The State We're In
We're in a state-it's unavoidable. We look in and we worry. We look out and we worry more. We can't avoid the state of things and we can't-and shouldn't-ignore the state it puts us in. And yet, we can reflect on the fragile beauties of the struggle for survival. We're still here.
Works exhibited together here come from a memory of place, a moment of observation, the touch of a conversation. Weaving the particles of life into stories we find new ways of connecting, grounding ourselves, reaching out to our troubled surroundings. And each story is many stories, the story of a single body and of a landscape and of the ties, and pains, that bind them together. We work to find a way in to understand, to find a way out to escape the state we're in.
Work is play. We attempt the impossible, accept the result and find joy in the simple feel of the material. Handmade paper and glass are things to touch. And they challenge us to challenge them: What can you do? How far can you be stretched? And reflecting the question inward: How far can I be stretched in my conceptions? Always there is this interplay between the worker and the worked, between the components that make up a piece, between the piece and the matrix of real life it inhabits. We too inhabit here and, playing and interplaying, we work out the meaning of it.
If we can only touch-inside ourselves, outside ourselves-if we can only feel the damage and the danger, the pain, yes, but the power and potential, then there is a grain of hope, not merely apocalypse. We are like found glass melted in a kiln, in dissolution, destructed, insolid and, yet, perhaps, even now, despite the state we're in, on the verge of becoming.
