[Arlene Shechet: Sculpting Time]
I am going to see pieces I haven't seen in twenty years
because a lot of these went to different people in different places.
Sadly, some of them we couldn't locate.
Twenty-five years ago, a very close friend of mine, Carol,
was dying at a very young age--
at the same time that I was having babies.
One day, when it was very clear that Carol was dying quite soon,
I was tearfully explaining to a Buddhist teacher.
He said, "You know, stop making such a big deal out of it."
And when he said that, I realized he was completely right.
He's like, "Everybody's going to die,"
"don't be too dramatic about it."
I had come to the realization, for the first time,
that I was going to die--
which should have been no surprise
but was a huge surprise, [LAUGHS]
inside of me.
So, to honor Carol, I basically threw out everything in my studio
and I started anew.
Instead of being one of those New Yorkers saying, "I don't have enough time,"
I said, "Whatever time I have is exactly the time that I need."
Plaster is so much a timekeeper.
Every single second as it's drying, it changes.
Even though I'd work with plaster many times,
I was just starting to pay attention to what was happening,
and I took the wet soup and I would try to mold it,
and it would start to harden up.
I would keep molding without an armature.
I had been doing some paintings out of paint skins.
I started embedding the paint skins onto it.
Whatever time--be it an hour or be it five hours--
I would make a piece for that amount of time, out of that material,
that suddenly became just the right thing.
For about a year, without letting anybody know--
including my husband-- [LAUGHS]
I grew this family.
I would put them on the various stools.
I just saw them as living on those places.
And so they just stayed there.
[Arlene Shechet: All at Once]
I didn't have aspirations to make a perfect figure;
I had aspirations to make this, kind of, signifier.
The real meaning of an icon--at least for me--
was in that it was there to keep me remembering what I wanted to remember.
After a period of time, I made something that reminded me of a Buddha form.
Very long story short, I just decided to go with that
because seeking form was giving what I was doing some direction
without too much direction.
I actually lived with them and enjoyed them as an installation.
It's not going to look as funky as my studio,
but it gets back to what I lived with,
as reminders of life being fragile--
and to have that be addressed in my studio on a daily basis.