WEBVTT 00:00:10.920 --> 00:00:16.998 JESSICA STOCKHOLDER: Can we mix  some abaca with this yellow? 00:00:19.040 --> 00:00:25.693 Well, I was invited to make  some paper here at Dieu Donne, 00:00:27.120 --> 00:00:28.484 something I’ve never done before. 00:00:29.560 --> 00:00:32.361 The experience of it is deceptively simple. 00:00:33.920 --> 00:00:36.738 It doesn’t feel highly technological. 00:00:37.880 --> 00:00:40.120 It’s also something that would be very hard to do 00:00:40.120 --> 00:00:42.598 without the help of the people in the paper mill. 00:00:51.680 --> 00:00:54.920 Paul has a lot of experience with paper 00:00:54.920 --> 00:01:00.939 and with all the techniques and  the history of paper-making. 00:01:03.134 --> 00:01:07.188 The whole paper-making  studio is filled with water. 00:01:08.132 --> 00:01:10.715 So it’s a very clean and fresh feeling. 00:01:12.230 --> 00:01:14.560 There’s a possibility nevertheless to make things 00:01:14.560 --> 00:01:17.034 that are bright and sharp and crisp, 00:01:18.680 --> 00:01:20.779 you know really plastic colored. 00:01:24.920 --> 00:01:26.800 You know part of me would like to make stuff 00:01:26.800 --> 00:01:30.996 that’s minimal and very well organized 00:01:30.996 --> 00:01:33.583 and neat and clean and quite comprehensible. 00:01:35.120 --> 00:01:36.960 I love the chaos, which is why I do it. 00:01:36.960 --> 00:01:38.760 I don’t make minimal controlled things, 00:01:38.760 --> 00:01:41.160 but I always feel kind of embattled 00:01:41.160 --> 00:01:42.560 and it takes me a while to really know 00:01:42.560 --> 00:01:44.871 which ones I like best after I’m finished. 00:01:50.052 --> 00:01:52.723 Cause I think there are lots  of different kinds of thinking. 00:01:53.294 --> 00:01:56.160 Um, you know your hands learn to do things 00:01:56.160 --> 00:01:57.680 that you could spend a whole day trying 00:01:57.680 --> 00:01:59.533 to write about and articulate. 00:02:00.760 --> 00:02:01.720 What’s intuition? 00:02:01.720 --> 00:02:04.840 You know it’s a kind of  thinking, it’s not stupidity. 00:02:04.840 --> 00:02:13.040 Um, and uh, so, so I think there’s a discomfort associated with trying to um, 00:02:13.040 --> 00:02:16.028 put all those different ways  the brain works together. 00:02:18.399 --> 00:02:22.959 You know so I kind of like to  avail myself of that discomfort. 00:02:35.600 --> 00:02:40.160 You know I, Like being in the studio alone. 00:02:40.160 --> 00:02:42.680 I don’t like (LAUGHS), 00:02:42.680 --> 00:02:46.240 I don’t, I don’t hire people  to help me in the studio. 00:02:46.240 --> 00:02:50.520 And you know when I do the installation 00:02:50.520 --> 00:02:53.040 I have to work with people to get, 00:02:53.040 --> 00:02:55.080 to get things done on time 00:02:55.080 --> 00:02:58.040 and to do things that I couldn’t do by myself. 00:02:58.040 --> 00:03:00.260 And in here I like to be alone. 00:03:00.260 --> 00:03:03.200 I, I mean part of the parameters I work within are 00:03:03.200 --> 00:03:05.600 that I can carry the stuff up here by myself 00:03:05.600 --> 00:03:07.360 and do everything by myself. 00:03:07.360 --> 00:03:12.202 And um, and, and it’s odd to be in the studio 00:03:13.080 --> 00:03:15.653 and not know what your going to do. 00:03:15.960 --> 00:03:19.200 You know it’s, I think  being an artist and choosing 00:03:19.200 --> 00:03:21.880 to put yourself in a circumstance where 00:03:21.880 --> 00:03:25.440 you don’t know just how  things are going to work out 00:03:25.440 --> 00:03:28.160 and what you’re going to do is uh, 00:03:28.160 --> 00:03:32.917 is very exciting and rich and also difficult. 00:03:36.320 --> 00:03:39.899 These pieces are more like pieces of furniture. 00:03:41.480 --> 00:03:42.800 You know they’re not furniture 00:03:42.800 --> 00:03:45.200 but they’re of the scale of furniture in the room. 00:03:45.200 --> 00:03:48.020 They address the architecture as furniture does. 00:03:50.040 --> 00:03:53.133 And furniture is also built for the body. 00:03:54.560 --> 00:03:56.760 And these are like that too, 00:03:56.760 --> 00:04:00.401 though they don’t serve any  particular function most of the time. 00:04:09.480 --> 00:04:11.375 And I love plastic. 00:04:13.065 --> 00:04:17.280 I also just love color and they’re  a really great vehicle for color. 00:04:17.280 --> 00:04:18.800 And they embody color. 00:04:18.800 --> 00:04:21.179 They’re colorful all the way through. 00:04:22.760 --> 00:04:25.423 Plastic is cheap and easy to buy. 00:04:28.760 --> 00:04:31.960 And my work participates in  that really quick and easy 00:04:31.960 --> 00:04:34.672 and inexpensive material  that’s part of our culture. 00:04:37.680 --> 00:04:44.383 In that way my work engages the means  of production that we live with. 00:04:56.080 --> 00:05:00.801 At the outset, my work was about  as nonverbal as you could get. 00:05:05.960 --> 00:05:08.649 Because I had two very verbal parents, 00:05:10.120 --> 00:05:12.920 I needed to find a place to kind of ascertain 00:05:12.920 --> 00:05:17.259 the nature of my experience  that wouldn’t be argued with. 00:05:21.525 --> 00:05:25.924 To work with the physical  world was a place to do that. 00:05:31.960 --> 00:05:34.298 But now having grown up, 00:05:36.120 --> 00:05:41.175 I find it interesting to put  words parallel to this work. 00:05:43.480 --> 00:05:48.822 When I make these pieces I don’t  have a, a literary story in my mind. 00:05:49.876 --> 00:05:53.232 I mean I’m thinking about what things  are going to look like visually. 00:05:56.920 --> 00:06:02.141 And then afterwards can put  words to what I’m doing. 00:06:12.600 --> 00:06:18.240 Drawings are a way of  planning what I’m going to do, 00:06:18.240 --> 00:06:20.880 a way of putting myself in the space 00:06:20.880 --> 00:06:23.040 and thinking about being in the space 00:06:23.040 --> 00:06:27.782 and mapping out what’s of  interest in the space for myself. 00:06:31.200 --> 00:06:35.366 Maybe they’re like recipes for action. 00:06:40.320 --> 00:06:42.960 In the studio I don’t have a plan, 00:06:42.960 --> 00:06:45.040 but for the installation work I need to 00:06:45.040 --> 00:06:50.080 have enough things planned so that I can make use of the time I have. 00:06:50.080 --> 00:06:54.840 And then I feel sort of prepared  to go and do the installation. 00:06:54.840 --> 00:06:58.240 But, but it’s always a kind  of uncomfortable feeling 00:06:58.240 --> 00:07:04.428 because I can’t do any more work  until I get there to start work. 00:07:16.400 --> 00:07:18.600 I mean this pile of light bulbs here, 00:07:18.600 --> 00:07:23.190 I’ve done that before and have some sense of what that would be like. 00:07:32.760 --> 00:07:34.880 It’s a nice color. 00:07:35.880 --> 00:07:36.872 Lower, lower. 00:07:37.640 --> 00:07:38.520 All the way down. 00:07:38.520 --> 00:07:39.570 Right against here. 00:07:41.480 --> 00:07:42.543 There we go. 00:07:42.960 --> 00:07:46.299 Being responsive to what’s there. 00:07:50.000 --> 00:07:52.799 Or what materials we actually were able to find. 00:07:53.840 --> 00:07:57.829 The sizes of everything,  what the colors look like. 00:07:59.080 --> 00:08:01.040 I mean it’s like setting myself down 00:08:01.040 --> 00:08:05.966 with a bunch of different  color paints and starting work. 00:08:06.800 --> 00:08:08.312 Many things could happen. 00:08:10.200 --> 00:08:12.570 Went shopping last night to find something blue. 00:08:13.360 --> 00:08:15.080 You know I didn’t want another cooler, 00:08:15.080 --> 00:08:19.520 there’s a lot of colored plastic  geometric shapes um, in coolers, 00:08:19.520 --> 00:08:21.233 but I’m using all those coolers out there. 00:08:21.760 --> 00:08:24.160 And I wanted something blue and plastic, 00:08:24.160 --> 00:08:27.967 something that had this color, that wasn’t very specific. 00:08:28.560 --> 00:08:32.480 You know that was like uh, you didn’t  right away think, oh it’s a.... 00:08:32.480 --> 00:08:33.680 And this seemed kind of perfect. 00:08:33.680 --> 00:08:35.621 So I was lucky. 00:08:38.080 --> 00:08:41.800 Refrigerators and freezers, I’ve always enjoyed 00:08:41.800 --> 00:08:46.732 because they are the place of food in a house. 00:08:48.400 --> 00:08:55.880 And food and cooking has to do with loving and giving in a family. 00:08:55.880 --> 00:08:59.879 But, but also freezers and  refrigerators are cold and frozen 00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:03.520 and that has to do if you  have an emotional mirror, 00:09:03.520 --> 00:09:06.440 that has to do with withholding and not loving. 00:09:06.440 --> 00:09:09.440 So for me they kind of embody that duality 00:09:09.440 --> 00:09:12.000 which is probably also in the gallery. 00:09:12.000 --> 00:09:16.760 The gallery and our institutions of art are both 00:09:16.760 --> 00:09:20.560 full of possibility and extraordinary feeling. 00:09:20.560 --> 00:09:24.264 And they’re also, they also  put art in a place of remove. 00:09:25.120 --> 00:09:29.360 So it’s...it has less power in some  ways than if it weren’t removed. 00:09:31.680 --> 00:09:34.688 In my work I’m interested in systems. 00:09:37.440 --> 00:09:42.038 And how things are geometric  or systematically organized. 00:09:47.467 --> 00:09:53.052 How a thinking process can  meander in unpredictable ways, 00:09:54.720 --> 00:09:57.360 in contrast to a system that’s been planned 00:09:57.360 --> 00:09:59.891 and that’s shared amongst people. 00:10:15.720 --> 00:10:17.760 I wrote a little text about this piece, 00:10:17.760 --> 00:10:19.540 it’s some kind of poetic text. 00:10:20.440 --> 00:10:23.064 Referred to the “Yellow Brick  Road” and the Wizard of Oz. 00:10:25.040 --> 00:10:32.155 I think all of those kinds of fantasy fictions have resonance with what I do. 00:10:36.800 --> 00:10:44.197 My work is about posing this possibility for some other experience, 00:10:44.680 --> 00:10:49.235 world than the one that, that we experience as mundane. 00:10:52.400 --> 00:10:57.038 Even while this is made of mundane things. 00:11:16.640 --> 00:11:18.916 My work’s really about pleasure. 00:11:20.914 --> 00:11:26.031 It’s not always pleasurable to make it, sometimes it’s excruciating and it’s hard. 00:11:27.436 --> 00:11:30.716 And I think that pleasure matters a great deal. 00:11:33.680 --> 00:11:38.887 I mean I, I think what kids do that’s play is a kind of learning and thinking. 00:11:39.480 --> 00:11:44.560 And uh, it’s, it’s a kind of learning and thinking that’s um, 00:11:44.560 --> 00:11:46.724 doesn’t have a predetermined end. 00:11:47.800 --> 00:11:50.020 So I think that I’m involved in that. 00:12:01.480 --> 00:12:04.256 It’s an ancient technique.