Behind the Work - Stacks

Behind the Work - Stacks

por Lauren Herzak-Bauman en Arcilla, esmalte y moda creativa

Behind the Work - Stacks

 

 

I made my first Stack in grad school, around 2007. It was a year after my sister Marci passed, and I was deep in my grief.

Books had appeared in my work before, but as closed, representational objects. I started opening them up. The inspiration came partly from one of Marci's housemates, Maura, who used old fabric pattern books as a form of stimming. Marci had cerebral palsy and was in a wheelchair — she didn't speak, and had little control over her body. Watching Maura move through those pages stayed with me. The resulting object stayed with me too — it was this beautiful record of an action repeated.

After Marci died, I turned to my work to process what I was carrying. The work turned inward and abstract, using pages and paper as objects to express the deep, ongoing conversation I was having with myself. I started letting these objects move. I let go of control.

Around the same time, I took a trip to the Anniversary Narrows. The big slabs of rock falling into one another, each one affecting the one before and after it, felt like a metaphor for life — for what it means to release your grip on how things are supposed to go. I was introduced to porcelain around this time too, and fell in love with it for its strength and its fragility. It was the perfect material to hold all of that: the inner grief, the loss, the processing. The whiteness of the clay, the raw clay fired, felt stripped away from other ceramic signifiers. More raw. More vulnerable.

The first Stack looked like a pile of white Post-it notes. I had carved X's and O's into them. Kisses and hugs to my sister.

Working repetitively is a form of grieving. Every time you repeat the action, the object is different. You are different. Eventually, all the moving will lead you somewhere else. And it did.

 

 

The kiln took hold at times too, allowing these stacks to move more than I had planned, fully removing my control over the final outcome. That felt right. That was the point.

This body of work continues, though I am in a much different place with my grief. I come back to these for the same reason I return to any repetitive work: every time, they are different. I am different.

I hope this offers a thread of connection — to my material choices, my thematic choices, and why I choose process-based work.

Commission inquiries are welcome.

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