candy
the house i grew up in
(From 2006)
Memories of the outside world will never house the same tonality as those of home and, by recalling these memories, we add to our store of dreams; we are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost. - Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
Over the last four years my work has centered itself on the essence of protected intimacy. The first two years of examination of this subject pertained to the search for a language that would describe it. The third year described longing for it; and the fourth year has sought to reveal it’s inaccessibility. The culmination of this project in it’s four year study is the subject of my department project.
What is protected intimacy but that which is held close to us and remains there?
Being protected, the elements that are most personal easily become timeless and somewhat primordial. They become abstract entities that, like Plato’s realm of perfect forms, create a situation in which everything known is only a shadow. “*Can we isolate an intimate, concrete essence that would be a justification of the uncommon value of all of our images of protected intimacy?1” I believe that with abstract ideals that we try to. As models of protected intimacy abstract and become timeless they are forever inaccessible and can never be built or returned to; and the ideals that they provide foundation for are then manifestations.
An important part of the process of my degree project was the building of models of personal ideals or timeless personal perfection. Many of the ideals I have created for myself have centered around place therefore I chose to make the models of specific places which represent personal protected intimacy. One of the models is a model of the house I grew up in. In the process of trying to figure out how to make the models, I sculpted this house over five times. In many ways this became an obsessive kind of pygmallion process. With each model I made a mold so that I could make multiples of the model ideals. This is in some ways a way in which it becomes possible to physically make and then repeat a model of protected intimacy. While this is a metaphor for a desire, it has a ridiculous element to it when identifying the metaphor for what it is. The models are first, very small and not really spaces therefore inaccessible; second, they are only a replica of the original made out of candy.
Do Ho Suh’s silk houses run on a similar metaphor. His houses are sewn transparent fabric that replicate the exact dimensions of the house/houses that he has lived in. They are created with the intention of being able to take the house in a suitcase wherever the artist may go. There is a sense of comfort in being able to take transport the home (a symbol of personal intimacy) to any new space, but the fabric home is made apparent as only a metaphor as it is literally and visually transparent: it’s faucet does not give running water, it’s furniture cannot be used, it’s walls do not protect.
I wanted to display the idea of protection in the project with the use of science-lab looking glass jars. Similar to a laboratory the jars keep the models safe and untouched. Similar to the study of species, the laboratory jars house the subject for during it’s entire lifetime.
The medium was a very important part of my project. I chose to use candy as it is something that is made to be digested or destroyed while also being savored and enjoyed. I wanted these elements to be applied to the models of ideals- that they are to be savored but also to be destroyed. Making the candy from scratch, pouring it into molds, waiting for it to cool, then taking it out of the molds became a repetitive cycle; each cycle in a way bringing to formation and to life a new place. I also liked that the candy in color and texture resembles amber- amber referring to a substance petrified in time. I also chose candy as it is literally sweet. In the realm of taste, candy is a typified object of sweetness. The good parts of memory and nostalgia could also be called sweet.
Another element of my project I felt to be important is the gradual destruction of the models. Realizing my ideals as unattainable manifestations made me long for them no less. The candy models melt leaving only amber colored sugar water- remnants of the original. Each model completely melts within about five hours to be replaced by a new model in the morning. I felt it important to convey that they were built given their medium (something to be savored and destroyed).
The idea for the landscape piece came later in the project. While the smaller models represent specific places, the larger piece represents a place that hasn’t been built yet. I chose to reference architectural topographical landscape models to describe the plan and dreaming of a hypothetical space- or in this case a hypothetical ideal. The landscape model is propped up in the air titillating above a mirror, and looming near it are the smaller, melting landscape models as if to foreshadow it’s melting and inevitable destruction. Duane Slick had asked, “what do you do to make a tragedy?” You start with the ending.
The project isn’t meant to have a final definitive statement. During a critique, a critic had asked me if the action of the melting was supposed to be good or bad? To which I answered that it was neither. One of the four noble truths of Buddhism suggest that all desire leads to “pain, deception, and betrayal because it’s goal will ever be elusive.” While this statement can at first sound negative, I feel it is less a statement of pessimism and more along the idea that one can end feelings of pain, disappointment, deception, etc. with the realization of the elusiveness of his/her desires.
The project was not meant to be dogmatic, only an exploration of emotions and ideas. Art projects function for me as a way to understand through metaphor the ways in which I exist in thought and action.
I made this project to try to understand how to face unbiased loss.
“…I can’t go into the meaning of the dream
Except to say a sense of total: LOSS
Afflicted me thereof
An absolute disappearance of continuity and love
And children away at school, the weight of the cross,
And everything is what it seems.”
- -John Berryman, from Dream Songs, No. 101
