Artist Susan Robb talked about her work and exhibition this morning, at the Lawrimore Project, in Seattle. She is an articulate and charismatic artist, and her work, (this is the beginning of her career), is intriguing on many levels. Because I have participated in so many critiques, I find it difficult to separate the artist from their work, and I came to the conclusion that it really is useless to do so. We are our work.
The audience who came to hear her speak, sat around a fire pit; it was one part of her work. She described being in the desert, and an awareness that overcame her, when she and her friends would just stop, and spontaneously build a fire. They did not need to engineer a fire pit, as there was no danger of uncontrolled fire. It was just a walk, a stop, a fire, then a move on. She described an immediacy to accessing the fire building, and the fire. The “system” was not apparent. (My interpretation). I like this thought. Her ability to pay attention to such subtle things, without an overly cumbersome need for language to dominate, will make her future work lively; I look forward to it.
Her talk reminded me of an experience I had in Poland. Another artist and I had decided to collaborate on a performative piece, during a short-term residency, outside the town of Poznan. We took a walk one evening, looking for a location; it was the middle of February. There was snow on the ground, and the rivers and lakes were frozen. We wandered along a path, near a frozen river. She was from an area near Big Sur, and I was from Seattle, so wandering in the woods at night, seemed normal. We came across an odd stone structure. It appeared ancient, like a crypt, with a slightly rounded top, above ground.
The remainder of it was underground. It had a slight 1/2 moon opening, in the front. We crawled into the space. Inside, we found only a rusted mattress, (only the metal inner springs). In the dirt, piled up against the opening, we began to dig. We found the most odd things; First, a completely carbonized apple, with one bite taken out; the flesh and skin completely black. Then canisters of methane gas. And lastly balls of yellow yarn. Below is an image of the carbonized apple, and a fresh apple, peeled by our hosts. We dipped both in beeswax, and then heated them both over a flame, holding them over us, and allowing the wax to drip onto the skin of our abdomens.
I won’t go into detail about the performance we did. It no longer matters, as some work is best forgotten. But these findings still intrigue me. The part of Poland we were in had been ravaged during World War II, and later by the Russian and communist influences. There were many buried things. Our host had taken us to an underground tunnel, to the east of Berlin. It had been built by Jewish prisoners, for the Nazis. One crawled down ladders, hundreds of feet, into the darkness. We then walked for nearly a mile, carrying flashlights, that we were told to be careful and watch, as they might lose power. In silence we walked through the dark tunnel. With out speaking, at a very quick pace. At certain points, we stopped to examine a structure, that had not been completed; the initials of the workers carved into the metal and rock.
Later, I met a young Polish artist, Katarzyna Podgorska, (I knew her by the name Kasia), whose work was often made of salt.
She made a bed of salt, (which represented more value than many pounds of gold), also cupped salt in her hands, as she made praying formations. then left the negative forms of salt in dark enclosed spaces. I also read, about the Wieliczka Salt Mine, in Poland, where intricate images were once carved into salt by the miners, in ancient times, and can still be seen today. People make pilgrimages to this mine. Slowly, over time, they are dissolving, from water seeping into the caves….(tears)….
All of these things, these pieces of the earth, and culture, are our living landscape. And now Susan Robb, has begun to unravel a part of this story through her work.
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