Benches

I’ve been making these benches since about 2019. I think about them in a few ways.  First they simply offer a place to sit and rest.  Also, like the large jars, they ground the collection in ideas of practical function, craft, and the tactile and physical experience of material objects.    

In a more abstract or historical sense I think of these benches in connection with the playful stacking in the sculpture of Brancusi and Noguchi.  In the same way Brancusi’s forms continually shift between sculpture and pedestal – questioning hierarchies of function and aesthetic contemplation – the benches soften the boundaries between subject and object, body and sculpture.  Our own bodies are another part of a fluid interaction between materials, sculptures, subjects and forms.