Studio Log

process work, writing, inspiration, and studio documentation. 

When the salt broke

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I felt like crying
The salt caved in,
Crumbled beneath my hand.

And it felt like one of those things
That was bound to happen
A certain inevitability.

My eyes closed

Like I’m supposed to mourn for salt
Like I’m supposed to grieve for salt
Like I’m supposed to weep for salt

My eyes closed

And my hands tried to piece things
together again

Salt on salt
Eating away at the pointer finger
On my right hand,
Skin shredded,
Salt eating

Anyways, the tears never came
I guess they were never coming
I guess this was always going to happen.

Kind of like I was always going to kiss him
I was always going to leave him
And I was always going to become something else
I was always going to become something broken

As if you could become something broken
As if you could choose the breaking,
Predict it
Anticipate it

As if there would ever be a moment
Where you weren’t at the work table
Carving salt
Carving salt and
Carving salt
And breaking salt

As if there would ever be a moment
Something would break without your permission.

Salt

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I spent the better part of the past sixth months carving this salt block. 

At first, I just needed something to do with my hands. I was having this encounter with someone in my life—a spark in the darkness—and I felt like it was consuming me, the only thing I could do was make this very physical, very laborious work. 

So I started at the top, carving it down flat with a box cutter because I don’t have any real tools in my studio, only cameras and books. Pretty quickly I decided to carve it into a cup. And I decided to carve it upside down, which meant I had to make a flat plateau first. 

I made mind maps about salt, and about want, and about cups. They’re all connected, I swear. I just wanted something real, some proof of what had happened to me, what was twisting me up. 

Sculpture is destructive and creative at the same time. There is debris and residue and what’s the point of it all? I just collect it in other cups. But also, there is something new being made, being unearthed. I feel like I’m dusting it off, like it’s a bone, a fossil I’m uncovering. Like it was always there. (Like we were always there.) Like it was inevitable. (Like we were inevitable.) 

The more my want consumed me, the more my body chained me up, the more I couldn’t have him, even when I had him and I just wanted more, the more salt covered my hands, the more I wanted to rip every last bit of my skin off of my body, the more I wanted all the salt to fall onto my table, the more I needed to carve and carve and carve. Like a teenaged version of myself cutting lines into my hipbones. Like a wild animal. Like a woman, unhinged. 

I used a hammer my grandfather had in his garage to pound a small flat blade into the salt. The sponges soaked with salty water dried up and crystalized. Little rock sponges. Papery sheets of salt flaked off the trays that held the water. Everything was disappearing. The water, the salt, myself. 

And the salt kept collecting on the table, and then the work changed, and the cup became a real thing you could see, people could see, I could run my hands along it. To gauge my progress I found a similar sized cup and used it as a sheathe. It showed me my mistakes, where my lines were bowed and I need to shave more down. How I needed it to be smaller, still needed to subtract more. 

Then I was onto a kind of precise shaving. The salt coming off wasn’t crystalized and sparkly anymore. Salt powder rained down on my hands. It fell onto my pants, clung to my sweater when I pressed the salt against my body to get a better grip. 

A callous formed on my left hand pinky. A hard little bump where the wood handle of the chiseled blade sat and rubbed. 


I sawed the cup form off the block. Started carving the interior. So much of my life has changed in the past six months. 

At least at the end I’ll have this fucking cup. And my pinky callous. 

I’ll have my proof, my weeping salt. 

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salt-3.jpg

Undone

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Spending a lot of hours these days thinking about friendships. Most particularly a lost friendship. I'm not sure I want to make art about it, it's a little angsty, a little too raw. But I'm also not sure I have much choice in the matter, it's the only thing coming to the surface these days. 

It reminds me a little of Sophie Calle's Exquisite Pain. Except instead of a lover I've lost a friendship so big it seemed like it would go on forever, a horizon line.