center

I spent two weeks spanning July and August of 2019 in Snowmass Village, Colorado at Anderson Ranch Arts Center taking “By Design: Prototype Development and Mold Making” lead by Hiroe Hanazono. Ceramics have been apart of my work in small ways for a long time. This workshop allowed me to expand my knowledge about plaster mold making as it relates to slip casting. Thanks to a rigorous schedule and the introduction of a lot of new techniques, Hiroe helped me to discover new ideas and formats for thinking. In two weeks I was able to make 7 molds and slip-cast, fire, and glaze 34 porcelain pieces.

To make my prototypes, I sledged plaster with handmade jigs, built forms faster by considering the top and bottom of a form first with Masonite and then filling it with clay, and threw a form upside down on the wheel. I learned how to crack a mold with a metal scrapers and hand saw. I mixed nearly two 50lb bags of plaster and helped to contain a few plaster disasters. I met some amazing people and learned about some new artists work thanks to their lecture series. I survived the altitude, drank more water than I ever have before, and learned about how to avoid bears by talking to yourself while you walk alone outside.

This workshop served as the catalyst for my newest body of work entitled “Shared Starting Point”. One of my favorite parts of being in Colorado was walking from my hotel to Anderson Ranch every morning. Just shy of two miles, the winding walking paths immerse you in nature as you slowly transcend through the mountains. On my first walk in Snowmass, I turned a corner and was immediately struck with a memory from my childhood. Bright, alert, and towering, everywhere I looked hollyhocks stuck out in the overwhelmingly green landscape. Growing up in my family surrounded by very serious green thumbs, hollyhocks were treated as exotic treasures. Described as temperamental in eastern Kansas, hollyhock seeds are coveted.

My paternal grandmother lived 387 long strides from my front door. When I was still a child, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Some of my fondest memories were spent swinging on her patio bench swing, talking about her flowers. She would spend hours sitting outside, slowly rocking and watching as buds turned to blossoms. As blossoms turned to seeds she would carefully and obsessively pick-up every seed so she could replant them the following season.

For many years my creative practice has been about memory, about loss, and about change. I cannot describe the world from the eyes of someones else, I have only my own.

I would not have been able to take this workshop if it weren’t for a Summer Research Fellowship from the Michigan State University, College of Arts and Letters and Research funding from the Department of Art, Art History, and Design.

Planning and Layering-- Frogmans Print Workshop

While at Frogman’s Print Workshop I was introduced to some new forms of experimentation. I took a week long workshop entitled “Monotype / Monoprint” lead by Delita Martin that introduced me to thinking through my work with more freedom and expression.

In undergrad, I spent a lot of time in the print studio, a place filled with order, fastidious note taking, repetition, and an enormous amount of trial and error. It was in that studio that I first recognized how art-making could transport you to another place where time stands still. Under the guidance of Tracy Otten, I desperately searched to find my voice in prints. I love process and I have a lot of patience, but I struggled with a lot of techniques. It wasn’t until she introduced me to woodcut that I felt like I had found something that I felt confident in the results I was creating. While working in prints, I was also spending a lot of time in sculpture and printmaking became my outlet for drawing and thinking through ideas.

While in graduate school, my primary focus was sculpture, but printmaking was a part of the way I processed ideas. Planning, layering, and being willing to fail leads me to some of my best ideas.

A few years ago Britta Urness introduced me to the wondrous world of collagraphs. Collagraphs begin with a piece of matteboard with edges beveled with sandpaper. The surface is created as you would a collage that is adhered with wood glue. Sealed with poly-acrylic, these plates are inked and wiped like an etching. They are no where near as durable as an etching, and they require a lot of experimentation as the collage surface can be a bit unpredictable.

When I went to Frogman’s, I brought with me a number of plates I had made, but not really done anything with, hoping that they may be able to be used as layers in some of my monoprints. A few days into the workshop, I had become a printing feen and I pulled two collagraph plates and began a series of prints to see what could happen. The result was “Open or Closed It Was the Same”.

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"Entropy" Proposed to Installed

Last week Entropy was installed on the Lansing Art Path for the Summer of 2018. This piece was proposed and commissioned for a public pocket park in Downtown Lansing, Michigan. The pocket park is located between the R.E. Olds Transportation Museum and Impression 5 Science Center located off of Museum Drive. This piece marks the first collaboration I have embarked on with my husband Samuel Gould. This piece gave us the opportunity to fuse our creative research to infuse sculpture and percussion into an interactive sculpture exploring the pentatonic scale, the building of sound, and its diffusion.

Entropy is an interactive free-standing sound sculpture that with human interaction illuminates sounds of movement and harmonizes a lack of order or predictability. The form of the sculpture mimics the cycles sound repeats as it builds and then lessens with each interaction, making the viewer visibly aware of the changing shapes of sound. Simultaneously enveloping space with sounds of disorder and then gradually returning to silence. Viewers are able to interact with the piece by entering into it through a barrier free entrance or through the perimeter of the sound sculpture. Sounds created by the work are inspired by the ringing of handbells and the sounds commonly associated with a xylophone or metal wind chimes.