Martin Puryear in "Time" - Season 2 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

MARTIN PURYEAR: I’m real 
interested in vernacular cultures

where people lived a little 
closer to the source of materials

and the making of objects for use.

I’m real interested in trades, 
in ways that people make things

which are not necessarily artistic.

I mean, they’re artistic in the sense 
that they can have formal beauty,

but they’re not, they’re not 
done with an artistic motive.

They’re done often with a utilitarian motive.

As a woodworker I use tools all the time.

And there’s a certain art history to the 
evolution of woodworking tools in itself.

These are the carving tools…

I mean, you look at the forms that 
various utilitarian things have taken

throughout history and there’s a whole 
sort of shifting sense of beauty.

It is a ladder. It's made like a ladder.

It's made like country ladders you see in places,

whether they would, people 
would cut a tree trunk in half

and put rungs between the two halves.

And Ladder at Fort that’s a, that's a ladder.

The title came after the work was finished.

I didn't set up to, set out to make 
a work about Booker T. Washington.

The work was really about using 
the sapling, using the tree.

And making a work that had a kind of 
artificial perspective, a forced perspective,

that made it appear to recede into 
space faster than it, in fact, does.

That really was what the work was about for me,

is this kind of artificial perspective.

It's an idea that requires 
a certain actual length;

it's a piece that couldn't have been done small.

As it was, it was thirty-six feet long.

And the idea of Booker T. Washington, 
the resonance with his life,

and his struggle, and the whole notion 
that his idea of progress for the race,

was a long slow progression of, as he said,

putting your buckets down where you 
are, and working with what you've got.

And so, it really is a question 
of like, the view from where you,

where you start, and the end, the goal.

And, I really, it's, this is something I 
don't really want to elaborate on too much

because I think, I think it's, it's in the work.

I came from a generation where the 
work was itself the information.

So, there remains this belief that 
the work itself can have an identity

that can hopefully speak 
whether it's through beauty,

or through ugliness or whatever 
quality you put into the work,

that is what the work can be about.

The work doesn't have to be 
a transparent vehicle for you

to say things about life today or what you,

what you see people doing to 
each other or things like that.

I'm making a case for my own vision.

It can actually move in a direction that 
has got some representational tendencies.

Or some, at least some elusive tendencies.

Or some kind of tendencies 
that are, very suggestive.

—OLIVER: Has it been eight years…

ave you been back since…

—PURYEAR: I haven’t been back.

This is my first visit since it was finished.

I wanted to do something which was like a folly,

like an architectural folly, 
which I think it ended up being.

It was just an attempt to make a work that had,

literally had two sides that there’s 
a grotto-like half of this experience,

that you can look into, you can peer into,

but never really enter. It’s 
mysterious, hopefully mysterious.

—OLIVER: You have to get down real low and

there has to be a lot of ambient light…

And then there’s the other side of it 
that’s very much a projection into space,

a kind of more aggressive, 
if you will, masculine side.

And the two are divided by a wall.

And I was very interested in working with stone.

The idea of real 
permanence was important to me.

And the idea of making shapes out 
of that material using stone shapes

in space that aren’t about straight 
walls and ninety degree corners.

OLIVER: I know the stonemasons loved the idea.

When they were here working they 
said this was their favorite part.

When they got here and they got to the window,

to do things other than a traditional stone wall…

—OLIVER: So there’s that false 
arch that’s over here and…

—Puryear: Do you have those maquettes?

—Oliver: Oh yeah, all was saved…

PURYEAR: Steven always gets extremely involved in these projects as a troubleshooter.

And, it almost seems that the 
more complicated the project,

the more fascinating it becomes for Steven 
and it doesn’t seem to at all put him off,

and it just sort of makes him 
dig deeper and deeper into it,

and just use all of his contractor’s instincts.

Most of the visitors like to take the pictures…

In the sense they get this...

Stone doesn’t want to go out over space.

And this piece cantilevers out to about five feet.

And so it took some serious engineering 
to allow that to happen safely.

And, through Steven’s work he knew 
of a very very good stone worker–

Eugene Domenically.

And he was a crucial part of this whole process.

—Puryear: I think he did the whole dome himself…

It was a funny thing about how 
we could get this shape right.

He wanted to look at the model and 
just eyeball it, remember that?

And I said, “Eugene I think we 
should have some kind of a, a gauge,”

and I suggested that and he – “No, 
we don’t need that! I can copy it.”

I mean, there’s a lot of know-how out there 
that’s really nice to collaborate with, and use.

That’s what I have learned is how to give up

some of the control that I felt I had 
to have over every single aspect of it,

because there’s sometimes the other people’s input can actually open up your thinking,

to possibilities that you weren’t even aware of.

I think of it as a monolith, although 
it is made from eighteen stones.

But it’s really carved in a way so that 
it becomes a contoured single object.

It certainly suggests a head, a colossal head.

And, I’ve done various pieces in 
the past that have been based on

that finished piece same 
idea of a an enormous head.

And, I’ve been wanting to do 
something in stone, in this,

using this kind of form for a long time.

I have spent most of my working life ah,

making work that may seem to be carved

but which it in fact is constructed, 
made from parts and put together.

And although this was made 
from eighteen blocks assembled,

essentially the process of 
shaping the blocks was one of

carving from solid material.
And I’ve never carved stone.

I haven’t carved stone since 
I left, left college really.

And when I got notified that there was an interest

in having a commission of mine in Japan,

the choice of material was in some ways 
suggested by the fact that it was Japan,

because they have such a tradition 
of working with stone there.

One of the major challenges which 
is the, the sheer scale of it,

the sheer size of working with blocks 
that large, finding blocks that large.

They have to be located in 
a very remote part of China

and brought to Xiamen on the 
coast where they were worked,

a city that has a very, very large stone industry

And a piece of this scale the 
carving requires diamond tools

and water to do it efficiently.

So I had to find a way to really 
transmit my ideas to artisans,

which required making the model at one-tenth scale

The model could be disassembled

and the tracings made of each block

and those tracings could be enlarged ten times

and that’s the basis that they 
used for making the final piece.

In China it was a little complicated 
because I had to translate in two stages.

— Puryear: You see how here it 
goes in. Together it may not be…

I had a person with me who 
spoke Japanese and English.

—It will be correct here and 
be correct here but maybe this…

And the person in the stone 
yard spoke fluent Japanese,

and he was Chinese.

So, it had to go from my person 
from Japan into Chinese.

The piece was, in fact, carved much 
more than I had anticipated in China.

The actual contour of the outside, 
was thought to be done in Japan.

It turns out that that was, that 
work was largely done in China.

That’s why I had to go to China, 
to, to see the work in progress.

—Puryear: This can’t be a straight line..

The work was delivered to the site in Japan.

I was introduced to, this man, Mr. Okasaki, 
who had worked with sculptors a lot.

Done a lot of carving, for, for 
various sculptors, Japanese sculptors.

And very very proud person, 
in terms of his workmanship

and the respect that he had for 
his work and just his abilities.

And, once the pieces were 
assembled, the shaping continued.

There was a week’s worth of carving on site.

Mr. Okasaki and his son did most of the 
carving with hand chisels, and diamond saws.

But the shaping was mostly done with hand chisels,

because of the surface I wanted.

I didn’t want a surface that was 
in any way ground or polished.

It had to have, it had to 
have marks of the chisel.

It doesn’t look natural.

It’s a very man-made surface.

It has, it has pockmarks from the, 
from the blows of these sharp chisel,

but the contours are quite 
smooth and quite continuous.

But, run your hand over it, and it feels like 
you’re running it over a very rough rock.

I think I do deal in forms, that 
people often see something organic

and derive from nature and I’m 
certainly interested in nature—

I’m real fascinated by natural 
forms and natural processes.

But I’m probably more 
interested in the way culture,

cultural forms evolve, the making process 
itself, and the history of making process—

it’s always been a big generator of ideas.