October 5, 2012 - January 31, 2013 // Travel Montana Lobby in the Andrew Precht Addition
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vanescent is a site specific installation by Moscow, ID artist Gerri Sayler. Drawing inspiration from natural world phenomena such as geological processes, land formations, and hydrological cycles, Sayler’s installations are at once metaphors and at the same time beautifully crafted places in and of themselves. Meticulous preparation and detail balance with the untamed, intrinsic qualities of her materials of choice: sisal, bamboo, rope, unwoven wire mesh and most recently hot glue and monofilament. As Sayler’s installations have evolved and grown in scale since her first foray into site specific work, so has the artist’s aesthetic. When Sayler accidentally dripped hot glue into water, the resulting hardened fiber serendipitously opened a door for her. The material is physically light and small while the transparent quality evokes water, ice, and the ephemeral. It would allow
Sayler to create ever larger installations without the constraints of engineering for weight and bulk. Not to mention the impossibly infinite ways the material could be shaped and draped, wrinkled and twisted. For the installation at MAM, Sayler designed Evanescent specifically for the light-filled atrium in the lobby that bridges the old building with the 2006 expansion. The strands of glue-laced monofilament hang from a grid high above the ground floor of the museum. Depending on the location of the visitor, whether directly underneath from the lobby or near the top of the work on the 2nd floor bridges, the strands drip and twist, fall and freeze, engaging the viewer from multiple vantages. Evanescent is the fifteenth such site installation that Sayler has completed since 2007. MAM is excited to present Gerri Sayler at full stride in her career.
John Calsbeek, MAM Preparator and Assistant Curator sat down with Sayler to talk about the installation. John Calsbeek: You began using natural fibers for your installations many years ago; explain how you arrived at using hot glue as a medium. Gerri Sayler: On a fluke! It was 2007. At the time, I was unraveling miles of rope and twine to harvest the fuzzy fibers for an exhibit. I took a break to make tea, broke an antique teacup and decided to fix it. I didn’t have super glue, just hot glue. I was doing my repairs over a glass tray we use to drain dishes. Some glue spilled in the tray and fizzled into luminous filigree reminiscent of an icicle. I remember thinking: a moment frozen in time! Everything changed for me in that moment. I knew instantly that the material would take me in a new direction, and it has. To create previous work inspired by landscape, I’d used earthy materials, such as clay, bamboo, paper pulp, wax, rope and twine. But these squiggly fibers of hot glue? They’re membrane-like, yet impossibly glass-like, too. They evoke natural phenomena, but it’s of something beyond land, something ethereal. JC: Is there a connection with the purely synthetic glue as a material that’s similar to the way you felt about the natural fibers? GS: When it comes to fibers, it matters not whether they’re synthetic or natural. Both are of this world, which is a co-mingling of nature, and increasingly, the built environment. Fibers seem to quiver with energy. They twist and curl, open and close in upon themselves, make possible infinite variations of form and line. Massed, they sculpt into structures that can fill huge spaces but are essentially weightless and as delicate as a spider web. JC: You draw a strong metaphorical and physical connection with Fiber, capital “F.” When you speak about it, the resolution in your work becomes even stronger.
GS: If you think of matter as the bone and tissue of our planet, then fiber is matter pared to its simplest form, its bare essence. It easily references the millions of fibers entwined in our skin, muscle, nerves, veins, heart and lung tissue, our genetic code. When first working with fiber, it symbolized for me an umbilical tether that linked humans to the fibrous body of Earth in which we all live. More recently, I’ve come to imagine fiber as a metaphor for the curvy, undulating line of nature’s cycles. More than any other material I know, fiber alludes intrinsically to the “barely-there” of human existence, a tiny speck on the timeline of infinity. JC: I am always intrigued with artists that the art world refer to, for lack of a better term, as “process artists,” that is to say, those who go beyond the basic love of making art via painting, sculpting, drawing, etc. The actual, physical process of producing the work is intrinsically wed to the finished piece. It is almost as if when the viewer steps up to your installation, an important part of the work is the “wow, how did she do that?” as much as the beauty and content of the piece. Do you understand what I am getting at? Do you agree? GS: If anything, I go deeper into my head, that’s for sure. Necessarily so, otherwise I’d go bonkers, with so much time on my hands, literally. The repetitive, systematic way that I fabricate my hot glue fibers works like a mantra. It pushes me into another time and place, where no clocks are ticking. One hand drizzles hot glue. The other hand pulls and swirls monofilament through water. A fan blows the air around me. Water. Wind. Everything about this process feels magical—liquid transforming into solid, like water to ice. But then, nature seems magic to me. The way it comes to life, dies away, resurrects and transforms itself again and again. So art making for me is a process of squeezing my material for all the metaphorical juice it has to offer. This is to say, my studio practice has become my spiritual practice. It’s a
way of responding artistically to the miracle of eternity. JC: Some words that jump to the front of my mind when looking at your past installations are: cerebral, simple, elegant, organic, geometric, systematic, kinetic, frozen, weighty and weightless. I notice that the seemingly contradictory descriptors and connotations come simultaneously. I believe that this is what makes art what it is, makes poetry. GS: Yes, yes and yes! Recently, I paired two words to explain the work: materiality and multiplicity. Equally important to me is contrast between the highly gestural filaments and the precisely linear grid; between the sparkling strands and their silhouettes of shadow, between translucency and opacity as the light changes and air currents shift. These physical contrasts also hint at the contradictions and connotations you mentioned, like chaos and order, form and formlessness, creation and destruction. So yes, I would say the poetics of nuances serve as grist for both artists and poets, such as my favorite mystic of old, Rumi, and contemporary enchantress, Mary Oliver. JC: During one of your first site visits to MAM, Steve Glueckert (MAM Curator) mentioned Glacial Lake Missoula in conversation and since then that geologic event has changed your ideas of this installation at MAM. GS: Steve used the term glacial erratics in passing. That night, I Googled the term and quickly discovered the Northwest’s astonishing geophysical history revealed in full-color digital splendor. I’ve lived in Idaho for 20 years. I was stunned and embarrassed by my ignorance of the floods that dramatically chiseled and sculpted this landscape I love. What I’ve discovered since would fill the back end of a 4 x 4 pickup. Knowing something of Glacial Lake Missoula geology has deepened my experience with this work. But science aside, the art is more a response to the metaphorical power embedded in the fabled terrain of catastrophe. The inspiration quickly trumped the initial appeal of the museum’s light and spatial qualities. Instead, Missoula’s location, part of the ancient lakebed, became the impetus to configure the strands in a new way, more suggestive of flowing “ice shards.” JC: We talk about metaphors, materials, spatial composition–in other words, a lot of formal aesthetics that have helped develop and now define your work. Then you delved deeply into the geology and physical science of our world. Isn’t it wonderful how so many disciplines and ideas com-
bine to inform our visual world? I can’t help but go back to the influence of poetry you spoke of earlier. GS: If my art history holds, Romantic poets claimed that Truth exists beyond the flickering shadows of Plato’s cave — and ours. Therefore, Truth is unknowable, but can be accessed by direct encounters of the Divine vis-a-vis nature and art. Life’s game board, however, does not come blister-packed with rules of engagement. One must find their own path. That said the world doesn’t need for my work to have meaning. I do. But meaning is not the point, really. If I have a goal, it is this: to create an experience for viewers that resonates on a visceral level with their innermost being. Or, at least prompts them to loosen their hard grip on everyday reality and slip into thin places on the other side . . . if only for a few moments. The residency, brochure, and video are supported through the generosity of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Installation structural support generously provided by Reineking Construction Co. Photographs by Patrick Record.