Vessel for Patience
Temporary earthwork created on the banks of the Mississippi river using clay harvested and processed in situ. The structure, upon completion, returned to the holes from which the clay was collected, a practice in gathering without extracting. Construction assistance from Erin Brockmeier.
A work focused on the patience involved in healing learned through the lessons of clay. Patience, from the latin patient: to suffer. Suffer, from the latin sub: below, and ferre: to bear.
To the root of these words clay lives as teacher of how to bear from below, a squelching wet place that will not be forced, time that must be born on recovering backs in order to shape something beautiful, and be shaped into something beautiful. Clay, a material body that keeps the score, holding the memory of all force and touch impacting it.
Living impacts the world, a footprint in mud, though, can we alter the attitude of that force, gather but not extract? How does this change our relationship to more-than-humans, to coalesce without ownership, the base of which is property, the base of which is permanence. To enter, make, and leave just as light. When does treating a material as something not for the taking turn it from it to she, from her to we as animism breathes relation into the moment, into an ethos of care-full consideration of others.
To the root of these words clay lives as teacher of how to bear from below, a squelching wet place that will not be forced, time that must be born on recovering backs in order to shape something beautiful, and be shaped into something beautiful. Clay, a material body that keeps the score, holding the memory of all force and touch impacting it.
Living impacts the world, a footprint in mud, though, can we alter the attitude of that force, gather but not extract? How does this change our relationship to more-than-humans, to coalesce without ownership, the base of which is property, the base of which is permanence. To enter, make, and leave just as light. When does treating a material as something not for the taking turn it from it to she, from her to we as animism breathes relation into the moment, into an ethos of care-full consideration of others.