SMALL SPARK

Before I share about sparkiness, I want to extend an invitation to the WestSideArt Hop this weekend. Please join us if you are in the area (of Ann Arbor MI). Details here. Lots of new things to see!

​Was there a small creative spark in your early years that became a vivid  theme in the work that you do today?

I recently came across this little paper remnant from when I was a kid because it relates a lot to my artwork. I don't remember the specifics, but what I vaguely recall is that this paper was from a listening and noticing exercise I was invited to do for a class in middle school.

This is the piece of paper I wrote on. It had been folded into fours. It's something I keep on my bulletin board to remind me of how impressionable we are as kids and how simple things like this exercise can shape a life.

List making in and of itself has come into my work many times, most notably in Empty Full, in which I inventoried every single object I own as both a list, and as a single calculated volume of space, which then was shared as a hollow cylinder in the same volume, with the list of objects on the floor of the structure.


In Yardsale, while I was holding an object with all of the usual stuff for sale, I asked each customer to cross off of a list an item of their choice for every object they bought. The list was of intangible things I was, I felt, ready to let go of at that time in my life. The list has things like: "Taking the bigger piece of pie" and "laughing when it's not funny".


Visual Traces of Groups of Work. I and five volunteers observed what was happening in the gallery: minute repeating events that are a part of a group at work, that became a list as part of the work, and then got translated into different types of adhesive marks on the walls and floor of the gallery, exhibited along with the list.


Lists also feature heavily in my third book the Elements: a love letter to all thing everywhere. Here, the objects and areas in which each element is found, are listed for all 118 chemical elements, as well as their behaviors, qualities and uses. All of my books except the very first have Indexes, another kind of list and another way to explore and enter the content of the books.


Spot Count asked others to list their noticings in open public spaces like a weedy lot or a park, much like I was asked to do in school long ago, though they moved through the space like you would for a bird count, or for a forensic search, but in my project, leaving colorful marker wherever they stood and observed.


I'm also excited to share that this same theme is coming forth in a new book project that will be ready to fully to share in just a few months. It's a book called Field Guide to Ambiguity, and is about all of the situations in which ambiguity is present, as well as some of the strategies we use to deal with it. It is essentially a list of such ambiguous situations, paired with a new artwork, reflections and variations on each situation, as well as beautiful design by my collaborator Patrick Barber in Detroit. Patrick has contributed much to the building of this book, the structure and the editing process as a book designer and a designer specifically of Field Guides as luck would have it.


I can't wait to share it with you, but for now, let's return to the piece of paper that inspired this post!


Do you have something from your childhood that made a huge impact on your livelihood, artwork or other creative work in a significant way?


What small thing was introduced to you that became a seed, that then grew into something huge?