WEBVTT

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Kara Walker: "A Subtlety, or the Marvelous
Sugar Baby"

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[WALKER] "Kara Walker's work deals with history..."

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[Domino Sugar Factory, Brooklyn, NY]

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Embedded in that statement,

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"Kara Walker is dealing with history,"

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is this kind of desire for

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a hero who can fix this problem

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of our history and racism.

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And I don't think that my work is actually

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effectively dealing with history.

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I think of my work as kind of

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subsumed by history [LAUGHS]

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or consumed by history.

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[MAN #1] Alright, what we want...

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we want to work from the back, forward.

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[MAN #2] Go the back...

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the layout...

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14, 24, 34, 44.

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[MAN #1] Okay.

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[WALKER] Nato Thompson from Creative Time,

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he said, "You have to see this."

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"This place is totally filled with molasses."

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Molasses on the walls,

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molasses on the rafters,

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globs of sugar fifty feet up in the air,

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just left over from this refining process.

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It was such a cathedral to industry,

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and such a cathedral to this one commodity.

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The whole project is predicated on

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this space being demolished

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at the end of the run of the show.

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I had to learn more about sugar

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in the process of trying to understand this
building.

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Sugar comes from sugar cane.

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Sugar cane is grown in tropical climates.

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Sugar cane is, and has been, harvested by
slaves,

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underpaid workers, and children possibly.

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It's a fascinating and very long history.

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I started putting down all of my free association
ideas,

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starting with sugar and molasses.

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And molasses is a by-product

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of the sugar processing.

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What other by-products are there?

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And I got to the end, and I was like,

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"Ruins!" You know?

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It was just like, "Ruins,"

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everything was just in ruins.

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And I couldn't just produce ruins.

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In this book I was reading

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about the history of sugar,

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contemporaries described something called

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a "sugar subtlety".

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I loved this term.

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A "subtlety" is a sugar sculpture

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made out of sugar paste,

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marzipan,

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fruits and nuts,

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that was sculpted to portray royalty,

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and only could be consumed by

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royalty, nobility, clergy.

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The subtlety presents this opportunity

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to make a figure that

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can embrace many themes

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that is representative of power

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in and of itself.

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[WALKER] Wow!

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I was sort of grasping at

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too many different ideas

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that I wanted to bring into the piece.

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[WOMAN] Like, what don't you want it to look
like?

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[WALKER] I don't know how to answer that.
[LAUGHS]

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I mean, I've never done anything like this
before [LAUGHS]

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So I don't really have, like,

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a really good opinion, you know?

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From ruins to the sugar subtlety

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lead me to think about the...

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you know, what sort of figure,

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and what sort of position would she occupy.

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I think there was a moment of stepping back

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and...ding! You know?

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"Oh, what about a sphinx?"

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You know, it was very subtle, actually. [LAUGHS]

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It's not a kind of

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Egyptophile relic.

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This is someone from the new world.

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I was not at all secure about doing sculpture.

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This was one of those things that was

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so out of my league that I hung back

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during the sculpting process.

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[MICHAEL FERRARI-FONTANA] We started with
a clay model.

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The model was scanned and digitized

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and created into a file that could be read
by carving robots.

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It's simply one layer that goes on top of the other.

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You always hear about sculptors

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[Michael Ferrari-Fontana, Sculptor]

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liberating the figure from the block.

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We go back in with the bow wires

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and basically drag the bow wire across the
blocks at angles

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in order to achieve the curvatures that we're
looking for.

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No matter how incredible robotic carving is

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the hand is an element that you can't get
away from.

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And it's beyond the hand.

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It's not just the hand--

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it's what's driving the hand.

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[ERIC HAGAN] We're in the process of doing
our first test,

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so we're still very much in the discovery
phase.

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I've done a lot of smaller tests--

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some twelve-inch figures--

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[Eric Hagan, Sugar Artist]

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but nothing five-feet tall.

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So it's a mixture of

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corn syrup, sugar, and water.

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Kind of like what you would use to make

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caramel, or lollipops.

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So we're boiling it up to between

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265 and 290 degrees Fahrenheit.

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We're pouring them into a rubber mold

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to let them set.

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So when we de-mold them,

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they will be covered in the sugar and water
mixture

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similar to the sphinx.

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[WALKER] I highly recommend a fifty-pound
bag of sugar

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for personal therapy.

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But if you mix it with

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a couple of gallons of water...

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it's very fun.

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I mean, it's the most fun I've had since kindergarten,
I think,

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making art.

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I think it was very important to me to have

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figures made out of a substance that is so

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temporal--

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it's so subject to change.

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I really recognize what a privilege it is

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to be working in that space,

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because I can think of

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a thousand other artists who could take on
the challenge

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of that space.

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I really love the fact

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of these figures kind of melting and dripping.

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And they're very much like the interior of

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the Domino Sugar Factory

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which is also still dripping,

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still producing molasses from its interior,

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still sort of weeping this substance.

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The mammy,

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although she's bent over in this gesture of,

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sort of, supplication,

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I don't feel like she's there to be taken,

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or satisfied,

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or abused in any way.

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She's sort of withholding.

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I don't want to make her into

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a non-sexual caretaker of the city.

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She's powerful because she is so

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kind of iconic in a way.

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And she is so monumental and so unexpected.

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If I've done the job well,

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then she gains her power

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by upsetting expectations one after the other.

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I think it's very important to look back.

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I don't think we do it often enough.

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I think sometimes looking back leads to, kind
of,

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depression and stasis,

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which isn't good.

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But, looking forward without any kind of

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deep, historical feeling of connectedness--

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it's no good either.