DO DUMB SMART
Investigating Phenomenal Material as Art
A Thesis Presented to
The MFA in Craft
Oregon College of Art and Craft
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirement for the
Master of Fine Arts in Craft
Jonathan Steele
May 2016
Table of Contents
Abstract
1
DO DUMB SMART - Investigating Phenomenal Material as Art
2
Introduction
2
Personal Context
5
Ceramics
7
Art Theory
10
Science
18
Philosophy
21
Works and Process
25
Conflation/Conclusion
33
Works Cited
35
Annotated Bibliography
38
Proposal
46
Image Inventory
51
Steele 1 Abstract
I stand in awe of the phenomenal world, peering into the processes that drive
material interactions. I think about the largest and smallest imaginable scales of matter. I
contemplate atoms, quarks, energy fields, galaxies, dark matter, light speed, and cosmic
and geological time. I value wondering, and I understand myself to be part of it all.
Engaging in the material processes that I ponder by setting ceramic materials into motion
is foundational to me. My work is an enactment of force: the attribute or tendency toward
physical action or movement of material. The practice that supports my work evokes the
forces of material formation within natural and manipulated environments. I offer my
viewer the awe that invigorates me. This inquiry constructs the theoretical context in
which my artworks operate by investigating phenomenal matter as it relates to art
(Richard Serra, Linda Swanson, Andy Goldsworthy, Bruce Nauman and Hans Haacke),
philosophy (Phenomenology, Material Vitality, Taoism, and Zen), science (Quantum
Mechanics and Cosmology) and my own experience of the phenomenal world.
Steele 2 DO DUMB SMART
Investigating Phenomenal Material As Art
"Change is the most basic condition (physic) of our universe. In its dynamic,
change (alongside time and space) constitutes a given in all things, and is indeed what
we are talking about when we speak of the phenomenal in perception. Most critically,
change is the key physical and physiological factor in our being able to perceive at all.
Our perceptual process is a kind of 'perpetual motion' assimilator. No change, no
perceptual consciousness. So while it is perfectly understandable that the overwhelming
majority of our conceptual energies are spent on organizing this myriad of perceptual
data into some form of 'familiar picture' we can work and live with, what is not so
understandable is how much of those intellectual energies have been spent on trying to
avoid this fact and its effects on our lives. Countless fortresses of 'concrete' thought have
been thrown up to transcend this inevitability, all of which, in the end, have proven to be
so much wishful thinking." Robert Irwin
INTRODUCTION
My work is primarily about the physical change of material as it relates to the
sensory experience and understanding of the viewer. I am fascinated by how people see
and understand the natural world around them, and I am investigating that understanding
in relation to independently occurring, physical events. My practice is suspended
between scientific analysis and artistic intuition. Art and science are not a binary, or
bookends, to a spectrum; each, rather, are methods for observing and engaging with the
world. I begin by deconstructing the dichotomy of art and science and find poetic insight
into what it means to see, to experience the world with elements of both analytics and
intuition. I examine my interest in the materials and processes that my art emerges from.
Personal experience, philosophy, science, and art history are my bases. They will be
researched and explored interdependently and positioned to inform my primary question:
What is the conceptual, artistic strength of the phenomenal—the enacting and perceiving
of inherent, essential qualities of nature—specifically in ceramic media?
Steele 3 My principal interest is investigating material interactions from an artistic
strategy. As art, my work is methodical and analytical, and, as science, it is expressive
and ambiguous. I am choosing art as my method for engaging and observing physical
interactions, which implies a criticism of science as the dominant strategy for developing
understanding of natural phenomena. This critique is founded, in part, on philosophies of
aleatory material vitality and phenomenology as supplemental epistemologies to
mainstream science. The works of Edmund Husserl generally, and Jane Bennett (Vibrant
Matter) and David Abram (The Spell of the Sensuous), have contributed to my
perspective on engaging and recognizing the active participation of material in the
formation of the world and of consciousness. My research has defined my approach to
my work as it engages ceramic material and the processes that take it between states of
change. Investigating material and process is the primary focus of my work as I build a
philosophical and art historical context around that investigation.
Figure 1 shows a glacial dropstone as an act of nature. A rock was carried by ice
and dropped into the clay silt at the bottom of an ancient lake. More silt covered the stone
and other forces of geology, and water movements pushed the clay out of the lake and
eroded the deposit to reveal the stone. When I look at this image I see a work of art: a
series of events and gestures acted by material phenomena that led to this composition. It
leads me first to notice that stuff moves. It is the fundamental state of things to be in
motion. Secondly, I notice that my appreciation is where art exists for me. My perception
of this series of events as awe-inspiring, as beautiful, allows me to see it as art, even
though it has not been made, designed, or formed by an inspired artist. I seek to inspire
that appreciation with my work. I am working in collaboration with geological and
physical forces to create compositions and forms that reference the incredible power and
existence of those forces themselves.
Steele 4 Figure 1 Glacial Dropstone in Clay, North Fork of the Skykomish River, Index, WA
Photo Credit: Jeffrey M. Schwartz, 2009
My former studies in physics play a large role in my current practice. Academic
physics has bolstered my curiosity in natural phenomena and has revealed the limitations
of a purely rational approach. In his book Tao of Physics, Fritjof Capra pairs traditions of
Eastern mysticism with Western physics, finding parallel threads throughout both. His
writing informs my approach to sculpture:
Physicists know that their methods of analysis and logical reasoning can never explain
the whole realm of natural phenomena at once and so they single out a certain group of
phenomena and try to build a model to describe this group. In doing to, they neglect other
phenomena and the model will therefore not give a complete description of the real
situation. (Capra, 41)
The material properties of clay are complex and constantly in flux. The geological
weathering of igneous rock that forms clay, and the water cycle that moves and deposits
it in a place, keep clay moving. In the heat of the kiln, clay undergoes a dramatic
Steele 5 transformation into ceramic material resembling the rock from which it came. When that
kiln is fueled with wood, another material from the earth is introduced that accumulates
and moves with the clay during its transformation. These processes are elemental, and my
work is my choice to participate with them.
Recognizing the limitations of a focused inquiry has been important to me as I
approach the difference between the following writing and the sculpture that
accompanies it. It has been central to my approach that my thesis paper and my sculpture
act as independent facets of the same inquiry. The writing is not directly about the
sculpture, and the sculpture does not stem directly from the writing. Rather, both are
separate investigations into the broader realm of my research. My sculpture cannot
possibly envelope the scope of complexity that it is derived from, and my writing cannot
approach the poignancy of the artistic content it references. Both become necessary to my
(and your) understanding of this endeavor.
PERSONAL CONTEXT
When I was in junior high school I became interested in science, specifically
chemistry and physics. My early science classes taught me that everything was endlessly
fascinating, that everything that I interacted with had an amazing story, an amazing
quality of being that could be wondered about, that could be investigated, that could be
observed, perceived, and maybe explained and predicted. It was my awe that drove me
into the sciences, and I stuck with science all the way through college. I was on track to
earn my Bachelor's of Science in Physics and positioned well to move forward into
graduate studies and field research, but when I looked over my career options I
envisioned a life lacking the joyous awe that drove me. Studying science was about
wondering, but being a career scientist seemed to me to be about answering the questions
and finding applications, dispelling the wonder. Socrates is often quoted for having said:
"The sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other
origin" (Plato, 155d). I began taking elective classes in philosophy, poetry, ethics, and art
to discover where I could maintain my joyous wonderment.
Steele 6 In my first semester of ceramics, I discovered a new wonder. Pushing clay
around, and trying to get it to move the way I saw it gracefully move in the hands of my
teacher, instilled in me that sense of awe that had fallen away in my physics classes. I
enjoyed pushing clay through my fingers, watching it move in response to my touch, and
discovering how it changes in the kiln. Of course, I couldn’t see it clearly then, but my
interest in ceramics was driven by the exact sentiments that held me in my science classes
from junior high until I earned my BA in Physics. I have a passion for physical material,
stuff and substance, and the way it behaves. I can contribute to its behavior, but it is
beholden to conditions more fundamental than those I can contribute to. I have a passion
for discovering my relation to the physical and material in my own being, doing and
perceiving.
I cultivate an extreme admiration for my empirical environment, for the
perceptual and imperceptible. I oblige my curiosity for the world to continually broaden
into more wondrous questions rather than deliberately amassing concise answers or
applications that narrow my perceptual experience. I seek to know enough about what I
perceive to be astonished and to be content in not knowing in order to maintain
astonishment. I cannot be curious about something that I understand completely.
Astonishment is more to me than an impetus for amassing facts; it is a state of being in
which I find intrinsic joy. In Alien Phenomenology, Ian Bogost discusses the emotional
state of wonder as it contributes to us sensing our world: "Wonder has two senses. For
one, it can suggest awe or marvel, the kind one might experience in worship or
astonishment. But for another, it can mean puzzlement or logical perplexity" (Bogost,
121). I am courting awe and wonder, as well as logical perplexity and confusion. I am
positioning myself as dumb1. My mantra: "do dumb smart" encourages me to critically
engage a joyful curiosity and perplexity that comes from a humble recognition that my
existence is beyond a concise, dogmatic understanding. I champion the dumb to find
value in the space of not knowing. I find meaning in incomplete knowledge and use
1 I use the word dumb as my ideology for seeking amazement in not knowing or overstating, deliberately puzzling myself for the sake of inciting a specific strategy of
investigation that elegantly avoids performing the cure for ignorance. Steele 7 perplexity and confusion as a beneficial state of mind that may not necessarily lead to
understanding.
I don't want to sit and think or passively observe; I want to participate. I want to
actively engage. Science is observing and philosophy is theorizing, but art is engaging;
art is participating. Understanding the world from a pinpoint perspective is to see the
world without oneself, and choosing to participate in the actions of the world is to limit
an idealized understanding. With my work, I embrace my lack of control and limited
understanding to recognize that my authority over my material, my tools and my
audience is partial and to acknowledge that the agency of those actors lends complexity
and credibility to my perspective and my art.
CERAMICS
Pottery was my first step into art making. Quickly after discovering a love for
pottery, I learned about and began to practice woodfiring as the technique for finishing
my work, and I began graduate school with a portfolio full of woodfired pots. My early
work woodfiring was joyfully naïve; I was learning and appreciating the process for its
own sake without questioning it. Through the academic lens of graduate school the
rationale for decisions once assumed has become relevant, even imperative to my work.
Tough questions asking me to vindicate every decision have pushed my work to be about
this process rather than merely employing it for aesthetics' sake. Woodfiring embodies a
wealth of cultural significance, personal gratification, and phenomenological observation,
and my task in positioning my thesis inquiry began by understanding precisely why
woodfiring was important to me. I determined that because a woodfired pot, and every
surface within the environment of the kiln, collects material from the burning of the
wood, it acts as a marker or artifact of a unique period of time in which change occurs.
The resulting surface and forms are readable evidence of materials (clay and ash)
interacting in an extreme environment. The behavior of the materials exceeds my control,
even if I am controlling everything I can. The hierarchy of I (active human agent)
controlling it (passive material object) is flipped. The material becomes active agent,
especially in an environment too extreme for me to enter. I am left as the observer of my
Steele 8 own work in a way, as it comes into being away from my hand and outside of my design.
I have found conceptual complexity in questioning the process and reconsidering my role
as maker.
Figure 2 shows a pitcher that I made soon after I started graduate school. It has
been a turning point in my work because it has never performed the function of a pitcher.
It is perfectly capable of holding and pouring liquid, but it need not. Instead, this work
performs the function of an artifact. It is meaningful because the movement between
tones is the result of the movement of flame and ash in response to form. The colors and
the tones are markers of material and flame. I determined that the conceptual content of
my work was this movement, accumulation, and the response of material to its
environment.
Figure 2: Jonathan Steele, Pitcher, Woodfired Stoneware, Reduction Cooled, 2015
Steele 9 Rob Barnard is a leading artist and theorist of woodfired ceramics, and his work
and writings are largely responsible for woodfiring's prevalence in Western ceramics. He
maintains that the reverence for process cannot uphold artistic content, suggesting that
aesthetics are central to the discourse around woodfiring within the field of ceramics:
We in the ceramics world have embraced wood firing and it's spectacular effects without
bothering to understand what it is about the process that moves us. What, for example, is
its language and can we as artists still exploit its archaic vocabulary to communicate
contemporary concerns? (Barnard, 37)
Barnard goes on to suggest an alternative perspective:
We have remained preoccupied with the process, the how-to of wood firing. This is an
understandable tendency in a field where method and material have long been
emphasized before everything else. Indeed, as a field, we have defined ourselves by our
material, and within that field by the process we use rather than by conceptual or
aesthetic concerns. (Barnard, 37)
While I agree with Barnard's analysis of the field, I depart from his suggestion
that conceptual and aesthetic concerns are at odds with process and material. The
separation of artistic concept and creative, expressive process (mind v. matter) is an
artificial binary. It suggests that art requires an intellectual distance from making.
Barnard is using the word "method" to suggest the production of objects. I make an
important distinction between production and process because, while production is means
to an end object, process can be an end in itself; process can be the objective. Insofar as
production is the emphasis rather than the product, or the thing itself, then conceptual and
aesthetic concerns are indeed swept under the rug. But if process is the objective, then
conceptual and aesthetic concerns enter into that endeavor, and the pot, the object made
becomes referential to the work, to the process, to the thing. The distinction between
production and process takes me beyond ceramics and into art history and theory. It is a
departure for me into the meat of my academic inquiry.
Steele 10 ART THEORY
Movements of Process Art and Endurance Art have set a precedent for the
conceptual validity of method and material. In 1966, Bruce Nauman came to his famous
realization: "If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the
studio must be art. At this point art became more of an activity and less of a product." His
work Dance or Exercise on the Perimeter of a Square (1967-68) (Figure 3) is a
particularly poignant example of Nauman making repetitive motions in his studio around
arbitrary boundaries and claiming them as the work of art. The work is the movements of
the artist in full realization of their absurdity and incapacity for accomplishing anything
substantial. The video is not the art; it is a document of the art. It challenges the
boundaries of the working definition of art in the 1960s and helps me to contextualize the
actions of material formation and process as having a capacity for carrying artistic
content.
Figure 3: Bruce Nauman, Dance or Exercise on the Perimeter of a Square (video still),
1967-68
Steele 11 Artist Hans Haacke presents natural processes as intrinsically meaningful. He
uses processes of biology and non-living materials. Haacke insists freezing, condensation
and photosynthesis have active agency and consciousness. Natural processes, therefore,
are intrinsically meaningful and disposed to artistic expression. I get a little uneasy when
the term "consciousness" is applied to non-living entities, but Haacke qualifies what he
means with an equal insistence that natural systems are indifferent to subjective emotion.
This frees him and his work from an overtly emotional stance. Consciousness does not
mean emotional, thoughtful, or intentional by our typical use of these words. Essentially,
it means the capacity for change and meaningful results as change moves forward.
Haacke assigns validity and clarity to the phenomena that is his (and my) medium. In
Condensation Cube (Figure 4) Haacke simply puts water into a plexiglass cube under
conditions that cause the water to condense on the walls of the cube. Haacke presents the
act of water behaving as the content of art: "We seem to be so accustomed to looking at
the gestalt of natural phenomena, and to interpreting it in a heartwarming, romantic
manner that we neglect perceiving the physical laws forming the gestalt" (Haacke, 44).
Figure 4: Hans Haack, Condensation Cube, 1963
Steele 12 Sculptor Richard Serra makes an argument for self-reference and intrinsic content
in his work: "I've never felt, and I don't now, that art needs any justification outside
itself" (Serra, 8). Serra asserts that art is under no obligation to contain "content" in a
literary or narrative sense. Meaning, or the effectiveness of a work of art, is not solely
dependent on a referent. While meaning does not have to be referential, it is impossible
for a work of art to exist in a vacuum, or without engaging surrounding contexts. Much of
art does contain narrative and referential contents, but form and material can be selfreferential, pointing to themselves without metaphor and existing in a field of other
process, formal, and material works. In his work Tilted Arc (Figure 5), Serra uses scale,
line, mass and balance to create a perceptual experience for a viewer being confronted by
a giant plate of steel leaning over him or her in a public space. This work embodies the
quality of the material and the space it inhabits, and that is enough to carry meaning.
Figure 5: Richard Serra, Tilted Arc, Steel 120' x 12' x 2.5" 1981
Like in Serra's work, the references made by my finished sculpture are to the
things themselves and the processes that bring them into form. This position enters into a
philosophical dialogue with Object-oriented Ontology, of which Ian Bogost writes:
Steele 13 In contemporary thought, things are usually taken either as the aggregation of ever
smaller bits (scientific naturalism) or as constructions of human behavior and society
(social relativism). Object-oriented Ontology steers a path between the two, drawing
attention to things at all scales (from atoms to alpacas, bits to blinis), and pondering their
nature and relations with one another as much as with ourselves. (Bogost)
Bogost is defining existence and "things" in a very general, all-encompassing
sense, as is the role of ontology. If we turn this argument from all things and focus it on
art things, it can help us clarify intrinsic meaning in minimal and process art. The
attention drawing that Bogost mentions is the role of an artist. When artwork is focused
on drawing attention to physical matter and process, the purpose is to ponder the meaning
of material being. I draw attention to the processes of making and focus on
transformation, referencing the movement of material from prior to future states; I am
pondering the meaning of material dynamic.
Linda Swanson is a ceramic artist working with installations that exemplify
process and the materiality of clay. I had the privilege of asking her a few direct
questions about her work and the way she positions herself as an artist. Her installations
of powdered clay materials absorbing water and ultimately changing form in response
offer insight into observing material interaction and transformation. The work Seep
(Figures 6 and 7) was the first piece of hers that I saw, before I was building anything
resembling my current position. Swanson spoke to me about her goal in creating such
work, her engagement with materials, and what she hopes to offer the viewer with her
installations:
It is very much about an experience that doesn’t necessarily tell you something, but opens
up a channel for a way of thinking and considering things, even ordinary things that
happen. A lot of the forms, I am not really forming myself, I am allowing them to happen
under certain circumstances and that, in a way, opens up what I hope is a sensitivity, that
when you see the ice crystals on your windshield, for example, there is a different
sensitivity or openness to the experience that is a little bit different than the way we are
typically thinking about these things, which comes from our scientific education. We
think we know these things, we think we understand them because we know about them.
I'm not anti-science whatsoever, but I do believe that we think we know these things
Steele 14 better than we actually do. My work is to set up a visual experience—that is a primary
way in which we know the world, a very direct way that we often don't allow for—such
that we question what we know and how we know it. It is more of a channel, a way of
understanding that is different from information. (Swanson)
Figure 6: Linda Swanson, Seep, Unfired Bentonite, Colorant, Water seeping through
Canvas, 2014
Steele 15 Figure 7: Linda Swanson, Seep (detail), Unfired Bentonite, Colorant, Water seeping
through Canvas, 2014
Swanson's work speaks directly to materiality and interactions of materials,
making a direct challenge to science as Western culture's primary way of understanding
our world. The importance she puts on perception itself in perceiving phenomena is
essential, and the freedom she takes to sit in joy and awe of the material world is valuable
to the position that I am developing with my work. Swanson went on to say:
I think art is a lot about sensation, much more than communication for me. We have ways
of communicating with people much more directly than art, so there is a power in the
sensing of something if somebody is willing to take part in that. It takes a lot of effort on
the part of viewers to try to have an art experience, and I think some of the shorter
experiences are more direct and clear. It is the sensory or sensation experience that is the
territory of art. (Swanson)
Swanson's work and her statements led me to Andy Goldsworthy's work and
perspective. Goldsworthy's work focuses on material, natural phenomena, and transitory
time. His sculpture and installations are always made with natural materials in states of
change or exemplifying a prior change. He uses stones, leaves, sticks, raw clay, etc.
Whether Goldsworthy is making work for the gallery or outdoors, he is engaging
Steele 16 materiality and time by subjecting his media to circumstances of change. Goldsworthy
clarifies his approach:
Movement, change, light, growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I
try to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place, materials
and weather, the earth as my source. Nature is in a state of change and that change is the
key to understanding. I want my art to be sensitive and alert to changes in material,
season and weather. Each work grows, stays, decays. Process and decay are implicit.
Transience in my work reflects what I find in nature. (Goldsworthy).
By using the life-blood of nature as his artistic content, Goldsworthy is using art
to interpret natural phenomena. His work is very confident within the art historical canon,
yet his phenomenological focus has him leaning on objectivity as well. The observation
of natural phenomena has been the domain of science, not art, and choosing to approach
art in this way is radical as it relates to how we understand science and art. Goldsworthy,
like Swanson, is making artwork at the threshold of science, but without operating under
its boundaries, methodologies, or motives. The methods and motives are aesthetic and
sensory.
In his piece Snowball Drawing (Figure 8), Goldsworthy packed charcoal and
snow into a ball and placed it on a piece of paper. The snow melted and flowed and the
paper dried, leaving a "drawing" on the paper. The snow drew the drawing, and the image
is of movement and change over time. I saw this piece in the Chazen Museum of Art in
Madison, WI, and listened to another viewer scoff that this was not art because it took no
skill to make. It's true; the piece took very little skill to make. It takes tremendous skill to
view, however. It requires sensitivity to the poignancy of phenomena and willingness to
let go of the desire to be impressed by an artist's skill for the sake of experiencing their
vision.
Steele 17 Figure 8: Andy Goldsworthy, Snowball Drawing, 2007
I make forms and force an extreme condition of change upon them, subjecting the
labored objects to a radical environment, both solidifying, as well as threatening the
endeavors of the studio work. My awareness of this change necessitates foresight and
flexibility through experience and gathered knowledge, yet the change itself and the
fullness of its affect, is beyond my premonition or control. The balance between skillful
and knowledgeable making and the forfeiture of control is integral to my process. I am
exploring artistic gestures that balance gestures of mine with gestures of natural
phenomena, allowing for phenomenal2 outcomes.
2 Colloquially, the word "phenomenal" means "remarkable" or "extraordinary"
(Dictionary.com). The word "phenomenon," however, typically means "a fact or situation
that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose cause or explanation is in
question" (Dictionary.com). The etymology from the Greek phainomenon, which means
"that which appears or is seen," lays more emphasis on the perception of action than its
occurrence (etymonlin.com). Steele 18 I wonder about the different meanings of designed and non-designed phenomena,
controlled and chaotic transitions of material in response to particular circumstance. I ask
questions about the natures of being and perceiving generally and in terms of art. Process
Art succeeds when it incites a curiosity and sensitivity in the viewer toward the power of
nature to move and change. Viewers can take that wonder with them out of an art context
and into their encounters with all kinds of natural phenomena.
SCIENCE
My fascination with science boils down to my awe and joy in observing the natural
world. I studied physics because I wanted to understand the mechanisms that drive the
physical world. The same questions that I ask the viewer of my art to consider: "What is
this?" and "How did this come into being?" are the questions scientists ask of nature. The
joy in wondering and the passion for observing drive me to participate in what is, fueling
both my artistic practice and my love for science. A scientific inquiry, though often
conceived of as seeking objective fact, is as subjective an inquiry as an artistic practice.
Werner Heisenberg, quantum physicist of the mid twentieth century, recognizes science's
subjectivity: "Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the
interplay between nature and ourselves" (Heisenberg, 81). The interplay that I engage in
between nature and myself is more art than science in my practice, yet it resonates with
the character of both.
The difference between science and art is a matter of intent rather than content.
Science itself is a method of questioning and interpreting observations, as is art and
philosophy. It comes down to the method of questioning because a single phenomenon
can be observed through any lens, and the found meaning of the phenomenon will reflect
that lens. Heisenberg again: "What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to
our method of questioning" (Heisenberg, 58). If this method is analytical, our
observations will be analyses. If this method is intuitive, philosophical or artistic, then
our observations and interpretations will certainly be aligned with the chosen method.
Science is a vehicle for the human mind to engage with the happenings of the
physical world, seeking to compile objective facts based on external information that can
Steele 19 be observed. The scientific method depends on skepticism and falsifiable statements and
seeks to produce theories and concepts that function with a capacity for predicting future
events based on the observations of prior events (Popper). Science does not and cannot
prove anything ever. It is simply the compilation of evidence and data that supports or
refutes our interpretations of the natural world. At its core, science must stem from an
engaged fascination and a yearning to understand what one observes without holding
onto cultural assumptions or dogmas.
The roots of Western science are planted in the Milesian School in Ionia in the
sixth century BCE. In this culture, science, philosophy, and religion were not separate;
they were all approaches to discovering what they called physis, meaning "nature" or
"essence." The word "physics" comes directly from physis and therefore etymologically
references a pursuit to understand the essential nature of all things. Philosophy, religion,
science and much of art are all investigations into nature's essence, so while our culture
divides these pursuits, they can just as easily be recombined. Science is particularly
dependent on the observable and the repeatable for its particular investigation (Capra, 1725).
I stress that science is limited to an understanding of what is observable because
there are many cases in which what is observed stands at a distance from what is real.
There are even occasions in which what is observed stands at a distance from what is
known. Much of the fields of quantum mechanics (the study of the very small) and
cosmology (the study of the origin and development of the universe) investigate
phenomena that cannot be directly observed based on extrapolations of what can. No one
has ever seen an electron, for instance, but we can observe its effects and interactions
with other things, coming to interpret that it is real. Similarly, dark matter is nothing more
than the cosmologists' stand-in explanation for the curious observation that there is more
gravitational effect all over space than the observed matter there is responsible for.
Therefore, something must be real that is not being directly observed. In quantum
mechanics, the observation itself changes what is observed. Nothing within the field can
be objectively observed.
Physicist Niels Bohr worked at the frontier of quantum mechanics in the twentieth
century. He defined the early scientific investigation into scales too small to observe,
Steele 20 scales that do not operate in accordance with the mechanical behaviors of matter that
science at human scale predicts. He states:
The great extension of our experience in recent years has brought to light the
insufficiency of our simple mechanical conceptions and, as a consequence, has shaken
the foundations on which the customary interpretation of observation was based. (Bohr,
2)
Bohr gives us two insights here: first, the vital role scale plays in our human
ability to observe an object/event, and second, the dependence science has on
interpretation. Bohr raises questions, such as: What does observation have to do with
reality? and How can the interpretation of our observations offer us insight into reality?
These questions bring me back to art. First, the effect of scale on the viewing of a work is
a foundational consideration in the making of an artwork. Second, observation and
interpretation are exactly the roles of the viewer of an artwork and exactly the
considerations of an artist in the making of it. The search for meaning that a
viewer/observer engages in is equivalent in science and art. Whether the meaning is
physical or philosophical, analytical or emotional, the search for it in a piece of art or in
nature has everything to do with the intent and interpretation of the observer.
Mathematics, as the language of science, is the primary tool for making
extrapolations into unobservable scales. Albert Einstein expresses the reliance of
mathematics for understanding nature: “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality,
they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality" (Capra,
41). Einstein is talking specifically about mathematics as a construct. Physics' reliance
math squarely defines it as a construct also. So Einstein is making an insightful
distinction for understanding scientific knowledge, suggesting that what is real and what
is known can never be exactly the same thing. Historically and colloquially, science tends
to operate under the assumption that what is known is correct when it aligns with what is
real. In advanced branches of science, in mystic philosophies, as well as in art, the
observed, the known, and the real do not have to be the same. The observed is dependent
on a phenomenon offering evidence to our senses, the known to our logic. The real,
however is under no obligation to offer us any evidence whatsoever.
Steele 21 All of this is simply to point out that scientific inquiry and the canon of science are as
subjective as in any other field. While the object of science's inquiry is preexisting natural
phenomena, the inquiry itself makes the field a subjective one. The art that I am focused
on investigates objects and processes that are equally preexisting; it is the inquiry through
an artistic lens that makes the work intuitive and emotionally meaningful. My sculptures
are the evident artifacts of a physical process. I create evidence that suggests that a
particular phenomenon has occurred. I choose to present these evidences as art rather
than science by choosing not to belabor their quantification or repeatability. It goes back
to the idea of knowing just enough to stand in awe. I choose to find value and joy in the
observation itself and profundity in simply being confronted with phenomenal action.
These evidences could easily be measured and quantified to offer scientific insight into
the phenomena occurring. There is equal validity, however, in viewing for the sake of
reflection and finding beauty in the interactions of material forces. I address conceptual
content that comfortably exists in the realm of science, but I do so by choosing art as an
alternative method for engaging it and for finding meaning in it.
PHILOSOPHY
The conceptual basis for my artwork is philosophical in that I consider my work
to be for the sake of expressing my understanding of the world and my place in it. My
perspective is built on modern physics, art history, phenomenology, and an interest in
Eastern mysticisms, without adherence to any such doctrine. Nature is inherently
dynamic and active, independently of an inciting force because material is, at the very
core of its nature, in motion. Stillness does not truly exist at the smallest or largest scales
and is only relative given the scale of our perspective. I consider stillness to be more
accurately described as equilibrium or balance. Motion is a given in all things.
In the fifth century BCE, pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus
wrote of the world as perpetually changing. His most famous adage: "one cannot step
twice into the same river," suggests that as time moves forward, nothing is static or
repeated exactly. It is similar to the mystic wisdoms of Eastern philosophies, Hinduism,
Taoism, and Zen, which suggest that everything, both physical and spiritual, flows
Steele 22 continuously. These philosophies of "The Eternal Becoming" are more than poetic; they
are reminiscent of insights later developed by modern physics. Quantum mechanics and
cosmology stand more readily in line with ideas of material vibrancy than with classical
Western philosophy, which is curious because Western science was born of the classical
Western worldview, which considers matter as passive.
Classical Western philosophy aligns with the Eleatic school of Greek philosophy,
which assumed a Divine Principle, a unity of the universe, an intelligent and personal
"Being" that stands unchanging apart and above the universe, directing it. The Divine
Principle led ultimately to the separation of spirit and matter and to the dualism that
became the ground on which Western philosophy stands, including Aristotle and
Descartes (Capra, 20). The assumption made is that matter itself is passive and that for
change to occur there must be a force applied. Aristotle reasoned that to create anything,
an agent had to bring together matter (hyle) and form (morphe). We refer to this as the
hylomorphic model. Tim Ingold writes contrary to the hylomorphic model and suggests
that material and force are the essential relation, rather than matter and form:
Form came to be seen as imposed by an agent with a particular design in mind, while
matter, thus rendered passive and inert, became that which was imposed upon… my
ultimate aim… is to overthrow the model and to replace it with an ontology that assigns
primacy to the processes of formation as against their final products, and to the flows and
transformations of materials as against states of matter. (Ingold, 92)
Ingold offers a reconfiguring of Western philosophy that agrees more readily with
modern material science and Eastern philosophies, a reconfiguration that I find
compelling. It is exciting to me to see the changes and shifts present in the world as
fundamental to existence rather than beholden to an eternal agent.
René Descartes contributes to the dualism and hierarchy of mind and matter, too.
With his statement: "Cogito ergo sum" (I think, therefor I am), Descartes equates identity
and being with the mind as specifically opposed to matter, or the body. It sets a context
by which we, as humans, stand apart from that which we observe. It sets a context by
which we develop a concept of a God who stands apart from the universe pulling the
strings. It establishes a division and subsequent hierarchy between two different realms:
res cogitans (mind) and res extensa (matter). It allows us to treat matter as dead and
Steele 23 completely separate from ourselves as we observe the material world as a multitude of
different objects assembled into a huge machine. It fails to account for the vibrant
material processes that act prior to our observing them, those that life spring from, those
that exist on scales beyond our comprehension, without the logical necessity of a being
controlling matter's passivity. The simple realization that my mind comes from a material
process, i.e., the actions within my brain, leads me to forget Descartes' dualism and see
my own perspective as based in material rather than separate from it. Being comes prior
to thinking. I am, and then I think.
Western philosophy has a perceived binary and hierarchy that exists between
subject and object, mind and matter, soul and body. I am writing in defense of the object,
of matter, of body. I suggest that this binary is as constructed as any other by histories of
pre-modern and modern philosophy. We are now offered the context, in this post-modern
environment, to lament the rational age, to tear down the modern structures by which we
engage the world. New philosophies have emerged and old ones have been revisited to
conflate the notions of subject and object, to consider matter as having an agency
previously reserved for thinking actors or spiritualties. An agent is not required to
"ensoul" the material universe with activity. Rather, material ensouls the universe with
vibrancy.
In her book Vibrant Matter, Jane Bennett argues for material vibrancy. She
unpacks the results of Aristotelian and Cartesian conceptions of material as passive and
argues instead that matter has a capacity too often ignored, a capacity that she refers to as
agency:
[My] philosophical project is to think slowly an idea that runs fast through modern heads:
the idea of matter as passive stuff, as raw, brute, or inert…The philosophical project of
naming where subjectivity begins and ends is too often bound up with fantasies of a
human uniqueness in the eyes of God, of escape from materiality, or of a mastery of
nature; and even where it is not, it remains a aporetic or quixotic endeavor. (Bennett, 2)
Bennett contends that matter is lively and active. She goes so far as to say that the
vibrancy of life is derived from the inherent vibrancy of material. She offers more
subjectivity to the actions of material and recognizes our bodies and our minds as
material phenomena.
Steele 24 Phenomenology is an alternative to Cartesian dualism and hylomorphism. Its
founder, Edmund Husserl, calls into question the Western, modern assumption of a
single, wholly determined, objective reality that one observes by rational thought, the
ontology sourced in Descartes’ separation of the thinking mind and the material world.
David Abram, a contemporary phenomenologist, writes:
Despite all the mechanical artifacts that now surround us, the world in which we find
ourselves before we set out to calculate and measure it is not an inert or mechanical
object but a living field, an open and dynamic landscape subject to its own moods and
metamorphoses. (Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, 31)
Matter and being, as well as sensing and perceiving, are phenomena. They are
active and engaging, continually undergoing progression and change. We tend to think of
matter as the stuff that phenomena occurs to, but the very existence of matter is a process
of the exchange of energies, of waves and particles and forces. Our understanding of it is
based in the phenomenon of perception. To take another philosophical break from
Western modernism, many thinkers have come to challenge the rational mind as the
defining tool for understanding. Ernst Peter Fisher said:
'Irrational' should no longer imply 'nonsense' or 'insanity' but simply something for which
it is not possible to establish a general law… The world is full of irrationalities—not least
is the destiny of each single human being—and it would be a far reaching mistake on the
part of science if it refused to concern itself with them. (Molderings 127)
I enjoy the break from the rational mind as primary source of understanding. It
brings me back to the validity of art in understanding content typically reserved for
scientific inquiry. It gives weight to intuition and emotion as genuine strategies for
understanding the physical world. Modern art, modern physics, and Eastern philosophies
have shown alternatives to rationality for perceiving and understanding the world. These
alternatives excite and engage me, fill me with wonder and awe for the world and for my
life, and that is most valuable to me.
Taoism operates with a similar distance from logical reasoning. It is seen as part
of the artificial world of man and not essential to nature. Taoists were not interested in
Steele 25 the constructs of man at all, but concentrated their attention fully on the observation of
nature in order to discern the “characteristics of the Tao.” They developed an attitude that
was essentially scientific and based in the careful observation of nature, combined with a
strong mystical intuition. “When we talk about the Taoist concept of change, it is
important to realize that this change is not seen as occurring as a consequence of some
force, but rather as a tendency which is innate in all things and situations” (Capra 116).
Zen Buddhism also works around the limitations of rationality: “Before you study Zen,
mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers; while you are studying Zen, mountains are
no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers; but once you have had
enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and rivers again rivers” (Capra 124).
From all these philosophical perspectives, I began to see materials interacting
with one another in ways that I had little or no control over. I began to marvel at
mountains and rivers in a different way, and I became determined to engage with the
vibrant material world by recognizing it in my artwork. Salt entering and exiting solution,
as the subject of the work Re/solute (Figure 14), not only precedes my knowledge of it or
my control of it, but my metabolism and my life depend on its tenacity to continue
behaving in this way. My awareness, my agency in presenting it as art, holds no sway
against its behavior. This material interaction, therefor, has more control of me than I of
it. This realization necessitates humility in my approach to understanding myself and my
world. The humility is precisely what I would like my work to suggest to its viewership.
WORK AND PROCESS
The background and context of my work is the cloud of thought and research that
surrounds my practice in the studio and at the kiln-yard. The work itself emerges from all
that is expressed above; it does not directly point at it. My intentions and my inspirations
are only truly revealed through my actions in making.
Woodfired pottery is my basis because I have enjoyed making pots, developing
my style and woodfiring from a gut ambition since 2009 (See Figure 9). I realized,
through the academic analysis of the aesthetics and process, that functional pottery was
Steele 26 not precise to the complexity of my academic inquiry. I am enriched by my involvement
in making of pots in the studio, gathering people to load and fire the kilns, and
discovering the pottery when finished. The moments of discovery and inquiry that
unloading a wood-kiln generate drive my sculptural and conceptual work. They are
similar to the moments of discovery that a viewer coming across and art piece might have
in the gallery. The exchange that I seek to inspire reveals the shift and accumulation of
material within the process of making ceramic work. To find conceptual depth, I began to
pare function out of my work for the sake of privileging material and process.
Figure 9: Teapot and Cup, Woodfired Stoneware, 2016
Kamagraph (Figure 10) was an early exploration into the notion that function
could be edited out. As "kiln writing," it became a document of the woodfiring process.
The accumulation of ash draws an image of the space and time within the kiln. The
abstract image tells the story of the embers fueling the inferno. The dark charred sections
show where the piece was buried in coals, the lines of mountainous texture are the fusion
of the top layer of the pile, and the flows of melted ash witness the greatest intensity of
Steele 27 the heat it generated. The work becomes an image of material transformation in the firing
of the kiln. It is an early departure from pottery towards the self-referential and material
art that my inquiry has become. Its weakness, however, is that it is more didactic than
poetic. It is read as a narrative. I can point out where things happened and what materials
and situations affected the work. It's more of an advocate for a specific process and
material than a poetic expression of process in general.
Figure 10: Kamagraph, Woodfired Stoneware, 2015
Because the art-object acts principally as a reference to the material process that
generated it, I consider my work to be self-referential. The work is informed by a wide
complexity of contexts: material, traditional and historical, yet it is not directly about any
of that. It is about the object's generation. My strategy in making art allows the questions
"What is it?" and "What does it mean?" to become inseparable. The work signifies
something greater than itself, without relying on codes or symbols. To understand the
Steele 28 imagery or form, I ask that the viewer look at accumulations and movements and
evidences of shift and change.
My thesis body of work reflects the constructs of nature through the constructs of
society. I make apparent what is already there, to point at material within my work for the
sake of inciting an awareness of material in general. Tim Ingold defines this as the role of
any maker, regardless of that maker's awareness as such:
Far from standing aloof, imposing his designs on a world that is ready and waiting to
receive them, the most [the maker] can do is to intervene in worldly processes that are
already going on, and which give rise to the forms of the living world we see all around
us... adding his own impetus to the forces and energies in play. (Ingold 21)
Where Ingold is talking about intervention, he is referring to a maker working
within the movements of material to enact his/her design. I prefer to discuss my role as
engagement because my design is precisely to reveal the worldly processes that are
already going on. Rather than intervening, I am collaborating with material. I am
identifying a profound quality that is present prior to the "art making" and enacting it as
art. It is not art unless I engage with the process—though that engagement could be as
minimal as saying: "Look!" Mud already turns into rock over time; I just accelerate it to
my design.
Ceramics has a built-in relationship with control and chance. Every ceramic artist
knows what it means to refine skill and control the form of their clay in the studio, only
to put the work into the kiln and cross their fingers. The kiln is a pause, a letting go, for
every ceramic artist, and unloading the kiln after the firing is a moment of discovery.
There has been a lot of technological development devoted to claiming control of the
kiln, computerized pyrometers and oxygen probes, etc. There has been a huge effort to
align the results uncovered in the moment of discovery with the design of the artist. To
me, the discovery is the exciting part, and I do not desire that moment to align directly
with my predictions and designs. I prefer to be surprised, to surprise myself with my own
work as much as possible.
To encourage my surprise, I introduce systems of chance in my making processes.
I never quite know how my work will turn out because I use materials and tools that I
cannot control. Forces larger than myself contribute to the work, forces that I have
Steele 29 scientific and poetic understanding of. An anagama kiln, fueled with wood, is a blunt,
archaic tool that limits precision and stands at direct odds with high-tech computercontrolled kilns designed to be exact. Control is contrary to curiosity. When I open an
anagama I uncover remnants and relics of a phenomenal event that I participated in, not
objects produced by formulaic procedure. I take joy in the result that is outside of my
control because the unexpected elements of my work allow me to stand as the viewer of
that work as well as the maker of it.
Control and chaos are constantly at play in my art. I am the master of my work in
the studio; I make objects with the controlled skill of a craftsman. When work goes into
the kiln, however, there is a letting go, and the severe environment is too elemental to
control. I have played this up aesthetically in certain pieces by making work with a tight,
controlled hand, a precise geometry in the studio. The firing disrupts this precision. In the
piece I Shrink Under Pressure (Figure 11), the construction of the elements in my studio
was to tight standards of geometry. The slabs were flat, whole rectangles. In the process
of drying and firing, the pieces depart significantly from that geometry. They split and
warp. The final piece shows a visual distance between some ideal, mathematical form
and real natural object. It is a visual distance between the tight control I had in the studio
at one moment in time and the forces of process and change involved in the whole
timeline of the making process.
Figure 11: I Shrink Under Pressure, Woodfired Stoneware, Paint, 2016
Similarly, in The Gravity of the Situation (Figures 12 and 13), the three clay
elements spanning the form went into the kiln as flat planes made from three different
materials: each has a plane of stoneware, one of porcelain, and one of terra cotta. The
Steele 30 flatness and the geometric precision of those planes, subjected to the severe environment
of the firing process, releases its rigidity, folding and slumping into a new loose form.
The Gravity of the Situation is made of three repeated forms with a controlled rigidity. It
is central to the read of this piece that each form was made to a precision and sent into the
kiln essentially the same: the same forms, the same materials, and even the same firing.
Yet the final piece shows three very distinct objects, with unique color and form. The
differences visible here read as the element of chance, which reflects the unpredictability
of the process. The repeated elements have become central to my work and its success in
imparting its conceptual content.
Figure 12: The Gravity of the Situation, Woodfired Stoneware, Porcelain, Terra Cotta,
2016
Figure 13: The Gravity of the Situation, Woodfired Stoneware, Porcelain, Terra Cotta,
2016
Steele 31 The wood fired kiln was my main tool in developing this perspective, but I have
realized that my work does not depend on the kiln itself, but can be enacted in other
environments with other factors that limit control and create movement, accumulation
and form. The piece Re/solute (Figure 14) is a departure from the severe kiln
environment as the catalyst for chance. This piece introduced chance in the behavior of a
solution of soda ash (Sodium Carbonate) as the water absorbs in the porous ceramic and
evaporates, leaving the soda ash to crystalize on the surface. This pieces takes that idea of
multiple, repeated elements to the next step. Each panel here was pressed into a mold,
ensuring that the forms are repeated directly. They then were removed from that form at
different states of rigidity, which caused different rips and breaks to emerge. The solute
coming out of solution is as repeated and controlled as possible, yet it responds to the
differing forms and conditions uniquely, putting on display the element of chance.
Figure 14: We Come To Resolution, Porous Stoneware, Soda Ash, Water, Steel 2016
Steele 32 The work I Lost Control; I Did Some Serious Damage (Figure 15) goes back to
the kiln as a tool for inciting forces reminiscent of geology. Layers of various clays and
steel were stacked on top of one another in the kiln, and, when heated, the clays fused
together and the steel melted and corroded the clay. In one sense, this piece was a
disaster. I lost more control than I intended! The steel found its way through the side of
the piece and spat and pooled on the floor of the kiln, doing serious damage to the kiln, to
other people's work in the vicinity, and to my reputation as a contributing member of that
team. It got me in trouble and it broke in half when I pulled it out of the kiln, so as far as
my plans for the piece went, it was an utter failure. In that very fact, however, it is the
most poignant example of material agency, it is the most phenomenal, and, thankfully,
when I take a step back and peer into the layers of corrosion and unexpected destruction,
I see a profound beauty that is so far beyond me as the work's creator.
Figure 15: I Lost Control; I Did Some Serious Damage, Woodfired Stoneware, Porcelain,
Terra Cotta, Steel, 2016
Steele 33 I am playing with my relationship to my work as its maker and viewer. I am
conflating the roles of maker and viewer and clearing a space for myself to be the viewer
of my own work by creating work that I cannot control or predict. When I watch a piece
unfold, or see it finished, I am acting as a viewer, as a spectator, rather than as a maker.
That position imparts on me the wonder, the awe, the mystery that is much more readily
available to an audience than it is to an artist. My work establishes my role in my world
as participator, inhabiting a space between objective spectatorship and subjective
expressiveness. I am both viewing and making in a way that pulls me into the world as a
person and as an artist.
CONFLATION/CONCLUSION
At its core, my work is about finding a personal balance between the observation
and manipulation of dynamic material within ceramics. I define that positioning as the
work's conceptual content. The point of equilibrium is an engaged participation that
exercises my agency as an artist and acknowledges agency in the material. Much of my
work leans to one side or the other, but all of it is focused on setting up a system of
potential change. With an idea/design of what might occur, I then allow my system to
enact or unfold according to the inherent character of my medium and process. It is all for
the sake of seeing and understanding my being and my role in my environment. The
adage: "We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are" (Anonymous), reminds
me that my making, my participating, and my viewing are an effort to define myself more
than to define the world. When a viewer approaches my work, they bring their own self
and their own perspective to it.
I find balance for the sake of harmonizing artistic and scientific approaches to
witnessing material and environment. Art leans more heavily toward manipulation when
an artist controls their medium to perform a conceptual role. Science prizes withdrawn
observation for the sake of objective information. Both, however, are strategies for
understanding the world and our being, and, since neither are perfect extremes on my
scale, both are valuable approaches for my inquiry. Ran Ortner, a painter of large-scale
seascapes, talks about art, science, and spirituality in the same breath: “A scientist and a
Steele 34 monk and an artist are all looking for the same thing: some deeper reality outside
themselves, or inside themselves. They are all involved in the same process: they have an
inkling of possibility and are working to realize that potential” (Conrad).
In my pursuit of a deeper reality, I have chosen distinctly to call my inquiry art rather
than science or philosophy. This distinction exercises my lightness in asking questions. I
create objects that ask those questions and are free to mean any number of things to
people with different questions. While writing about Marcel Duchamp and John Cage,
Herbert Molderings discusses art as it is distinct from science and philosophy:
The work of the artist differs from that of the scientist and philosopher in that it proceeds
in the entirely opposite direction and develops the ability to transform concepts into
'perceptual metaphors,' which are 'individual and without equals' and thus render it
impossible for criticism to derive new laws, axioms, and 'clearly marked boundaries'
from them. (Molderings, 124)
My work, as it embraces aspects of both art and science, can be defined as a
methodology for interpreting observation. Interpretations of the work can be emotional
and intuitive or factual and empirical. The value of my work stems from the acts of
observing and interpreting themselves, as they are dependent on the "happening" that is
the making of the work. When I began to see science as a perspective—as a method for
observing like art is, rather than as a ubiquity—I began to see both its value and its
limitation. For science is a construct dependent on subjective assumptions and is not
objective by any stretch. Art, as an openly subjective field, allows us to observe material
phenomena with a different lens, while science can offer a more complex and interesting
picture of the natural world that we find ourselves a part. This is the strength of process
art, because change, movement, and transience are fundamental states of material.
Learning to see that as poetic, as artistic, as well as learning to predict how things operate
according to the laws that we build around our observations, enriches my life and informs
my being at its most essential level.
Steele 35 Works Cited
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Steele 38 Annotated Bibliography
Abram, David. The Child, the Painter, and the Forgotten Life of Things. Haystack
Mountain School of Crafts, 2003. Print.
This is a brief essay in which Abram expresses his observation of artisans
working at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts during his two weeks there as a writer in
residence and alongside the workshops in varied craft media. Abram sees the artists
working with their material as less about their skill controlling said material but as more
of a collaboration between the people learning to form their medium and the medium
reciprocating that formation towards the makers.
Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books, 1996. Print.
More of a comprehensive philosophy than his essay The Child, the Painter, and
the Forgotten Life of Things, The Spell of the Sensuous expresses Abram’s argument for
phenomenology and contextualizes it within the history of philosophy. He also leads in
on the resulting political implications of his philosophy, assigning responsibility to
humans for our impact on the environment. He explores the dependence of human
thought and perception on the external environment and investigates epistemology
through an inquiry into language and sensory perception.
Andrews, Oliver. Living Materials: A Sculptor's Handbook. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1983. Print.
This volume delves into many specifics of making and understanding sculpture
and is far too broad to have been formative in my research. It was mainly in the
introduction where I found kernels of wisdom and quotations referencing material
interaction to be helpful content to my position.
Barnard, Rob. "Beyond the Process" Ceramics Monthly Vol. 34, No. 10, (October
1986) pp. 36-39.
Barnard is an important figure in the history of ceramics, especially with regard to
conceptually positioning the technique of woodfiring. He assigns the importance of the
Steele 39 woodfire process to the unique aesthetic it produces and defends its relevance in his
1980s context. I do not find myself behind the whole of his position and have a different
perspective on the importance of the process itself as it imbues its inherent quality into
the work it produces.
Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. London: Duke
University Press, 2010. Print
Bennett constructs her philosophical stance on materiality. She challenges
Cartesian dualism by expressing an inherent power/property within matter and positions
herself against the idea of matter being "ensouled" by life or vibrancy, suggesting rather
that vibrancy and matter are inseparable. She then dives into the political implications of
such a philosophy and works it into an angle of environmentalism. I certainly agree with
her conclusions, and her logic makes sense. I do, however, get a little lost when she turns
to banging the drum rather than positing her philosophy. All I wanted out of this book
was an explanation of her approach to materiality rather than the political manifesto it
became.
Bogost, Ian. Alien Phenomenology, or What It's Like to Be a Thing. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2012. Print
Bogost develops an object-oriented ontology that puts things, matter, and objects,
at the center of "being," as opposed to thought, perception, consciousness, or spirituality.
His philosophy suggests that nothing is "more real" than anything else (standing against
assumptions of Galileo and Descartes, explored here also). Humans become equal players
rather than sitting atop a hierarchy of philosophical relevance. We are not the sole or even
primary objects of philosophical interest. Unlike experimental phenomenology or the
philosophy of technology, Bogost builds his phenomenology on the idea that all things
interact with each other, effectively "perceiving" one another.
Cage, John and Kostelanetz, Richard. "The Aesthetics of John Cage: A Composite
Interview." The Kenyon Review, New Series, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Autumn 1987) pp.
102-130
Steele 40 Cage, a pillar of post-modern art history, exemplifies and expresses a shift in the
role of the artist from making a concise statement with a work or series to using art as a
means by which to ask questions. He shifts the role of the artist toward that of the
observing viewer, collapsing the clear modern barriers. I find that shift inspiring and
essential as to where I hope to position myself as an artist in my contemporary context.
Capra, Fritjof. The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern
Physics and Eastern Mysticism. Boston: Shambhala, 2000. Print.
Capra explores the parallels that emerge between advanced modern physics and
mystical philosophies, particularly the Taoism and Hinduism of Asia, but also including
ancient Greek and Western mysticisms. He argues that the mode by which our Western
worldview operates, the dualism between mind and body, actor and subject, has a history
and is as fallible as any doctrine. The Western rational point of view has produced, over
thousands of years, insight into nature, which, in itself, defies our rationalities, our
cultural assumptions regarding how to perceive the universe, and has begun to turn
towards a worldview present in mystic wisdoms since ancient time, the holistic unity
portrayed in mystic philosophies.
Cocker, Emma. "Over and Over, Again and Again." Failure. By Lisa Le Feuvre.
London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2010. N.p. Print.
This article was relevant to our discussions this semester about failure. What I
gleaned from it for thesis was essentially only Cocker's reference to John Baldessari and
explaination of his photo series with the balls thrown into the air. The distance that
Baldessari approached between ideal and geometric perfection, as it relates to achievable
human action, applied to my modes of thought.
Damasio, Antonio R. Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain.
London: Penguin, 2005. Print.
Since Descartes' most famous statement: "I think, therefore I am," the idea that
the mind exists as a distinct entity from the body has profoundly influenced Western
culture. Damasio, as head of neurology at the University of Iowa and a prominent
Steele 41 researcher on human brain function, challenges this premise considering the role of
emotion and feelings as central in human experience and rationality. My primary interest
in this book is its critique of Descartes as the basis on which much of Western thought is
built. He uses a lot of neurology patients as anecdotes to suggest that losing certain parts
of the brain has emotional implications, as well as intellectual, which becomes tangential
to my interest in the argument.
Der Lauf Der Dinge. Dir. Peter Fischli and David Weiss. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Oct.
2015.
Inside a warehouse, a precarious 70-100 feet long structure has been constructed
using various items. When this is set in motion, a chain reaction ensues. Fire, water, and
the laws of gravity and chemistry determine the life-cycle of objects, of things. It brings
about a story concerning cause and effect, mechanism and art, improbability and
precision. This film is essentially a video of a Rube Goldberd Device but with an
interesting focus on aesthetics as opposed to engineering, insofar as there is no task
achieved by the string of events and concern for direct and honest cause-effect
relationships is superficial. The work is a conflation of art and material dynamics, while
identifying itself as determinedly art.
Descartes, René, G. R. T. Ross, and Elizabeth S. Haldane. "Discourse on the Method
of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking for Truth in the
Sciences." The Philosophical Works of Descartes: Volume 1. New York:
Cambridge UP, 1970. N.p. Print.
In this essay, René Descartes makes his argument for reason in approaching an
understanding of the natural world with a scientific approach. Part of his argument works
within the framework of his famous quote: "cogito ergo sum" or "I think, therefore I am,"
which is built on a primacy that Descartes assumed for the thinking mind. Not only is the
mind considered primary over matter, Descartes considers it to be the measure by which
we realize our existence. Descartes’ assumption here is what he builds his defense of
reason on, and on which centuries of thought emerge regarding the mind as dualistically
separate from matter. This established another realm, philosophically, in which thought
Steele 42 and "spirit" or "soul" exist, that interacts with, but is not married to, matter or material
existence. This philosophical position is one that I care to speak against, reconsidering
mind and matter, or physical and ethereal, as more delicately interwoven than binary.
Groys, Boris. "The Obligation to Self-Design." e-flux, Nov. 2008. Web. 03 Feb. 2016.
This is an article on modern design in a modern context of secularism. Groys cites
Nietzsche and Adolf Loos as his main philosophical context for arguing that the paring
down of modern aesthetics in designed objects is with the express purpose of revealing
the essence of those objects rather than in perpetuating an illusion via aesthetics. Groys
argues that honestly seeking true essence, both in the physical object and in ourselves as
modern people, is the result of Nietzsche's diagnosis of God as dead, which eliminates
the privileged voyeur of our souls from our worldview and imparts responsibility for our
ethics to ourselves and to each other, the result being essential and honest ethical
imperative.
"Guggenheim." Process Art. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Dec. 2015.
Process art emphasizes the “process” of making art (rather than any
predetermined composition or plan) and the concepts of change and transience, as
elaborated in the work of such artists as Lynda Benglis, Eva Hesse, Robert Morris, Bruce
Nauman, Alan Saret, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, and Keith Sonnier. Their interest
in process and the properties of materials as determining factors has precedents in
the Abstract Expressionists’ use of unconventional methods such as dripping and
staining. In a ground-breaking essay and exhibition in 1968, Morris posited the notion of
“anti-form” as a basis for making art works in terms of process and time rather than as
static and enduring icons, which he associated with “object-type” art. Morris stressed this
new art’s de-emphasis of order through non-rigid materials, pioneered by Claes
Oldenburg, and the manipulation of those materials through the processes of gravity,
stacking, piling, and hanging.
Process artists were involved in issues attendant to the body, random occurrences,
improvisation, and the liberating qualities of nontraditional materials such as wax, felt,
and latex. Using these, they created eccentric forms in erratic or irregular arrangements
Steele 43 produced by actions such as cutting, hanging, and dropping, or organic processes such as
growth, condensation, freezing, or decomposition.
Higgin, Marc. "Tranchée Alexandra Engelfreit." Ceramics: Art and Perception 25.1
(2015): 60-63. Print.
This is an article on a particular installation by Alexanrda Engelfreit, a piece that
is massive in scale and process context. Engelfreit engages geological scale and time
using her whole body as her modeling tool. As Higgin describes it: "Her work leaves a
profound, visceral and unspoken sense of relation; body and clay, giving and receiving,
forcing and suffering, setting geological time-scales against the breath of the human
body." Engelfriet engages the body more than I am currently, but the materiality and
scale she is working with, not to mention her firing technique, is inspiring to my practice.
Ingold, Tim. "The Textility of Making." Cambridge Journal of Economics 2010: 34.
Print.
Ingold assigns primacy to the processes of formation as against their final
products, and to the flows and transformations of materials as against states of matter. He
challenges the Aristotelian model of hylomorphism and suggests that it leads to the
dualism, binary, and hierarchy that becomes foundation for our understanding of matter
as passive and inert and spirit as agency.
"Interviewing NCECA 2013 Emerging Artist Linda Swanson." NCECA Blog RSS.
N.p., 19 June 2013. Web. 05 May 2015.
Swanson is a contemporary in ceramics and is working with changing, dynamic
ceramic installation using water and raw clay to make large scale systems of change that I
find inspiring. She speaks eloquently about the importance of material in her interview
with NCECA, and I also had the privilege of interviewing her directly on the phone.
Steele 44 Irwin, Robert, and Lawrence Weschler. Being and Circumstance: Notes toward a
Conditional Art. Larkspur Landing, CA: Lapis in Conjunction with the Pace
Gallery and the San Francisco. Museum of Modern Art, 1985. Print.
This is the text from which I gleaned the quotation by Robert Irwin to begin my
paper. I found Irwin's art and philosophy engaging and of somewhat cursory interest to
my research, yet his quotation about change and the phenomenal is a perfect introduction
to my ideas.
"Linda Swanson." Linda Swanson. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2015.
Swanson is a contemporary artist working with clay and living and teaching in
Montreal. Her work is focused primarily on material interactions of ceramics, often
involving a chemical focus on glaze surfaces or unfired installations showing the
interactions between clay materials and water. She has been approachable by me, and I
have not only used her website as a source, but have had the opportunity to speak with
her directly about her work and her perspectives on making art and engaging in the world
through it.
Newton, Isaac. The Principia. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1995. Print.
This is the primary text in which Sir Isaac Newton published his observations and
theories regarding his system of physics, which defined science's understanding of the
behaviors of moving objects for the following three hundred years. His systems and
observations are no longer considered universally applicable, but they maintain predictive
power for objects under "normal" conditions. These models fall apart when observing
very small scales and very extreme conditions of speed, time, and gravity. Under these
conditions quantum mechanics and Einstein's relativity make more accurate predictions
contrary to Newton's models.
Steele 45 Serra, Richard, Ernst-Gerhard Güse, and Yve Alain. Bois. Richard Serra. New
York: Rizzoli, 1988. Print.
This book is a vast resource of philosophical context for and images of Richard
Serra's work, which relates to my practice in its focus on materiality, self-referential
form, and phenomenology.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University, n.d. Web. 02 Dec. 2015.
This is an incredible resource for overview and in-depth information about
philosophical concepts, movements, histories, etc. It includes concise definitions of broad
topics and generative strands of source-finding capacity. I have come back to the site
over and over for simplification and clarification of the concepts I'm working with. It's
like a reliable, respectable Wikipedia.
Zukav, Gary. The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics. New
York: Perennial Classics, 2001. Print.
Zukav presents quantum mechanics in a concept-heavy and math-light way,
seeking to make the dense topic, as a primary scientific theory for a contemporary
understanding of the physical world at small scale, approachable to an audience that may
very well be fascinated by what we know about how things are without the analytical,
jargon-abundant context of advanced physics. He claims that physics is considered
impossibly difficult by most of the population, not because the concepts are challenging
to grasp, but because the communication between those who research in the field of
physics and those outside the field is riddled with roadblocks.
Steele 46 Proposal
Artistic Agency via Material Inherency
"Change in the most basic condition (physic) of our universe. In its dynamic, change
(alongside time and space) constitutes a given in all things, and is indeed what we are
talking about when we speak of the phenomenal in perception. Most critically, change is
the key physical and physiological factor in our being able to perceive at all. Our
perceptual process is a kind of 'perpetual motion' assimilator. No change, no perceptual
consciousness. So while it is perfectly understandable that the overwhelming majority of
our conceptual energies are spent on organizing this myriad of perceptual data into some
form of 'familiar picture' we can work and live with, what is not so understandable is how
much of those intellectual energies have been spent on trying to avoid this fact and its
effects on our lives. Countless fortresses of 'concrete' thought have been thrown up to
transcend this inevitability, all of which, in the end, have proven to be so much wishful
thinking." –Robert Irwin
Research Question
Can conceptual strength and artistic agency radiate from the inherent qualities of
ceramic media, through strategies and traditions of material transformation?
Aim and Scope
Creativity relies on dynamic processes of change. The inherency3 of a material is
its physical dynamic prior to applying a chosen design4. Craft is the dynamic state that
operates between design and the finished art object. Perception and analysis follow as
additional dynamics incited when a viewer engages the art object. In my experience, an
excessive importance is placed on design, as it is indicative of the agency of the artist.
The inherent material quality of the work is too often neglected. My purpose is to assign
import to material quality and process, especially within the ceramic medium, and to find
a space for artistic agency in the creative processes apart from design.
I began my MFA by challenging my interest and experience in woodfired
ceramics, needing to first ask myself what drew me to that tradition. I settled on the ideas
surrounding process, particularly defined as a distinct and dynamic series of actions that
3
Throughout this paper I will use the term inherency to refer to the physical characteristics of a material
that operate independently of artistic manipulation.
4
Design will refer to the conception and intellectual strategy of the artist
Steele 47 leave visual information. In short, the woodfired object carries a visual record of its
having been made.
The kiln makes direct marks on the objects within; each discrete piece of fired
ceramic references the kiln-space it occupied, the proximity of other objects, and the
activity of people tending the kiln. The actions and decisions of artists, in partnership
with inherent material properties, create a surface in response to form, space, and time. At
the unloading of the kiln, the objects are investigated, revered for their quality imparted
by a system established and set into motion.
In his essay "Beyond the Process," Rod Barnard challenges woodfire-artists: "We
in the ceramics world have embraced wood firing and it's spectacular effects without
bothering to understand what it is about the process that moves us. What, for example, is
its language and can we as artists still exploit its archaic vocabulary to communicate
contemporary concerns?" (Barnard, 37). Barnard goes on to claim that process is not
content and that the resulting aesthetics are the primary concern. While I understand his
position, I am convinced that process itself can be content, and woodfiring as direct
participation in a dynamic act of material conversion exemplifies that. This
transformative process, and the intentional meaning it carries, is foundational to my
work.
Rationale for Inquiry
I am an agent with control over the finished art image/object that I make. I have
aesthetic sensibilities and creative intent, yet I am motivated to make work that springs
from something more elemental, more essential than those subjectivities. I recognize that
art requires the artist's presence, and I am striving to strike a delicate balance between
artistic will and the process of making. Many materials and scenarios can express this
investigation because, as Robert Irwin says, "change constitutes a given in all things"
(Irwin, 9). It is important that my work reference its making by way of a discernable
process so as to emphasize material inherency. I have chosen to use woodfired ceramic
techniques simply because they have been the forces that have challenged me to consider
my work in this way.
Steele 48 John Cage comments, "Instead of representing my control, [my compositions]
represent questions that I've asked and the answers that have been given by means of
chance operations. I've merely changed my responsibility from making choices to asking
questions" (Cage, 108). I want my work to ask the questions "What is this?" and "How
did this come to happen?" as well as "What does this mean?" My finished work operates
as evidence of the forces and the period of time that brought it into being, and also
challenges the viewer to consider their belonging to an ever-changing material world.
Objectives
The objective of my inquiry is to expand the content of my work in new directions by
making images of new events, and to make polished, finished work that is evident of its
conceptual base, while also making choices influenced by subjective and objective
aesthetic constructs: color, form, value, etc. The challenge is to bring a sense of
individual artistic decision making into the final artwork from a starting point that
precedes me, that is the essentially driven investigation of ceramic materials and their
dynamic states. Linda Swanson has positioned her work using similar concerns:
"Typically in ceramics we try to remove water by drying and firing. Its final removal
renders ceramic objects permanent. As I started to add water back in to raw clay and
glaze materials, I saw them undergo various changes in form and character and I became
less interested in a final lasting form than in the processes of formation and dissolution"
(Swanson). Swanson's inspiring installations are time-based material events that
exemplify transitory material properties. Her works also include considerations of color
and form that strengthen their merit as artworks when they might otherwise be considered
purely experiments. I see my work operating in a similar vein.
Context
My work is positioned around the modernist idea that art can succeed as selfreferential rather than metaphorical. I am challenging representation and metaphor by
offering inherent material quality. I am looking at the action-based artworks of Anish
Kapoor, Linda Swanson, Jackson Pollock, and John Cage. I am also looking at
Steele 49 philosophies of Tim Ingold and Robert Irwin that challenge predominant Western
conceptions of art and material interaction.
Ingold specifically challenges the Aristotelian hylomorphic model of matter and
form:
To create anything, Aristotle reasoned, you have to bring together form (mophe) and
matter (hyle)… Form came to be seen as imposed by an agent with a particular design in
mind, while matter, thus rendered passive and inert, became that which was imposed
upon… my ultimate aim… is to overthrow the model and to replace it with an ontology
that assigns primacy to the processes of formation as against their final products, and to
the flows and transformations of materials as against states of matter. (Ingold, 92)
The primacy Ingold asserts for the processes of formation is the context in which
my research begins to operate. I am establishing scenarios for which material (hyle) can
enact its dynamic property, thereby supporting Ingold's affront to Aristotelian thought.
The references I am making are to the material itself and its dynamic quality.
Simultaneously, it is an assertion of agency to establish such a scenario by which we can
perceive a material's inherency. It is an assertion of agency to ask a question, to
investigate the essential.
The inherent qualities of conscious-less matter are not value based because they
operate independently of value systems, of life, of human experience, of perception. But
asking questions of those materials becomes an autonomous act and asking someone to
look necessarily imposes a value system. When perception is introduced into the
equation, when agency comes in, when decisions are made, we introduce value. The
reference is independent of value, but making the reference is a value-based action.
Methodology
An art piece can operate as evidence of its having changed over time, a direct
artifact of its having been created. The formal quality of this piece references the process
by which it came into being. The image records a period of time in which change occurs,
the transition of material state, the former and the future. The inherent quality of a
medium can be focused upon as artistic content. I am making images and sculptures that
Steele 50 act as static artifacts of dynamic action. I am also making work that undergoes material
change in the gallery setting under the eye of the viewer.
I am firing wood kilns in the region and setting up systems for change. I am
allowing these systems to unfold, documenting, maintaining controls and variables, and
analyzing. I am identifying observable phenomena and establishing systems by which
those phenomena are on display. I am identifying the difference between the artifact, or
the evident object, which shows a prior happening, and the dynamic object, one that puts
on display a present and current state of change, happening before the eyes of the viewer.
I will determine the difference between the documentation and observation of an event
through a body of work this coming year.
Potential Outcomes
Through this inquiry I strive to create a series, or multiple series of works that
exemplify the quality of material in transition, to assign primacy to the processes of
formation of material as opposed to their final products. The work will exemplify
material that has changed, showing evidence of that change, and material that is
changing: an image of recorded action and an occurring action. I will explore this within
the context of ceramics as a medium and employ woodfiring, among other techniques, to
create work that puts on display a philosophical reverence for material inherency and
transition.
Steele 51 Image Inventory
Jonathan Steele, Pitcher, Woodfired Stoneware, Reduction Cooled, 2015
Jonathan Steele, Teapot and Cup, Woodfired Stoneware, 2016
Steele 52 Jonathan Steele, Kamagraph, Woodfired Stoneware, 2015
Jonathan Steele, I Shrink Under Pressure, Woodfired Stoneware, Paint, 2016
Steele 53 Jonathan Steele, The Gravity of the Situation I, Woodfired Stoneware, Porcelain,
Spraypaint, 2015
Jonathan Steele, The Gravity of the Situation II-IV, Woodfired Stoneware, Porcelain,
Terra Cotta, 2016
Steele 54 Jonathan Steele, The Gravity of the Situation, Woodfired Stoneware, Porcelain, Terra
Cotta, 2016
Jonathan Steele, We Come To Resolution, Porous Stoneware, Soda Ash, Water, Steel
2016
Steele 55 Jonathan Steele, I Lost Control; I Did Some Serious Damage, Woodfired Stoneware,
Porcelain, Terra Cotta, Steel, 2016