Materials that Speak
From musical instruments to old magazines
I can't say when I first learned the concept of “letting a material speak,” which has been on my mind for a while now. But I do remember my first immersion into the concept. It was through music.
I had the life-altering great fortune and privilege to grow up with a piano in the house (and a flute!). Then, in fourth grade, I began my journey as a strings player and was able to borrow instruments1 from school. They, themselves, taught me about their mechanics, their motions, their sounds, and my movement. my own body, my air, my fingers, my energy on, in, around them. How a gesture initiates from the lower back, twists through the shoulder, and carries through the fingertips. How planting yourself into the ground like a tree pulls the breath deeper so you can use your entire body to exhale.
I also learned to let music speak through my own body as I became a professional modern dancer. Because I came to dancing late, I knew I'd never be a ballerina, but knowing that pushed me to immerse myself in ballet intensively in my late teens and early 20s. I wanted all the possible muscle memory in my body.
However, the study of ballet and modern did not emerge smoothly from my original love of breakdancing—my toprock got really weird from those influences. I later discovered, to no one’s surprise, that I'm a natural at tap. But this did not overlap whatsoever with Flamenco, which I had tried in college and years later, when I lived in Spain. Meanwhile tap and ballet do not mix: they have antithetical requirements when it comes to the ankles: one is tight, the other is loose, and both require a very different kind of precision. Even the way to follow the music is different.
Dance, more as a medium than a material, speaks to us through our body—in the doing of it—and, if we’re well-trained enough, we can translate that to/for the viewer; another way to let something speak to you, for you, and with others.
Now, as I return to the visual arts, I'm scratching the surface of an inanimate (but animated) material talking to me—the observance of which is severed from my own performance (unlike with dance and music)
I was ironing fabric.
I found that when I folded along the fibers, the fabric showed me the way to crease and iron. Perfectly straight, perfectly even, could do it with your eyes closed. But, if I folded at any sort of angle, especially over serious length, it was very hard to get a nice, clean line. I had to approach the material differently… like curving a large piece of paper into an ocean wave and pressing down on top of it. Not matching corners and edges with origami precision.
Then I started listening to paper; it holds shape more easily than fabric, yet once it's creased can never be un-creased. Paper is ubiquitous, an invisible necessity. And it’s so easily destroyed. Torn and ripped. Burned. Dissolved in water. I would say I am fairly obsessed with paper. Bending, folding, cutting, positive and negative spaces, collages and shapes, flat sheets turned 3D. The colors, textures, sources they’re born from, things printed on them, and who tossed them away for me to discover.
Then there’s the question of how to listen.
Do I have the capacity? Yes. After a lifetime of practice that evolved from intuitive to meta-cognitive. But do I also have the patience and stamina to explore and to work with various materials? Probably. Unfortunately, I am viscerally and terribly adverse to creating waste and that makes it hard to make mistakes, ie test, try, experiment, learn, recreate, re-do, etc.
BUT, what if I work with leftovers? What if I only use discarded things? It ain’t novel, but it is sustainable and fascinating. Plus it creates limits that allow me not only to push my own creativity but the permission I need to listen to as much as the materials will tell me.
Next up I hope to post about the project that got me thinking about all this: KMAC Couture, an annual fashion show I recently had a piece in (the video above features some of the flowers I created for that design…). Stay tuned!
And, as always, tell me things! Ask me things! Suggest things!
Instruments. Tools. Utensils. Things to make music, to build, to draw and sculpt, to cook and to eat. Incredible feats in themselves, which we hold in hand that can make life easier, more beautiful. Utile utensils we utilize. Latin utilis, meaning "useful," which in turn comes from uti, meaning "to use," the past participle of which is "usus"