University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Falling through the cracks: Two years of work

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Falling through the cracks: Two years of work

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Content INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. ProQuest Information and Learning 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. FALLING THROUGH THE CRACKS; Two Years of Work by Stanton Curtis Hunter A Thesis Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF FINE ARTS August 2000 Copyright 2000 Stanton Curtis H unter Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 1405239 ___ <g> UMI UMI Microform 1405239 Copyright 2001 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. U N IV E R S IT Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L IF O R N IA T H E G R A D U A TE SC H O O L U N IV E R S IT Y PA R K L O S A N G E L E S . C A L IF O R N IA 1 0 0 0 7 T h is thesis, •written by -A**Tts i4u«^ag._______ u n der the direction of A li Thesis Com m ittee, a n d approved by a ll its members, has been pre- s-ented to and accepted by the Dean o f T he G raduate School, in p a rtia l fulfillm ent o f the requirem ents fo r the degree of Master , of...FjL n.& -.A E .ts. _ TH ESIS COMMITTEE . lA J lcA b e^ Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ii “The presence of an object can render space more empty than m ere vacancy could ever envisage.” - Homi Bhabha, Anish Kapoor. 1998, University of California Press “Beauty is the oracle that speaks to us all.” - Luis Barragan (architect) - Herbert Yampa, Mexican Contemporary. 1997, Stewart, Tabori & Chang “What should be im portant is the expression itself, not which camp it is in. We’re in an era of synthesis, and that’s the fun of it, that’s the whole point. Performance is not about scholarly truth, or right or wrong, or proving something. It is about expressing something.” - Esa Peka Salonen (Conductor, Los Angeles Philharmonic), Los Angeles Times, January, 2000 “There is no such thing as modem art. There was art that was done then, and art that is done now; a rt is equal.... All a rt is experience, yet all experience is not art. The artist chooses from experience th at which he defines out as art, possibly because i t has n o t y e t been experienced enough, or because i t needs to be experienced more, [italics my own] .... All art-world distinctions are meaningless.” - Robert Irwin & Jam es Turrell, statem ents for the Art &Technology Project, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1971 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS Epigraph. .......................................................... ii Preface ............................................................. iv Personal Art History ........................................ 1 Graduate Studies .............................................. 3 Motivation ......................................................... 5 Two Years of Work: Cracks, Fissures, Rivers, Fault Lines ............................................ 8 Conclusion ......................................................... 13 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PREFACE Often in our culture, and in our a rt training, cleverness is valued more than sensitivity, explanations are valued over silence and direct experience, formula has co-opted creativity, and irony/kitsch has defeated beauty. My art is an attempt to counter this trend. If the past is any indicator, my work will always evolve and change. What will not change is how I want to effect the viewer, aspects of which are to give them the same sense of astonishment I get when something new comes to me, and to convey a pristine stillness that is present when the mind stops. Can these be expressed? Other artists have successfully conveyed them to me through their work, and I have the urge to try to do this also. I saw a video on Maya Lin (Fall semester, 1999), architect and designer of the Viet Nam Memorial. I was impressed by how she wrote pages and pages of thoughts, and conducted thorough research before coming up with designs. This preparation was part of the creative act. I have used this thesis in the same way. In writing about work I am currently engaged in I have seen more consciously what it is I am drawn to intuitively, aesthetically, and philosophically. It has been interesting to flesh out verbally what initially Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. seemed to be two years of blindly following my nose. I am now making sense of my intuitive, visceral path. I can unapologetically state that for me it all boils down to beauty. More specifically, the inherent primal beauty in, and as a spontaneous response to, the gesture of the natural. This might be exposing the visual patterns of structure of plants, water, or geological formations, or perhaps change and the forces of change as evidenced through the appearance of cracks, rust, fault lines, and erosion. I would like to thank the School of Fine Arts for granting me a Teaching Assistantship which has allowed me to embark on my studies. I am grateful for the program’s intim ate size which allowed for easy access to faculty as well as their attention, and was conducive to “cross-pollenation” with other graduate students working in other media. I feel it is responsible to have a small, selective graduate program considering the actual availability of work in the a rt world. I would like to thank my thesis committee for their excellent feedback and suggestions in regards to my art over the past two years. A special thanks to Ruth Weisberg and Kate Hoskins for their careful reading of my thesis, which has not only made it more readable, but has brought about Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. greater coherency to my studio practice as well. Finally, I wish to thank my family, Sue and Chris, for bending their schedules around mine for the past two years so that I could pursue my art. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PERSONAL ART HISTORY 1 For me, the door to the world of art was through functional pottery. At first sight, this seems a craft-oriented, design-fueled pursuit. However, there are deeper aesthetic aspects and even social values in regards to livelihood that make ceramics as much a statem ent and expression as any art. As an activity, pottery is both a protest and a return, and has been since the beginning of the Arts & Craft movement in the late 1800’s. Simply put, this movement was a reaction to the spread of industrialization, factories, mass-produced products, and the dehumanization of the workplace and of commodities. I grew up in M innesota in the 50’s and 60’s , a time when this movement had a renaissance. To me, pottery was a symbol of the entire counter-culture movement. It was an activity that was anti-war, anti- commercialization, anti-9-to-5 wasteland of the work place. It was especially linked to honesty, integrity, working with one’s hands, the back-to-the-land movement, communes, the influx of Eastern religions and world-views to America, and environmental concerns. The “small is beautiful” aesthetic, the cottage industry feel of ceramic production at that time came in part from the East, with the popularity of Bernard Leach and his writings on apprenticeship with Zen potters in Japan. In short, I saw the life and work of the potter as a Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. spiritual life lived outside the loop of commercialization and industrialization, all concentrated in the aesthetic of the hand-made, useful object. Coinciding with the rise of pottery as a cottage industry, artists (for example P eter Voulkos, Ken Price, and Paul Soldner) and institutions in Los Angeles w ere breaking traditional craft-based boundaries and catapulting ceramics into the arena of tine art, using day to make abstract expressionistic works. This was the most fertile and significant period of American ceramics, and rem ains influential today in the freedom to break tradition it has given to all clay artists who have followed. It is against this historical backdrop that ceramics began to hold more possibilities for me than just simply making good, honest pots. Almost unconsciously, a more narrative way of working took form. The pots w ere becoming more animated, more experimental, more expressive of feelings an d ideas. My work prior to graduate school did not have any particular look or style, though a certain amount of whimsy would often find its way into th e objects. One o f the more important explorations with clay during this time that still influences my work today was a materials approach. In essence, I was finding different ways of distressing clay, of exposing it to natural but accelerated processes such as heating/drying, moisture, stretching, cracking, breaking, and scraping. I would then capture the clay somewhere in its trans formation from one state into another. Though I was heavily manipulating Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 clay, it was still earth doing what earth does. In effect, the results were as much in the category of “foundobject ” as they ware a result of manipulation. With a materials approach, texture became a very im portant concern. It was apparent from looking at biological, nature, and geological photography, as well as photographs of th e earth from outer space, th a t textures and patterns of structure repeat themselves from microcosm to macrocosm. This was m y first, though somewhat unconscious, experience of how scale can reverse, and how this effects perception. Scale was to become a recurring element in my work. A final development prior to graduate studies was th a t I was becoming dissatisfied making singular works that sit on pedestals separate from the viewer. This led to an interest in making groupings of pieces that m ight tell a story or become more of an environm ent. GRADUATE STUDIES I have used graduate school as an opportunity to make art on a larger scale where the viewer is engulfed by the work. R ather than being grandiose or theatrical, the art has actually gravitated more towards the subtle. It may cover a larger physical area, yet less seems to be there. The work suggests a different place, but in such a way that the gallery remains a gallery, the hall, a hall. The space in which the work occurs is not disguised, but rather is overlaid Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. by another place or occurrence. Even the objects placed so as to change the room into a different environment work both literally and figuratively. Clay objects read as clay, but also allude to rocks. Cracks in the wall or floor remain cracks, yet suggest different kinds and scales of topography, perhaps even aspects of our psychologies. Not only is the work on a larger scale, many of the installations are miniaturizations of yet still larger areas, as if viewing geography from an airplane. When scale is m anipulated in this way, it creates an immediate visceral connection with the work. Having a body makes everything relative in size. When this relativity is challenged, for instance when a small crack in the floor reads like a river, the logic of physical relations is challenged. One can sense a space as large as a landing strip inside the smallest space in the body. These are perceptions which almost seem to occur at the cellular level, where the body seems infinitely small yet infinitely big. By playing with scale, it is possible for awareness to be freed up, allowing new and direct perceptions to rush in. The work I am doing now probably has its deepest connection with the earth art movement of the 1970’s which has continued on into the 90’s by artists such as Andy Goldsworthy and Richard Long. My work differs in a few essential ways. First, whereas most of the earth art was/is executed outside, my Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 work seems more effective inside. I feel that there are already enough, natural processes occurring outside and the contrast is lost. Second, and also an issue of contrast, many earth artists have rearranged natural elements in a Cartesian/manmade sort of way, introducing straight lines, smooth circles and sharp angles to the out of doors. The main th ru st in my work has been rather to expose the gesture of the natural as it creeps into manmade urban environments, either as nature is already doing, or in added, manipulative ways, such as placing objects indoors th at evoke geological events. I might add that clay is a very appropriate material for realizing many of these occurrences, as it is itself the result of natural geological processes. Third, my work is not necessarily impermanent, nor pointing to impermanence in an entropic, break-down, decay-laden way, a la Robert Smithson. There is an aspect of impermanence th at is not degenerative, b u t is actually an opening to the unknowable, and perhaps is even life-giving. T hat is a very important distinction. MOTIVATION Beyond the visual content of my work, I realized during the first semester that I wanted to make work that was not contrived or reactionary, but actually hits me where I live. My deepest desire is to make work th at is Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. contemplative, work th at is conducive to stilling the viewer’s mind. The extreme harshness of M innesota w inters in my childhood taught me th a t there is the most exquisite beauty and aloneness th at comes to the fore in desolate environments. Other artists have been successful in evoking stillness in me. Bill Viola, Michael McMillan, many of the Light & Space artists and E arth A rt people come to mind. Their work will never go out of date because the silence and clarity of being is lasting and will always be relevant. The more hectic, chaotic, and superficial society becomes, the more this kind of work th at points to the depths of silence is needed. I asked Bill Viola when he visited USC in April, 1999 what means are still effective to make younger people, who have grown up w ith the overstimulation and bombardment of the senses in our culture, stop and pay attention. He said silence. Michael McMillan uses changes in scale, darkness, uneven walking/crawling surfaces and other devices to disorient the mind and create a sense of intimate experience. This intimacy of experience is always available, but is clouded by habitual modes of thinking, feeling, and moving. McMillan’s work disrupts habit and seems to break down normal ways of knowing. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. My relationship to the gallery, the “white cube”, is not an a rt historical association, clogged with rules generated by years of art-making and a rt criticism. It is a zendo; a clean, pristine, empty environment th at inspires me to straighten up and take notice. I also associate this space with a screen upon which anything can happen, giving a sense of wild potential. It wakes me up and puts me on my toes. It is my desire to make work th at exposes and emphasizes these pristine and awake qualities for the viewer. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TWO YEARS OF WORK- CRACKS,FISSURES, RIVERS, FAULT LINES 8 The summer prior to graduate school I was experimenting with cutting thick clay slabs with a wire, creating undulating terrains. Due to its thickness, and to the dry hot air, the slab naturally began to “S” crack into three pieces. This is a common type of crack that travels through the entire clay wall caused by uneven drying, and is literally in the shape of an S. The gesture of the crack and the texture within it struck me as beautiful. These elements dramatically contrasted with the terrain of the wire cut, suggesting a deep river gorge viewed from the perspective of an airplane. In hindsight, this became the foundation of work that has formed the through-line for me over the past two years. The first work generated from this fortunate accident was a 36 foot long river or fault line cutting through 70 wire-cut slabs of varying thicknesses. It was “glazed” with an external raking light that highlighted textures and troughs with shadow and light. Another tributary leading to my current work was the “Granite Isles”. Here were slabs of granite on top of which rested little wire-cut granite- colored clay huts arranged in a staggered format, m irroring the granite tile floor the work floated upon. This was a first attempt a t having work morph out of the environment, with th e intent th at the environment become more alive, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. or at least less taken for granted. As a result of poetically playing w ith the granite floor, it took on the characteristics of a “sea” of granite. Next came a series of partially buried pots in a 40 foot neglected strip of dirt just outside of W att Hall at USC. Large rocks and small river rocks were brought in and placed according to how w ater flowed through, th e area, as evidenced from existing eroded troughs. The pots were “glazed” w ith d irt on the outside and buried, bringing to one’s attention the private space of the vessel interiors, as they were glazed w ith bright reflective colors. I was initially trying to suggest an archaeological dig in an unlikely, untended site. Unexpectedly, as th e outsides of the pots blended completely w ith the ground, the true shape of the vessel was obscured and the openings became more like portals into a large, shiny subterannean world. I combined th is element of underground reflective spaces w ith the slab river/fault piece previously mentioned to create the series “U ndercurrents”. “Undercurrents” is a series of gashes or eruptions that have the gesture and flow of a river that opens sporadically to reveal a luminous underground interior, a current flowing beneath the surface - this current can suggest water, or blood, or lava, or simply space. For a future installation, these “faults” will be arranged in row s, perhaps four or five, referencing tilled fields which are so prevalent in Minnesota. I like the improbability of something so completely untamable being cultivated. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 10 H ie final related avenue of work I w ant to mention, is th e coloring of found cracks on concrete floors. They grew specifically out of a topographical fault line/river/mountain range that morphed out of the wall which I had on exhibit for USC’s open graduate studios in the Fall of 1999. This topography was built out from the wall w ith plywood and joint compound, and lit so as to dramatically highlight th e raised area. On one level, by coloring in the cracks and putting in mirrors to reflect them and make them appear longer, I am simply marking them as beautiful occurrences that usually go unnoticed. This is actually in the tradition of Robert Irwin, who did a series of markings across the country in the 1970’s. He would put a rock or a stick in line with the view of a sunset framed by mountains out in the wilderness. Or he would manipulate the view out a window so the viewer would notice how shadows fall on buildings at a particular tim e of day. O r more blatant, putting a huge rectangle between two buildings to frame a particular view he felt should be noticed. And of course marking has a rather vast tradition in and of itself outside of art. Grave markers of different cultures as well as pilgrimage route markings are two examples. David Ireland is another artist who works in marking found occurrences. In David Ireland. A Decade Documented. 1978-1988 (University of California Press) it states, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 11 Ireland came to see his role as an artist as not necessarily to be original, but to retrieve or uncover existing information, revealing its potential as art. pg. 22 There is also a tradition of filling in cracks of Japanese Raku-fired pottery with, gold leaf, transform ing the vessel from something damaged or imperfect into an object even more precious than if it had never cracked. In the western world, dentists fill in cavities and smooth out cracks rather than embellish them like the Japanese potters. The crack reveals an exposed nerve which can get infected. It is painful and can even he life-threatening. All pain exposes the fragility of bodies, which is a crack our culture is understandably horrified by and attempts to get rid of and deny. We tend to see all cracks as degenerative. We like to either ignore or dismiss imperfections, or blow them out of proportion and reject items or situations with minor flaws th at are otherwise fine. We live in perfect square rooms, we try to develop smooth personalities, we develop and live from what we hope are air-tight philosophies th at keep dynamism at bay. We want to feel in control. Having a take on reality gives the illusion of standing outside of reality in order to describe it, th at we are somehow not so affected by it. But are we in control? In all our efforts to “ get it together”, has it happened? It is common to think that someday it will all get resolved, that all the loose ends are going to get tied up in a picture-perfect ending. Appreciating cracks, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 12 noticing their beauty and the fragility they expose, in a sense m ight be a way of embracing uncertainty. Wrinkles are cracks, another reminder of physical finiteness. Death is the biggest crack, the biggest unknown. Not knowing is the m ind’s biggest fear, and it rushes to fill in the crack with the known. All beliefs and opinions and perspectives are just a s bound by the nature of dissolution, breaking down, cracking up; but impermanence is much deeper than just things falling apart. Its message is th at wtaat seemed solid is open. What seemed opaque is empty, porous, clear, fluid. I n a sense, the cracks not only engender a sense of humility, they symbolize for me unconditional freedom - that nothing can permanently get boxed, in or cut off from some sort of whole or natural progression. Birth happens through a crack, in hum ans and in eggs. Something new occurring out of som ething else opening up. Pain is associated with the new because the old has to stretch, break, become more pliable. The unknown can be both horrific void a n d ecstatic newness. These are som e of the different levels of meaning I find in exposing cracks. Whether a viewer would respond similarly can not be guaranteed. The cracks are not m eant fco present a point of view that is either agreed with or not, but as works th at engender a visceral response that might grow deeper Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 13 upon reflection. They are subtle works, places where one would not expect to find flashes of color. This makes actually noticing them a surprise, perhaps even as much an act of discovery for the viewer as it was for me when I first noticed their beauty in th e sidewalk at sunset. There is something poetic and paradoxical about the cracks I am working on now. I feel I have come around full circle, as so much of my work grew out of an accidental cracking of clay over two years ago. CONCLUSION How I have traveled from a primary focus on the well-made pot to my current efforts to express and evoke complex ideas and feelings is, in hindsight, nothing I could ever have planned. My history as an object maker, my love of the act of making and the exercising of skill will most likely keep me from disappearing into the found object/occurrence altogether. Rather than seeing “found vs. manipulated” as a polarized choice, it seems more of a continuum along which I work. I feel both comfortable and excited anywhere along that spectrum. Likewise I feel comfortable working along the continuum of site specific work to completely nomadic w ork th at could be presented anywhere. This is not an irreconcilable difference. W hat ties it all together is the gesture of the natural as it appears, or as I introduce it into man made environments. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

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Creator Hunter, Stanton Curtis (author)

Core Title Falling through the cracks: Two years of work

School Graduate School

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Fine Arts

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Fine Arts,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Weisberg, Ruth (committee chair), [illegible] (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-35071

Unique identifier UC11342288

Identifier 1405239.pdf (filename),usctheses-c16-35071 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 1405239.pdf

Dmrecord 35071

Document Type Thesis

Rights Hunter, Stanton Curtis

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

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Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA