Homeland Economics

Homeland Economics: a collaboration between Miel Paredes and Rebecca Scheer

The collaborative project we envisioned was this: Miel raises a vessel (gravy boat or creamer) and Rebecca deconstructs it. In other words, Miel transforms a flat sheet of metal through arcane but skillful wielding of the hammer into a graceful, useful serving dish and I ruin it (in an artful way).

Viewed from the inverted lens of the art world, it would seem that I have co-opted a perfectly useful object redolent of decadent Western excess toward the subversive aims of perfectly useless art with a capital A. Perhaps I question the nostalgic colonial Williamsburg appeal of the crafts in a post-post-industrial age. Perhaps I harbor a socialist's disillusionment with hand craft a la William Morris. Perhaps I do, but please note that I shed real tears as I pierced the vessel with the "old fashioned" style waste-overflow drain pattern visible on the bottom.

Viewed through the fisheye lens of business economics, with the exception of a few rarified market niches (collectors, historians, academia, and really smart people like you), the singular American craftsperson is irrelevant to modern society. Goods for our homes and bodies are designed by global celebrity designers (nice work if you can get it); the physical task of creating material goods is outsourced to the current location of cheapest labor (not such nice work). From Walmart to IKEA, the government sanctioned/supported business model is the same. The market is by no means free; the entrance fee is affordable only to corporate entities.

For a plethora of stuff, we have not even traded but have actually discarded many valuable yet intangible benefits of the local and real economy including: respect between the makers and users of objects (think about built-in-obsolescence), the value of skillful labor to human life, the value of human labor vs. machines, the value of human life vs. limited liability (think about safety recalls), and the value of human relationships over financial contracts. For these losses I also weep.

Miel Paredes and I are members of a weird club of academic entrepreneurs who cobble together a living from teaching our art/craft/working process, making work for galleries, making jewelry for craft/art fairs, and other odd jobs loosely metal related. At times, it is exhilarating to so closely link the practice of our craft to our personal economies. At times, it's merely draining.... ba dum bum. Miel essentially agreed to be the straight (crafts) "man" in our collaboration, while I got to deliver the (artistic) punchline. It isn't fair but that's precisely the point. The joke's on all of us.

Rebecca Scheer
September 3, 2009

Please also visit:
www.mielmargarita.com
http://emmalinestudio.etsy.com/
http://scheersilver.etsy.com/
www.scheersilver.com

Transitive Implements

Making things out of metal is my physical inquiry into the nature of human existence. I choose commonplace objects, close to home, and extra ordinary. Ubiquitous as they are, eating utensils function in the intersection between self and not self, the magical moment where matter sustains the spirit.

This inquiry starts in a place of in between-ness. Is this a whole utensil in the process of disintegration or hundreds of silver granules on the way to becoming a utensil? The issue is not of utility versus (useless) art. Rather, these objects have a clearly designed use: to encourage us to think about life.

How different are the processes of coming together and falling apart? To make these Implements, I spent 3 months learning the ancient art of granulation. Failure loomed large as my deadlines approached and only two prototypes carried potential. While inspecting my work, a visiting artist dropped both pieces and the prototypes were mangled. Instead of failure, though, this produced a breakthrough. Following a technical suggestion from the artist who “ruined” my pieces, I produced a full set in three weeks.

Are dissolution and becoming distinct states or stages of a continuum? If one can’t identify the difference, is the distinction arbitrary? Regardless of what I think I know about the state/stage I am in, manufacturing multiple tenuous (but tenacious) connections is my human and artistic goal. Not knowing if this is the beginning (of the end) or the end (of what is beginning) is good. It could go either way.

Rebecca Scheer, 2004

Failure is Built In

Weakness
This series of modified flatware entitled, Weakness, transfers the frailty of human existence into the familiar shapes of knife, fork, spoon. Craft is not the showcase but the sleight of hand that reveals our ambivalent relationship with objects. We display our personality and taste through the language of objects; what might they say about us over time? Slight shifts in the configurations of these familiar forms suggest the complexities of the human psyche and the human form.

Precious
The process of making Weakness began with found silverware rather than raw material. Starting with objects that carry intrinsic personal, aesthetic, and economic value is a challenge of its own. A spoon engraved with a name (Eloise) and a date (1916) refers to a specific life. One may surmise that Eloise selected the flatware pattern herself (perhaps a wedding gift). She made a specific aesthetic choice (as have I), one that she lived with day by day, or perhaps for special occasions only. The objects held value for her once, of that I am sure. The fact that these pieces of silverware were purchased by me in the year 2002 based upon crude weight and the spot price of silver suggests that they no longer carried personal value to anyone in particular, having been traded for pure material value some time ago. But, the cargo of sentimental reference to a life passed imparts the objects with the preciousness of the individual human life. All modifications I made to the flatware were performed with this in mind. It is out of this respect that, to the best of my skill, I retained where found, engraving, dates, tarnish, and the marks of use/misuse (scratches, dents, nicks, etc.). These are the evidence of lives once lived. Nevertheless, my creative choice to modify the utensils demanded a simultaneous destruction of the integrity of the original objects.

Rebecca Scheer, 2002

Futensils: Using Craft to Deconstruct Craft

The Futensils arose as a critical inquiry loosely aligned with one method of literary criticism, deconstruction. The conceptual framework for the project stems less from interest in Derrida's endless chain of signifiers and signifieds than from the linguistic model of binary oppositions that he sought to reveal through the process of deconstruction. In a nutshell, Derrida contended that definitions of what is are always made in opposition to what is not. Definitions are therefore dependent upon an excluded and repressed binary opposite. The role of deconstruction is to call attention to the exclusion, note the necessity of the devalued term, and thereby give value to it.

The work consists of a series of deconstructed silverware which are variously hinged or mechanized to fail to perform their intended functions. The bottom falls out of a spoon. A knife droops rather than cuts. The tines of a fork flap ineffectually. All pieces are laboriously forged and constructed by hand.

Can an object be deconstructed to reveal the underlying oppositional hierarchy that defines it? I contend that a fork is a conceptual construct (no less than a word) that hinges (pun intended) upon the opposition of utility and uselessness. We expect a fork to perform a certain function (piercing, shoveling). If it fails, is it not a fork or just a bad one? The average fork would be considered a product of craft rather than art. Within the world of craft, the useful is valued but, in the world of art, utility is often suspect. In much post-modern art, a highly crafted object is archaic; it's the idea that matters. Why spend time perfecting form and finish (craft) if only the idea matters?

By these underlying definitions of art and craft, this body of work is designed to fail on both counts. The work interrogates the oppositions of art/craft, utility/uselessness, idea/matter, and success/failure, revealing the dependency of the privileged term on its "opposite." The Futensils are designed to align themselves with the devalued term, to fail in ways that subvert the meaning of success.

Nevertheless, one could starve on theory alone. Language and utensils are not essential for life but the act of eating is. Still, the body and mind I sustain through this process will eventually fail me. Failure is built in. The value of this existential trap (our construction and ultimate deconstruction) lies in the meaning we build. Elaborate construction of dysfunctional utensils points to both the futility and wonder of the process itself.

The goal of my deconstruction is not only to point out the lack of definable artistic or craft values but to cultivate awareness of the act of construction. To build (thoughts, words, homes, art) knowing the inevitability of deconstruction, is a heroic act; it points to freedom.

Rebecca Scheer, 2001