i am making fluffy cumulonimbus and cumulostratus clouds out of porcelain.  the inside of the cloud i am building right now smells like a lake.  that wet, earthy smell reminds me of childhood freedom, dreams of endless possibilities, night crawlers, swimming long distances, early morning fog.  it was a time when i had no idea i would one day be full of nostalgia for the south i never want to return to, and would instead be making clouds.  after deeply breathing the lake-like air, i asked the cloud, “are you happy?,” it said nothing.  when i asked the cloud, “do you want a sister?,” it said,”yes.” so, i will make a huge family of them.  the dreams of the clouds will finally be captured like thought bubbles inside glass snow globes.  i wish i knew how to escape the pull of gravity the way clouds seem to.

All of these thoughts made me remember a monologue that has stayed with me for years (from the brilliant play Black Battles with Dogs (Combat de Negre et de Chein), by Bernard-Marie Koltes).  It is spoken by Alboury, a tribal West African man whose brother has been murdered by a white engineer who is working on the construction of a bridge:

A long time ago I said to my brother:  I feel cold;  he said to me:  that is because there is a little cloud between you and the sun;  I said to him:  how can that little cloud make me so cold, when all around me people are sweating and getting burned by the sun?  My brother said to me:  I too am cold;  so we kept each other warm.  Then I said to my brother:  when will this could vanish, so that the sun may warm us once again?  He said to me:  it will never vanish, it is a little cloud that will follow us wherever we go, always in between us and the sun.  And I felt it follow us everywhere, so that in the midst of people laughing, naked in the heat, my brother and I were still cold and still warmed one other.  So, beneath this little cloud which deprived us of warmth, my brother and I grew used to each other, and used to sharing our warmth.  If my back had an itch, my brother was there to scratch it, and when his back itched I scratched it; worry made me bite the nails on his hands and, in his sleep, he sucked my thumb.  Our women stayed close to us and they too began to freeze, but we all kept warm because we remained close to one another under our little cloud, we became used to each other and if one of us shivered it spread from one side of the group to the other.  Our mothers came to join us, and the mothers of their mothers and their children, and our children, a countless family whose members were never torn away, not even in the dead, but retained in our close embrace, sheltered from the cold under the cloud.  The little cloud had risen closer and closer towards the sun, depriving the whole family of warmth as we grew ever larger and ever more used to each other, an innumerable family made up of the dead, the living, and the unborn, each one ever more indipensible to the other, as we saw the edge of the sun-warmed lands moving away from us.  That is why I have come for the body of my brother who has been torn from among us, because his absence has disturbed that closeness which has allowed us all to keep warm, because, even though he is dead, we still have need of his heat to warm us and he needs ours if he is to remain warm.

we land on a highway with the force of a locomotive. i walk away from the crumpled rubble carrying a bright yellow cloth wardrobe, inset with clear plastic windows. i don’t bloody my teeth or tear my knuckles. i think of the bleached planet. i shouldn’t have walked away. the pilot is crumpled. i walk away from him, too. i walk along the broken highway until i arrive home. no one is expecting me. i wasn’t expecting to plummet to earth in a thin metal craft. the bathroom tile is clean. the carpets are white and have been vacuumed. i sit on the bed, with my pale billowing skirt and perfect hair and waxy skin, under my knowledge of the bleached planet. the daylight filters in as if nothing happened. i sit there until i hear a knock on the door. i wake up to a window full of snow, and think: is that what space exploration is supposed to be like?

thank you for the barrage of words, for inventing and arranging them, for sending out locomotives full of them. thank you for sending them out with the umbrellas and shovels i need to sort them. i an not a poet, but i need to be pummeled by fistfuls of images and fueled by words, to find definition with which i may navigate. thank you for the sort of provocation that leads to dreaming of space travel and thin metal and mint green dresses and waking up to snow. now that i am awake, i will always know that i returned from outer space untarnished and fearless.

I intend to continue writing critically about my own work, as well as that of other emerging artists. I hope to engender a more critical dialogue in the field of ceramics (beyond the old versus craft debate) and to explore the ways in which artists may use this medium to engage their social, cultural, and artisitic concerns in a very contemporary way. How does such a humble, ancient, and earth-bound material speak to our increasingly digital culture? How does the possibility of a purely virtual presence affect not only the way we chose to interface with the physical world, but our capability and willingness to do so?

By
Dawn Gwedoline Holder
Introduction: Origins of the Intimate Miniature

It started in the middle, as most things do, a center that slowly radiates outward. I began as a maker of vessels, pursuing form on the wheel, finding pleasure in the creation of useful objects. Although my work no longer focuses on functionality or the use of the wheel as a tool, my origins as potter have informed many concerns central to my work, such as the exploration of interior and exterior space (both physically and metaphorically), and especially my interest in the domestic realm and all its trappings.

As a potter, cups and mugs were among my favorite forms to fashion. Cups are the most intimate of vessels. They are cradled in the hands and caressed by the lips. One intrinsic characteristic of cups is that they can only be sipped from by one mouth at a time. My attraction to this profound sense of intimacy has drawn me to the making of miniature objects. Working on a diminutive scale allows for an intimate and solitary encounter with the viewer. Although works such as Play House are not miniature when compared with the average sculpture or human body, the space created within can be seen as a miniature in comparison to the actual square footage of the typical suburban home.

The use of miniature conveys a sense of both preciousness and empowerment. The attention to detail on small objects implies a sense of time, patience, and care. Small things are always in danger of disappearing or being lost, yet they are easy to control and manipulate. Additionally, the toy-like quality of small objects immediately transports us to youthful times of wandering, imagining, and collecting pocketfuls of precious, little things.

The realm of the miniature provides a world where the both the maker and the viewer have the gift of omniscience and omnipresence. As the scale shifts, the relationship between our bodies and the objects brings us into the realm of the gigantic. Momentarily, we allow ourselves to give in to the illusion of possessing power and control over these tiny, imaginary worlds.

I am attracted to the pure whiteness that porcelain provides. I often choose to leave much of my work unglazed and uncolored to underscore its existence as fictive, fantastic, or living in the realm of memory and imagination rather than reality. Whiteness provides a blank slate unto which the viewer may project his or her own details. Whiteness invites flights of fancy and daydreaming by transporting us into the realm of the imagined. With the blank in the mind, one is able to connect with the remembrances of physicality and experience, rather than their actuality. Color is used sparingly but intensely, and with particular emotive connotations in mind. The use of pearlescent metallic paint throughout the work (in both Play House and Pinnacles 1, 2, and 3) is meant to evoke a sense of both shimmering beauty and false preciousness/ pretenses.

My studio practice consists of an active interplay between image and object, space and time. Ideas are developed gradually, often undergoing a process of modification, revision, and recontextualization until their final form is discovered. The process of gradual discovery is essential to my work, as it allows me to generate intuitive responses to the imagery and subject matter I am exploring. The interaction between sculptural object and two-dimensional image gives me the opportunity to explore the imagery from a distanced and slightly removed perspective.

Presenting my ideas through photography and video serves both to disorient the viewer in terms of scale and to give a sense of authenticity to objects, which have been crafted for the explicit purpose of inhabiting the realms of fantasy, memory, and imagination. Additionally, transporting the objects from the realm of the viewer into a two dimensional worlds allows the work to exist purely in the mind, creating an experience removed from the realm of tactility and shared space. In this case, the viewer cannot readily use his or her body as a subconscious tool for measuring scale.

In building Play House, I have rendered the archetypal structure of the American dream into a fantastic shrine, a beautiful but unnerving space that encapsulates the longing and anxiety of the modern female. The sculpture takes the simplest form of the house, as rendered by the imagination of a child: a pitched roof, a window, and a door. Although simple in form, the house is rather lavish in its décor and use of materials. The outside walls and roof of the house are adorned with thick, rainbow-shaped swirls of white buttercream icing. The edges of the roof are decorated with flowers and ruffles, piped on with pale pink buttercream icing. The inner walls glow a pale pink and are awash with opalescent glitter. The window and door are encased in molding made from thick, swirls of pearlescent porcelain. The entire confection is placed on a large padded, pedestal swathed in shimmering pink satin, as if on a giant pillow.

The sugary sweetness of the frosting is at once poignant and overwhelming. The smell permeates its surroundings so completely that the work is perceived, for many viewers, first through the olfactory sense (engendering a subtle, subconscious hunger for sweets, the desire for cupcakes or cookies) and is afterwards encountered visually. In fact, the desire to sample the icing has proved so overwhelming that at least several viewers have reached out a finger to swipe a little taste. The association for many is one of both comfort (everyone knows how quickly the sugary reward can momentarily tame the wayward, whining child) and celebration (the infinite variations of birthday and wedding confections). The smell of frosting evokes the joy of childhood, excessive piles of cakes and cookies tempting the hungry shopper in the supermarket bakery, and the enduring tradition of the wife/mother/grandmother who expresses caring and affection for her family through the preparation of sweets.

White sugar is intrinsically linked with the idea of desire and want; it is at once entirely unnecessary, the hallmark of American culture (in the prevalence of soda and junk food); and, of course, unmistakably delicious. As with many things delicious, overindulgence can quickly bring one into a state of revulsion and nausea, even danger (as in the tantalizingly tasty witch’s house). This dual relationship with sugar forms an appropriate analogue to the insatiable desire for material possessions and longing for an ever-larger house in which to shelter them.

The dream must be beautiful to catch the eye. Even though the adult knows that nothing is more “valuable” than the precious gleam cavalierly emitted from the facet of a diamond, the shimmering frost of glitter excites the inner child, keening back to the simple notion that every sparkling thing is precious and desirable…. even birds understand this. Why else do they bring bits of metal and shiny foil gum wrappers to tuck into their nests? When diamonds are not attainable, we appreciate the shine of whatever sparkle we are capable of attaining to decorate and elevate our tired surroundings. Glitter, sprinkled to excess, also speaks of rainy-day craft projects; the cheap allure of overdone makeup and over-sexed girls; not to mention, the impossibility of ridding yourself of it completely, once those flecks have graced your face and hair.

My video Suburban Allegory explores the idea of the suburban house (and the life it represents) as a fetishistic object. I am especially interested in exploring the space of the lonely princess. How does she abate her boredom? What are her playthings, and how do these speak to her desires/ fantasies? I imagine the princess trapped within a tiny room. She is surrounded by miniature houses, tiny models of suburban dream homes, which speak to her desire for the decadent comfort of suburbs.

There are no windows in the princess’s tiny room, but she dreams of the outside world. Perhaps, she even escapes one day. As she searches, she leaves a trail of houses behind her to mark her path. She finds picturesque houses, construction, emptiness, wind, the loneliness of an enormous lawn, the edge of the world, and she buries her dreams in the woods of longing. There is a sense of loss and confusion, as she cannot find her dream home, her prince, her family, or anyone. She remains alone in her tower, waiting under the auspices of the hourglass, with no one to admire her black hair or pearls, fading beauty.

These themes and these questions create an allegory of the modern woman’s dilemma. The freedom to choose everything, a career, family, location, an education, is as powerful as it is overwhelming. I question how much happiness attaining the material trappings of the American Dream actually brings. The intoxicating desire for success and independence clash with the need to be vulnerable occasionally, to be taken care of and sheltered. The quest for financial independence and a successful career often requires sacrificing close relationships with friends and family. Even as women continue to gain recognition and equality in the workplace, images in the media continue to reinforce the ideas that women should be thin, attractive, and sexy, while still retaining a sense of modesty. Achieving success and happiness requires a deft navigation through these conflicting forces. The princess is caught in an anxious rift between longing for the simplicity of the past and seeking freedom of the present.

(stills from Suburban Allegory)

The iconic picture window found in so many suburban homes functions not only to let in light and frame the surrounding landscape, it also frames the tableau of intimate life and its accoutrements for the wandering eyes of the curious neighbor or passerby. Because the video is tucked away on the inside, the viewer must crouch down to peer through the window or the door. In this way, the viewer is invited to engage in the enticing action of peeping into windows of others. The crouching viewer becomes part of the work as his/her actions serve both to entice the curiosity of others, and to underscore the emotional separation inherent in the fantasy world.

Throughout the work, various layers of frames and pedestals serve to create a sense of metaphorical elevation, physical separation, and picturesque preciousness. The satin pillow pedestal of the house evokes both a sensuously soft bed and the lining of a jewelry box. Inside the Play House, elaborate corner sconces profile various model houses. On the far wall, a particularly choice model house rests upon a tiny, delicate pink chaise lounge, which then sits upon a highly decorative wall sconce. Yet again, the Pinnacle trio uses this double nesting of platforms: the tall and craggy golden pinnacles, topped by perfect green lawns, upon which sit tiny porcelain houses sinking deeply into elegantly sculpted porcelain pillows. The video itself operates on many layers of remove: the use of the golden frame to house the princess figure; the screen housed behind luscious, immobile curtains; and finally, the deep and curvaceous molding around the window and door which frames the entire set.

What is left of the frontier? What about the element of surprise, and the spirit of adventure and exploration that was once so intrinsic to this land of ours? We conquered the frontier, a little bit for adventure, but mostly so we close ourselves off in our own tiny worlds. The necessity for space and privacy is very different in the United States than it is in other countries. The trio of Pinnacles pays homage to the opportunities we miss by hiding within our preciously conceived suburban fortifications.

The pinnacle sculptures also serve to place the Play House in a fantastically impossible geographic location. They shift the scale of the work entirely, providing a far-removed aerial view, in hope that the viewer could imagine himself/herself housed comfortably, perched high on a golden aerie, surrounded by a manicured lawn of green.