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As much as I wanted to dive into making right away this past week, Mark and I started with an art tour of our friend Gabor’s most recent gallery show. Gabor’s new work was so different than his prior work, and I was truly inspired, not just by the work, but his commitment toward a new medium. Originally a print maker, Gabor’s exploration toward sculpture spoke to me as an inward expression. It is other worldly, creepy and stunning. Looking at each piece, it felt as if the sculptures could float upward, sucked into sky, or melt away into the floor boards, leaving gorgeous puddles behind. Gabor’s transformation with this show reminded me that change is good, and change is brave. It reminded me that I should look outward, with big eyes, expanding my creative brain as I explore my time here, unafraid of different, ugly, raw, beautiful.
We continued to ramble through bars and neighborhoods, Budapest serving us fresh lemonade and cocktails. I have been struck by the dichotomy of rough and smooth, dirty and clean, comfortable and strange. And the more I notice it around me, the moreI want to find that feeling in clay.
As we headed back to AQB, I kept thinking about the 200 kilos of clay piled on the tarp in my work area. When I imagined what I could create with it, I drew both a blank and endless floating ideas. No idea felt like an, ah-ha! I felt a little stuck, but craving something that I did not know yet. In this way, the process of creating work for this show has been unexpected. I find myself at ease, completely lost in untethered time, totally focused on creating. I am completely aware of the moments around me, and I am inspired by small details, big patterns, shifts in ideas, and uninterrupted time to evolve with clay.
I follow my hands and trust that they will transform the clay in front of me. I trust that my hands with interpret the art I have seen, the city I have experienced, and they will direct and gather that information into an unknown presentation of something new to me.
I am excited by the surprise of myself.
Working with my brother in a collaboration has been interesting because as much as my creativity evolves in the process, Mark's creativity evolves as well, and we evolve creatively, together. So essentially, there is a triangle of creative thought and idea that are woven and warped and changing in real time, continually.
The concept that Mark and I started with has shifted over this week. Initially, I was making tons of small vessels that Mark’s machines would destroy. It was a very straightforward idea, and I had to make repetitive vessels, in different colors of clay. A lot of this work was made with "repetition and productivity" as the focal point. We talked about how productivity and moving forward and through experiences helps create pattern and folklore in family dynamics: the repetition of generational stories, care, of worry and joy.
However, inspired by Budapest, (the concrete, industrial, old tucked into modern, the shores of the Danube and other art work we have seen), we have decided to highlight expiration and decay. Because honestly, my hands could not help themselves. I simply could not make repeated vessels. Maybe because so much of my clay experience in Portland is making objects over and over for the shop and wholesale. Here, in Budapest, my hands craved big and messy and wild and ripped and dirty and cracked and broken.
So, we are now incorporating the concept of broken objects, abandoned items, and items that become and grow out of their environment. And in a lot of ways, I feel this is much for raw and real look at how dynamic and layered experiences are. We are messy and beautiful. Good comes out of the ugly. Sadness and joy are layered. Being a human is not as simple as a vessel. It is a vessel, a broken shard, a remade object, a neatly swept up pile of dust.
Our final show will encapsulate the clean beginnings, the in-between moments, the breaking of, the growing, and the adaptation.
In so many ways the ways, how this show has evolved feels exactly like the stages of my creativity and growth as an artist while I’ve been here. I have 4 bags of clay left and I am so curious to see where my hands lead me.