Arlene Shechet in "Secrets" - Season 7 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

ARLENE SHECHET: Clay is extremely elemental.

There is nothing about it that is attractive
or interesting.

It’s just very, very basic.

The lack of beauty in its raw state is important to me,

because it gives me great freedom.

Because it has no character, I can make anything.

It’s just there to be invented.

So it’s called wedging.

It’s a clay term for kneading.

If you learn how to do it,

it rocks back and forth and it forms this spiral.

It’s quite cool looking.

I’m not a person dedicated to a material.

But I have dedicated the last six or seven years

to working in clay.

Clay is one of these materials that permits
one to be both in control and out of control.

It’s like a real conversation with the work.

One of the great things about making art
is that you get to make things

and then listen to those things and
pay attention to those things.

I always wanted to be in a factory.

I would tell my parents that I wanted to be
either a farmer or a factory worker.

My parents completely blew me off with that one.

Growing up in New York, you’re sort of seeing everything finished.

You don’t see anything being made.

So I wanted to know where did everything come
from.

- I think I’d better cover this again.

If I add a piece of clay too soon, it collapses.

Too late, it won’t attach.

There’s a perfect moment to do everything.

And then when the moment passes it’s gone
and there’s nothing to do about it.

Intellectually and maybe spiritually,

it’s an interesting thing to work with.

I build four or five things at the same time.

All of these pieces are at the beginning.

So these pieces will probably be much larger
and have other elements

that I don’t know about yet.

Yesterday, I figured out that I needed to
add some parts to this,

cause this is just going to be woven coils

and those just have to be added a couple of
at a time.

I have these pins to remind me that these
haven’t been joined,

because sometimes I could just forget.

I was thinking, I have to have a real appetite
for ugly.

There are so many points where this thing
is just hideous

and yet I have to believe in it.

And I have to go on with it.

But it might be something good.

Cube next.

And uh, in about fifteen minutes we’ll pour
out the extra slip that you see on top.

And the plaster will allow the things to become
dry clay then

when we take it out in a couple of hours.

This is a slip cast mold of a firebrick.

And you can see the mold picks up every single
part of the firebrick.

Every nuance, when they’re wet like this,

I sometimes take the opportunity to, you know,
do something with it.

If this thing did not have the air pressing out,

it would just collapse.

It wouldn’t hold all these forms.

Or if it was solid, you couldn’t do it at all.

This is already on a kiln shelf, right?

The really out of control part is
this thing that I slave over or I play with,

will dry for several months and then
it will go into a kiln of over 2,000 degrees

and that’s nuts.

You know that.....

And then all bets are off.

I come in here and pick from the tree of glaze.

I have this reference book that has
photographs of every work and

then notes on what I did.

If one glaze is under another glaze or on
top of it,

it will be chemically completely different
and fire completely different.

We fire with a computer to a very exact degree
based on what the glazes are.

This piece has gone through five or six firings.

It’ll be a couple of days of firing and
then

two and a half days of cooling.

The fact that you have to make things hollow

is something I’m attracted to.

This mushy substance becomes structural.

You can push up against it,

you can create form in a way that something
that’s solid could never create form.

Okay, we’re going to load this in pretty
soon.

If it’s a completely solid thing then it
can’t be fired.

One day I just felt how happy I was here and
how I was actually getting to live my fantasy.

That being an artist, working in a studio,

I had created both a farm and a factory.

And when I thought about it,

the essence of that desire was really
wanting to know how things were made.

I’m always saying yes to new situations.

If I keep creating a closed system,

then I’m not uncomfortable enough to push
some boundary.

-Here we go.

I just want to be pushing boundaries
and solving problems.

I was invited to Meissen.

It was very, very open-ended.

I was given a studio and I didn’t have to
define a project.

I didn’t have to say what I was going to do.

And I didn’t have to design something that
would be part of their production.

Ninety-nine percent of the things there are cast.

So working with molds was something

that I hadn’t incorporated into
my regular clay practice.

The infrastructure of how things were made there

has edged its way into my vocabulary

in terms of the actual sculptures that
I found myself making for the RISD show.

What I brought to Meissen was everything I knew.

I just wanted to let it rip.

I love every kind of industrial architecture.

Industry in general, tools.

What some person might think of as
mechanized and frightening,

I think of as mechanized and fascinating.

It’s also a very particular thing at a place
like

the Meissen factory which began in 1710.

The origins of the whole porcelain world are
right there.

That was the first place in Europe
where they figured out how to make porcelain.

Inside this place is a factory,
but dedicated to the handmade,

to this vigilant craftsmanship that in
many ways I am the antithesis of.

Borrowing from their insane need for perfection,
empowered my desire for imperfection.

I walked around the factory endlessly and
I realized

that the thing I really loved were the molds.

The mold forms were way closer to my aesthetic than

the things that were coming out of those molds

that were the Meissen traditional objects.

I ended up making a proposal that I would
make molds of their molds

and cast in porcelain slip my molds creating
porcelain versions of their industrial objects.

When I cast in their molds,

I left all of the seams and
all of the little signs and symbols that

indicated how to put the piece together and
would never been seen outside of the factory.

I cast in the signatures as sort of a celebration
of the worker.

The workers, when they saw them,
they would just laugh.

I was taking bits and pieces of everything
that was true to Meissen,

historically and everything that was
true to me as a contemporary artist

working in an 18th Century factory
and try to put it together.

ANDREW MOLLEUR: This is the largest thing
up here too.

ARLENE SHECHET: Yeah, right, right in here.

I think really close in there is great.

I really like that.

It’s like coming from inside.

Okay, well undoubtedly we will fire it again.

But I might start, start to work with it.

I’m going to turn this around.

We needed to make scale versions of each sculpture
for the gallery.

Down here, I can very roughly approximate
the way I might see things as I enter the gallery.

I don’t want everything at the same height.

I don’t want too many things with metal
over there,

too many things with concrete over here.

So I’m balancing all of those concerns very,
very intentionally.

The complete piece is not just the ceramic.

The complete piece is something that allows
the ceramic

to live in the world at the height I want,

in the shape I want, and in the material combination
that I want.

And in the color I want.

What is referred to as the pedestal,

I sometimes call the architecture of the piece.

I have a real appreciation for how complex it is

to make something that is compelling

and that changes with every view.

That is an old-fashioned sculptural concern
that I love

and that I believe comes back to that thing of

people walking around the pieces in the gallery.

Sculpture creates movement.

I did in my early teaching improvisational
dance

with the students because I think it’s the
same thing.

Clay is a great three-dimensional drawing
material.

It leaves a record in the same way that
a drawing leaves a very direct record of the

artist’s hand.

The installation is the whole thing and that’s
a very big idea.

I think actually I’m an installation artist
who makes objects.

I want to make something more than an idea.

I don’t want anybody to be able to describe
the pieces too easily.

I want to make things that are more open-ended than that.

I want to make physical comedy and intellectual humor

that has a kind of visceral reaction

that ends up by creating some sort of complex feeling.

So that the reaction isn’t, I understand this,

the reaction is what is this and why?