The Importance of the Things You Don’t See
written by Emma Logan
Art is about visual communication. At the core of most work is the desire by the artist to share something with the viewer.
Often that message is a request or demand that the viewer reconsider an issue that is overlooked because of its perceived mundanity or irrelevance to the current social powers. Art about matters of identity like race, gender, sexuality, poverty, immigration status, and disability fosters conversation about equity, visibility, and needed changes in society. A growing collection of artists are bringing the same state of consciousness to normalized ideas about land control, extraction, and capitalism.
In our current exhibit "Changing Climate, Changing Practice," we share with you a number of artists adding to this conversation through their works and art practices. And though I prefer to operate behind the scenes, I want to share some of my own, related work with you.
Nuts About Milk, porcelain and almonds in the shell, 36” x 36”If you aren’t someone I’ve interacted with in the last three years (read: regular ear-bending conversation/rants about almond farming,) you might not be aware of the ecological disaster that is our obsession with almonds. The industry is depleting the water table in drought sensitive areas, trucking in stressed honey bees for February pollination and endangering local populations, and showering us with manipulative food marketing. But almonds are so tasty, amiright?!
Nuts About Milk is a question to the viewer about how we assign rights to water resources in California, how popular culture impacts those choices, and how our purchases influence agricultural practices. With this piece, I hope to start conversations about the interconnectedness of personal decisions and the environmental impacts related to land use.
Ceding Ground (take 2), stoneware, luster, soil, paper, 12”x36x36”Fire, drought, and capitalistic control threaten our food systems. We must seed a new landscape. Ceding Ground is an invitation to reckon with the damage our colonial history and practices have had on the health of the land and of each other.
Sometimes the research and material or process choices of the artist fly under the radar - without an apparent visual meaning or information listed in the description of the work. The self-defined rules, research, and quiet ideas that drive the artist to make work are no less important than the obvious read by contemporary audiences.
The soil in Ceding Ground was harvested from my backyard - located in the agriculture-rich community of Sonoma County, CA. The newspaper used to make the basket was woven out of sections from local real estate ads. The seeds/cedes themselves were all made from reclaimed clay left behind by other makers. For me, these decisions connect the work to the issues I’m exploring at a deeper level than pure aesthetics alone. Sonoma County is bountiful because of the land stewardship by the Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo people (currently recognized as the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria,) who have lived here for thousands of years; I live, work, and grow on land stolen from them, divided up into parcels, and sold explicitly and only to White people. The last piece I’ll share might initially seem removed from the issues of land use and agriculture, but everything is connected.
The Work of My People, porcelain, earthenware, water, 6" x 78" x 21"The Work of My People highlights the transfer and adoption of ideas between different communities through an interpretation of the ceramic practice of my Beaker People ancestors from 4500 years ago. The Beaker People buried their dead with ceramic beakers covered with patterns that suggest family ties, positions within the tribe, and skills, and many patterns are believed to have been adopted from other peoples. As they traveled across what is now known as the European continent, the Beaker People shared knowledge supporting agriculture, bronze working, and ceramic skills; unfortunately, they also brought disease with them, and many of the communities they met and exchanged ideas with died as a result.
Viewers of this installation were invited to activate the work by filling a beaker with water and placing it on one of the 7 tiles - each of which had been painted with glaze in the patterns adopted by the Beaker People (but not fired). The water moved through the semi-porous earthenware and rehydrated the glaze below, transferring it to the beaker. After the show, the tiles and beakers were fired to make the transfer permanent.
The conversation continues: