Although my degree is in Digital Media, I left graduate school considering myself to be a sculptor. Because I made objects. But my objects are more like constructions, my skills more lay than sculptor (I can’t cast or carve but I can weld and drill), and these everyday-looking objects end up cast in nostalgic stories that take place far away from that white cube of space the real sculptors seems so obsessed with. (as an object of contemplation, that is. I am certainly obsessed with that white box as a place to put my stuff in!)

My space is the world, and when I read Judd or Morris, I realize just how far outside the mindset of sculptors I am.

But I never questioned why I had decided to identify as a sculptor until I found myself at MacDowell Colony describing what I do as “sort of sculpture, but really more like disfunctional construction…” And then, one day, when I noticed that I had been listed at MacDowell as an “Interdisciplinary Artist” I realized I didn’t have to start with the sculptor thing. I could just describe what I do!

I make objects, and invent impossible tasks for them, tasks that undermine their purported purpose. And then I take them out into the world and I do these tasks, and it takes alot of effort, and I usually end up needing help from strangers, and so far I haven’t gotten in any real trouble, though I’ve been called off from one project three days on the road with it by a sherriff, and keep expecting a call from Providence police about another one.

But “Interdiscplinary Artist” sounds so wishy washy, and as hung up as I am on blue collar skill-focused make-something criteria, I still like the stance ofthe sculptor.

And then I learn about Charles Ray, whose sculptures are very sculpturey (laboriously constructed using traditional techniques such as carving and casting), but whose very sculptureness seems to mock the work’s subject.

“A Charles Ray sculpture is, generally, about the story of its making” (Deborah Fisher, again!)

“Ray seems to define sculpture as the physical evidence of a set of specific spatial questions. It’s about relationships: you and the thing. The thing and its meaning. And so on.”(Fisher)

I’ve started seeing the medium I am working in as story-making, or maybe even myth-making. But rather than simply tell the story, or act out the story as a performance, I want the story to be real. I want it to live as a story someone tells about this guy he met. If Ray’s story is about the object’s re-making, mine is about its undoing. Me and the thing. The thing and its purpose. Its purpose and its meaning. And how its meaning is undermined by its purpose. Maybe it’s all very meta and ironic, but it feels so damned earnest.

Lucy seemed to pick up on this double flip, “You say you don’t believe in what you are doing, but you really do, while not really believing in any of it”.

I am mixing a lot of themes up from different posts now, and I really don’t see how these musings on Charles Ray help determine if I am sculptor or not, or if that matters.

So maybe stating it this way will tie it all together: Charles Ray’s stories about about the making process. Mine take place after the making, during the performative aspects. Charles Ray’s stuff looks like sculpture, reproductions of everday items (like a car or a tree). Mine look like everyday items (because they are, built or rebuilt by me using the normal ways of making these things, rather than the sculptural ways).

So he is making sculpture, and focusing on the making (and their provenance). I am making vehicles, and focusing on their use (and how that conflicts with their provenance).

Now, I really cannot think of a less intersting question than “am I an artist?” (other than “am i a sculptor?”), so let me say that what this post is really about is that I think there is more value in using art to look at the world than in using art to look at art. And perhaps that’s where my outsiderness can help.

“At a time when we are so obviously damaging the world with our ideas of it, it makes more sense to question that capacity for humans to make meaning in the world than it does to take it as a universal truth.” (Fisher)