Traces of a hand moving through dough and flour – markmaking to be consumed, to please, to imbibe. There is an appreciation of intuitive gestures and and observation of how each movement impacts the final result: swivel of the wrist in dough when subjected to heat becomes an amber-edged pattern almost too lovely to cut.
Collaboration : the action of working with someone to produce or create something, something produced or created by collaboration. from collaborare ‘work together.’
And then, consider the dough as clay, not to consume but rather aid in consumption, to please – yes, and as a vessel for imbibing. A rhythmic repeated action, a physical communication through material which is then transformed by fire and by somatic participation. In fact, corporal involvement is necessary for either form to be activated, or perhaps each form is activated by one another?
“Anni Albers, in writing for Encyclopedia Brittanica, reflected that all weaving traces back to “the event of a thread.” The crossings of thread make a cloth. Cloth is the body’s first architecture; it protects, conceals and reveals; it carries our weight, swaddles us at birth and covers us in sleep and in death. A patterned cloth symbolizes state or organization; a red cross stitched onto a white field is the universal sign of aid. A white cloth can be a ghost, a monster or a truce. John Constable described the sky in his paintings as a “white sheet drawn behind the objects.” When we speak of its qualities we speak of the cloth’s hand; we know it through touch. Like skin, its membrane is responsive to contact, to the movement of air, to gravity’s pull.”
The Event of a Thread, Ann Hamilton
"The photograph is only the trace or souvenir of the work of art ... the photograph as document of an artwork that was too remote, too ephemeral, too personal to be seen otherwise, an artwork that could not be exhibited and would otherwise be lost, so the photograph stands in for it."
A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit
Collaboration: a utilitarian exercise in applying one's practice to another's, or, how to learn to stop worrying and just trust the process.
SWEET SOLSTICE was a collaboration between Tara Jensen of Smoke Signals Baking & Melissa Weiss of Melissa Weiss Pottery, with lydia see on June 20, 2015.
Styling: Tara Jensen, Melissa Weiss, lydia see
Pottery: Melissa Weiss
Pies, cakes, and cookies: Tara Jensen
Fiber Installations, Indigo Dye, Weaving Installation, and Photography: lydia see
the last photograph (to the right) of lydia see, was taken by Sarah Nicole Snyder (to the left).