generic of is a creative text paralleling the creation of my thesis exhibition. I use fragmented layers of narrative, description and prose in the same way each handbuilt ceramic is fired multiple times, allowing the glazes to build upon themselves. This is a close study of the still life, the intimacy of consuming, and how trauma is passed through the gut

Levaque, Nicole

English

VCU Scholars Compass

Virginia Commonwealth University VCU Scholars Compass Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2019 generic of Nicole Levaque Virginia Commonwealth University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd  Part of the Ceramic Arts Commons, and the Sculpture Commons  © The Author Downloaded from https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/5893 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at VCU Scholars Compass. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of VCU Scholars Compass. For more information, please contact libcompass@vcu.edu.              Can objects be sentient or do they only hold sentimentality?              Text is carved by CNC router into food safe plastic. A board once perfect for cutting fruit is now scarred by words making an uneven, unsafe surface to use. No longer functional for the kitchen, it has become ambiguous signage on an unmarked building. I am interested in using poetry to greet an audience, to set the tone and pace for what’s to come.           The scaffold    Growing up the scaffold was shown to me as a plank between two supports under another plank that lead to yet another, higher plank. I would construct childhood DIY scaffolds in trees instead of tree forts, taking my planks with me as I went higher. These old ideas of mobility and temporality have continued to influence my practice today. One move in the studio will lead to another. One sculpture will inevitably break down and become a part of another show, will become the inside structure, or the new glaze for the next work. Everything or anything can be recycled or lead up to the next level. There isn’t a sense of preciousness when it comes to the work, which parallels the world of construction, of renovation and gentrification that I’m conceptually speaking to. Although I invite an audience to eat off elaborate ceramic ware, no fuss is made when precariously made or installed work is inevitably broken. Unlike the collector, sentimentality is to be avoided. In many ways my work deals with hierarchies, of consumption, of materiality, class, beauty and environment. I can interpret the scaffold as a way to understand and break down each of these concepts, to put it in an archive that is continually being remade through itself.                                                    LOOKING FOR LEASE  1.  Are there junk drawers in model homes?    I’d say so. They are filled with unanswered questions. With off-gassing carpets. Paint chips of nail polish and cotton swabs of fiberglass insulation. The pink kind, full of glass shards that hardly count as shards they are so small. Slivers?  Not even that. Dust. Dust that stings like poison ivy reduced to the diameter of a pore. The stained-glass panels are made of polymers, the lights carved from foam.   They give off the heat of the door you touch to check if the flames have spread. They cheat too many too quickly. A lease on life, on love.   Remember the drills? You’re told to crawl through a gutted bus, its insides are carpeted, reminds you of a motel you stayed in late summer at a beach town you’ll never go back to. This inland town relied on a freshwater lake to pretend its shore was the ocean. You heard once, so believe now, that our eyes cannot see more than two miles ahead. The answer is easily found but you choose not to look it up. The lake might as well have been an ocean; its shorelines came in and out with the storms instead of the tide.     You grew up afraid of the undertow, with its water that moved faster than flames caught on curtains. Days became defined by the strength of the pull that would bring your legs so quickly out from under you. Your body would be best to submit, fighting would only tire you faster and bring you no closer to the surface. This submission laid the brickwork of your body today.  In the bus the carpets are still off-gassing, releasing that sticky scent of plastics, weighing heavy with a sweetness you cannot stand. This is the smell of the motel whose carpets must have been newly laid. You note to be careful not to let the pile under your knees and palms give you a burn as you crawl towards the door. Although you understand what this bus is supposed to be, it’s hard to believe in it.   On your knees, burns come from friction not flame.   Reach out to the closed metal door before you, the one scaled down half its height. Use your palm still red from the carpet and find it warm to the touch. Forgetting the drill, you feel the weight of ten quilts on top of you. Your body’s temperature rises to the point where you would have woken from a dream with sweat between your legs. For a moment the bus becomes a trailer. Removed of its mobility with a cinder block foundation. You can now understand the path the fire took. From the ceiling hangs lavender in dusty bunches, a wreath of baby’s breath, roses in shades of dry blood and carnations that should have been a corsage. The flames will eat these drying flowers.  Some steam while the lavender catches and turns to ash.  The burns come from friction not flame.  2. They try to convince us that screens can stand in for reflective pools. All the power points and presentations elude me. They say blue light has the same effect as dunking under the surface of a pool and looking at the sun through the water above you.   My hand-held documentation isn’t a misrepresentation.  They’re convinced scrolling mimics throwing change in a pond and making a wish.       Scrolling as a platform for units of time. Learning from free tutorials, non-experts, laypeople. Consulting sped-up footage that only gives half the answers while focusing on the life of the host. Community is found through the comment section. Time is spent, bought, wasted, given, lost. Beauty is found in makeup tutorials, nail art, nail biting. The smell of the dollar store.  The smell of the travel and labour that has made it.  Customer reviews.  Consumer platforms.  Groupon deals.  Sales.  Clearance.  Overstock.  Forums.  Ratings.    The collections of strangers.    Buy rate repeat buy rate repeat buy rate repeat–  I like trying to find beauty through faking it.  I’d rather suffer from imposter syndrome than amateurism.  What’s the difference between the handmade and the mass produced?  Does it matter if custom weavings are bought through a mobile app?   Remember, the smaller the screen the fewer the tricks.  It’s all because hoarding is passed down through genes. Already storage is held in four cities and there can’t be a fifth.      THE BETTER THE FOCUS, THE BETTER THE FINAL POST  3. I like the contradiction of images and words- it’s probably because language escapes me. See I knew French. As a child I could understand the commands given to me, I would listen and know what to do, what to say,  but then something happened. I can’t remember what, but I think if I could I would understand why I can’t speak French now.  It’s my mother tongue, but one I don’t speak, one I don’t understand, known and forgotten so early.  Do you know your mother tongue if all you can speak of is food? My father was born with it, and my mother learned it; my mother and I both lack our mother tongue. Unknowing meant secrets, so it’s ok.    CHOOSE A SIMPLE BACKGROUND  4. I make lists of working titles.  I make lists of activities I want to name but don’t.  I look for beauty in the bombardment of selling something. I think of commuters as victims to the corridors that link them.  Workdays are spent window shopping this economy of ugliness.    Collections of still lives are brought out to buy, backed by a two-way mirror that sets the stage for a show that never happens but is defined by chance, giving value to the luck of picking up this rather than that.    THAT>THIS THAT<THIS THIS> THAT THIS> THAT THAT> THOSE> THEM THIS>ME >YOU>THAT> THAT   I have staged this corridor of commuting before setting foot in it.  I have given slow gazes to the miniature monuments lining these halls.  They stand in for moments of grief.  I resent “less is more” for seducing me with a minimalism I can never embrace.   Choose a simple background. Describe in detail your ideal still life, of compulsions and collecting.  Stained glass made from crucibles of plastic that is found on every inch of sand.  Sand turning into glass turning into plastic beads and recycled bottles of dealcoholized beer. Bottles turning into glass into sand into those soft plastic pebbles underfoot.  I beachcomb an ocean of sponsorship.     I have a mistrust of this beauty. Imagine a red sky at night sailors delight sky.  Rocks larger than two torsos together form a stage. They sit before a lake whose shores change with the seasons not tides.  Open water that stands still like glass or rages in whitecaps.  Red sky in morning, sailor’s warning. Within limits there is truth in this saying.                                                                                                                                                                  5. Q: When a commuter passes through a lobby do, they think of the flower arrangements that have passed before?  A: No, they are thinking of email bankruptcy. Relationship bankruptcy. The fear of finding out their lifestyle evokes these types of bankruptcy.  New job, new city, new country, new language, new people, new lovers, new clothes, new pets, new number, new email, new hair, new skin issues, new plants, new dead plants, new address, new home, new sheets, new commute, new debt, new tan, new scar, new habit, old habit, new diet, new weight new loss, new  trend, new failure, new money, new accounts, new stories retold, new path, new stores, new laws, new fears  Q: Can hoarding be passed down through genes?   A:  I hear family anecdotes of hoarding and see this trait in myself. I hear family anecdotes of moving over oceans putting value in material and visual impressions. I hear my own anecdotes disregarding these thoughts, devaluing my processions.   C: I love objects.   R: But I treat things badly.  6. When I pass through the lobby I think of the large stain. It’s the size of my fist and forearm on one length, on the right side if you are looking at the table to the south. The stain is actually a deletion, it’s a spot where the original stain has been stripped away in a perfect splash. Bleached not quite white. It’s almost exactly like the stain on his calf. The spot where that chemical was spilled and the pigment from his skin permanently erased. Erased in the shape of a splash and a run. The same size, my fist and forearm resting on his calf, where the calf meets the shin. The hairs that grow in this patch are translucent, not white, but clear as cooked rice noodles. And I remember his hair caught in my teeth, the dark hair and the almost red hair of his face caught in my mouth. The stain grows into two torsos, becoming an unfinished diary entry made up of only one list.  7. The junk drawer stands in for a drunk life, a junk life.  Together we’ll engage in an illogical system of arrangement and renovation that I alone have begun.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  a material list    yogurt, full fat  red food dye (no taste) organic black tea  white sugar english breakfast tea (red rose)  mother also known as the scobie (bacterial culture)  stoneware porcelain terra cotta cone 06 glaze (various) cone 6 glaze (various) tempurpedic memory foam compromised mother, unknown culture (mold) generic memory foam yellow generic memory foam blue hibiscus flower chamomile lavender  raspberries strawberries upholstery foam yellow serta hybrid memory foam ginger blueberries lemon ice bug light painted bronze (burnt out chicken wing) fishing lures with pheromones plaster primer quickset kombucha flies alive  flies deceased  gt bottles flip top glass bottles candles                                                generic of is thinking through histories of trauma, chronic pain, the relationship one holds through domestic objects, and the bed. There are many invisible power structures in the home and in perceived wellness, both physical and mental. This is a close study of the still life, the intimacy of consuming, and how trauma is passed through the gut.   I have a mistrust of beauty. This draws me to try and recreate the moments of beauty I find in the objects I make. I feel defined by the scavenge and the horde, the look and the collect. I am trying to find beauty by faking it, through the balance of imposter syndrome versus amateurism, through the handmade versus the mass produced. I find beauty in sand blasted plastics on beaches, waste from suburban renovations, pop up ads, and my own repulsion for what all this represents.  I often catch myself overwhelmed by my objects, burdened by what I find and my compulsion to make. Yet my work cannot live in the world of the paired down. I obsess over the differences between collecting and hoarding, over beachcombing and scavenging, over recycling and reusing, but my practice is physically rooted in collecting.    I think there is a fine line between collecting and hoarding and that line is deeply rooted in class and socio-economic status and perceived mental health. Maybe this isn’t a line at all but a leaking vessel, one where I am constantly navigating the ebb and flow.   How many times can a piece of ceramic be fired, how many times can a still life be rearranged? This repetition is central, its action easy, predictable and ultimately a source of healing. I’m interested in how a meditative state can be induced by repeated labour and the kind of art object that results.  Will work still feel laborious if meditative thought can ultimately be reached?    Everything is palm to heart to head scale, intimacy is the key. Repeat the action of the pinch pull feeling forefinger against thumb. This action makes the pinch pot and allows us to endlessly scroll and consume online.  Can there be healing in both?   There is more than just scale that connects hand to pinch pot to iphone. But my hand, phone, and pots are all the same size.   I came to ceramics for both its familiarity and materiality. Each vessel is hand built, functional yet uncanny, precarious in the interpretation of usefulness and function. The tableaus are physical spaces to explore my complicated views of domesticity, its link to expectation, and the (attempted) dodging of violence.   With the constant and very visible trace of the hand, my tableaus are open to soft chaos and change.   The hand is a central character in generic of. It appears in yellow on the largest bed; twice with only four fingers; it’s there in the blue vessels on the candelabra; and folded up into drinking cups for kombucha. The fingerprint can also be found embedded in the surfaces of the fired clay and as smudges on the memory foam mattress.    You take a hand to take a drink.  These handbuilt ceramics with their untested layers of glazes live in the space between commodity seduction and apathy for the amateur. They lie somewhere between surrealist object and pottery class reject, precarious in the interpretation of their usefulness. I am confused by my own role in commodification, by the contradictions of critiquing consumption through a commodity. I am confused by the satisfaction in selling a pinch pot for $25.    the mind gut connection  You are offered home brew kombucha.   Can the mind be healed through the excess of serotonin formed in the healthy yards of the intestine, activated by the cure-all kombucha I brewed from an online recipe claiming ancient Russian heritage? Or will batches of cheaply yielded kombucha lead to canker sores and a body that ferments its diet of processed food leading to inflammation of the gut, worsening IBS, our modern affliction?   Heal one heal the other… but what comes first? I’ve decided It’s the gut first that is the key! That is why kombucha is here, that is why you ingest it, you are offered it to drink in pinch pots, in the pinch pull.  Drink the kombucha not water.   Kombucha is made by brewing highly concentrated black tea with sugar, letting it cool and adding a bacterial culture called a mother that will ferment the liquid. After a few days you can choose to do a secondary fermentation, remove the mother, bottle the brew into smaller airtight containers add a second source of sugar (fruit) and carbonation will occur. As you continue to brew your kombucha, the mother will feed off the sugar. She will grow and reproduce. A healthy mother can form many offspring.   I started brewing kombucha when I stopped drinking alcohol. But all kombucha has alcohol, as the fermentation process produces a small amount. I wonder if drinking it is a Russian roulette of my sobriety where I feign responsibility if I get tipsy? My excuse being it’s for my gut, for my mental health. This contradiction and risk hold my interest mirroring so many others that I see within the drink and within my practice. Drinking so much of a bacterial culture can form healthy probiotics healing my unhappy gut, or it can aggravate and ferment the sugars in my body.   I live in this push pull.   Oral histories also live in this push pull. Changing each time, they are told, even more when they are left unspoken. Mother daughter connections circle around and through this tie in to this bacterial culture. So much is passed through the matriarchal link. Direct links to addiction, mental health and chronic physical conditions are made from grandmother to mother to daughter. When a difficult story has to be told it’s like looking under a mattress knowing that you might find something awful, but that there will be relief in knowing what it is.    I have a mistrust of all this beauty.                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Photos by Devin Hein and Terry Brown  

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