Caroline Woolard's Floating Possibility | Art21 "New York Close Up"

["New York Close Up"]

I grew up surrounded by the ocean.

It's a place to let your thoughts
wash over you,

almost like daydream or sleep,

where anything is possible.

["Caroline Woolard's Floating Possibility"]

I think what it means to be an artist

is to be voraciously curious
about the world around you.

And I cling to every fact and image
that compels me.

During my research process I became obsessed
with this historic vessel.

The amphora is a two-handled vessel with a
pointy bottom

that looks like a turnip or a carrot,

and it was used by conquered people

to ship goods like olive oil or wine
to ancient Rome.

I also found that the "at" symbol that we
use in email every single day

is a mark for an amphora.

And I would never have thought that every
time I press the "at" symbol

I'm conjuring an imperial form.

A transformation from the amphora
to the "at" symbol

relates to a lot of my interest in economy
and exchange.

For me it felt like a clear direction
to go in.

[WOOLARD]
--Hello.

[HELEN LEE]
--Hey!

[WOOLARD]
--Okay so what have you been working on?

[LEE]
--I have some murrines.

[WOOLARD] I knew that

it would be impossible for me
to pursue this project alone.

[LEE]
--I'll show you the "at."

[WOOLARD]
--Oh it's so hard to see!

[LAUGHING]

[LEE]
--There you go.

[WOOLARD] The "at" symbol is so much
about digital communication,

which often occurs through a glass interface,

so I wanted to work with master glassblowers.

[UrbanGlass, Brooklyn]

I fell in love with glass because it's
automatically collaborative.

[Alexander Rosenberg, artist]

The way glassblowers are trained,

you have to work in a group of
two or three or four,

and at best,
glassblowers flow together in a

non-verbal choreography

to produce things that would be impossible
if they were working alone.

[Helen Lee, artist]

So we went into the material exploration itself,

which was always informed by the research,

but also leave space for the material to
speak on its own.

We tried making many different amphorae.

We made a custom blow mold
of the ancient form.

We tried making hourglasses

to think about the word "amphorae"
which means "carried on both sides."

The amphorae were not made for display.

They were made to be taken off of ships

and to find their ground in the sand.

In order to imagine the amphorae at sea,

as they're often found,

we decided to go to the beach.

[Rockaway, Queens]

--Babies, a lot of babies.

At the beach, we had to learn

how these objects, with their pointy bases,

would find stability.

We tried filling them with sand.

We tried filling them with water.

We tried looking at them floating in the water.

And what we found was that

they have an incredible capacity
to almost levitate.

I love objects that have an
uneasy relationship to gravity

and this inability to reconcile a concrete
and hardened world.

We know that, for this project,
we'll be at a traditional gallery space.

Another will be in a performance lecture.

Another will be online as a project site.

We're in the state of the project where
we continue to experiment--

where we continue to
say "yes" to one another's whims.

I want to move into a space
of speculative fiction

to allow myself to imagine, as a visual artist,

what could be.

What if the amphora could unroll
and becomes a wave or a line?

What if the imperative to communicate
that we have right now,

is, in the future, an imperative to rest?

What would it mean to suspend disbelief

and make a work of art that's
for a dream state?

What if art could be a kind of
glistening glass object

in the middle of the ocean?