Eighteen Yuan

BFA Metals

By under-firing enamel, I am able to describe the true texture and color of the natural surface. Rocks or sand can be melted to make glass, which is the main ingredient of enamel. Conversely, I melt enamel to make rocks. Natural rocks absorb heat slowly and dissipate slowly; these qualities of warmth and resonance are embedded into wearable objects that quietly evoke difficult subjects. By bearing these objects on the body, I urge the wearer and audience to consider the new lightness of these burdens, and propose new ways to move forward.

Splitting Rock Necklace 2019. Enamel, copper, silver, photograph, tickets, letters 3.5 x 4.5 x 12 in.

Peeling Rock Brooch 2020. Enamel, copper, sterling silver, steel 5 x 2.2 x 1.5 in.

Circle of Life Necklace 2020. Enamel, copper, sterling silver 4 x 10 x 12 in.

dirt: inSide landScapeS — Clara Pierson and anna Conlan in Conversation with

Emilie Houssart is redefining the museum gallery space, transforming its walls into an interactive and earth-related project that serves to challenge the way people look at dirt. The SUNY New Paltz MFA student has served as the Spring Artist-in-Residence at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, where she has curated the interactive exhibition DIRT: Inside Landscapes. By examining the relationship between communities and dirt, Houssart hopes to bring awareness to how we view, treat, and interact with the earth. This relationship is acknowledged through interactive elements, where guests are encouraged to share their own feelings on the matter, while also employing the art of local creators from The Dorsky’s permanent collection, from Thomas Cole to Peter Iannarelli. Using these artists’ works, Houssart examines people’s views on dirt, while also noting how these interpretations have evolved over time and place.

This is a conversation that occurred between Emilie, Anna Conlan, the Dorsky’s Director, and myself, where we explored the role of DIRT in the museum and how the exhibition has expanded beyond the gallery’s walls.

Clara Pierson: So, why did you choose dirt for the theme of this exhibition?

Emilie Houssart: It really came out of immigrating to the States and noticing that people use the word ‘dirt’ for the earth over here. As someone who grew up in England, I found that really shocking, because “dirt” is a very negative word for us, and I never quite managed to forget about that. In my work at the moment I’m looking at things like industrial farming, toxic food practices, and a dissociation from nature coming from this postcolonial vision of America where everything exists to serve humans. Dirt is the key to all of that, so it was really exciting to focus in and try to think about our relationships with dirt further, especially in the very clean environment of the museum.

CP: How do you think this exhibition fits into the Dorsky as a museum space?

EH: The Dorsky doesn’t feel to me like a physically very welcoming space. The architecture is quite hard to be around as a human. I’m really interested in the geometry of our built environments, and how that represents unilateral ways of thinking. In theory, the museum is built for the public, but it doesn’t always feel that way. With this exhibition, I wanted to try to

with emilie houssart

make the barriers between the community, the museum, and the landscape more porous; and to connect typical museum associations with landscapes to the land under our feet right now. Seeing people respond so warmly to the dirt of Peter Iannarelli’s piece in an air conditioned museum room with no windows is really exciting—even before they’ve engaged with it as an artwork. And it feels good to have this growing community organism of thoughts—a contemporary, public landscape—occupying the same space as Thomas Cole and Sharon Core.

Anna Conlan: In terms of the museum not being accessible, that’s something that we really want to change. We want the community to know that this is a space for them, we are here to serve them, and the Artist-in-Residence program is also part of that. The goal of the program is to have a contemporary artist use the museum, interact with the Museum’s collection, our audiences, and the space, and create a project as a result. Emilie really ran with that! She took art and interpreted it with labels that tell a new story while also connecting with her wider practice as well. That’s a wonderful thing about working with artists because they think in different ways and look from different angles.

EH: If I had to summarize my goal with the residency, it’s to make people realize that their relationship with the ground in the future is a choice. And of course, that choice is completely up to them. But I would like them to come in and have an experience, so that when they leave, they’re no longer able to say that they’ve never thought about that relationship. Also, I’m a Dutch Huguenot immigrant from England, so this is an amazing opportunity to think about the relatively recent history of my predecessors coming here and destroying a multiple thousand-year-old culture; one that is now becoming a model for us again of how we might exist collaboratively with the land around us. This model of Eurocentric land domination has become normalized but it’s not sustainable, and it’s not ok, in so many ways.

AC: I’m curious if your ecological consciousness has been something that you’ve been interested in for a long time, or is it something that you’ve developed and grown? I remember seeing your paintings early on and noticing the incredible classical training that you received, and how sophisticated they were. Then I saw your prints and they were so abstract and different, and now the work that I’m seeing you do involves sculpture and performances with potatoes. I’m interested in

DIRT: Inside Landscapes, at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, 2021. Photo: Bob Wagner/Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art (left)

Wall writing from DIRT: Inside Landscapes at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, 2021. Photo: Emilie Houssart/Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art (above)

the stylistic and formal journey that you’ve been on in your practice, and whether it is a departure, or part of a continuous timeline of ecological consciousness and activism.

EH: I understand those works much better now. They all came out of a general dissatisfaction with humans—with what I now understand to be European colonial culture. The dead birds were an absurdist thing about dignity and value. It was like, let’s take this Dutch Old Masters tradition and do it on bits of trash I’ve found on the ground, of something that manages to be at the same time tragic and slapstick; beautiful and really revolting. And that was the only place I felt comfortable—in the murky, grey area between those two axes. Then I started making these little prints where you would take a geometric element and smash it, pushing delicate artisanal paper to its absolute extreme limits. At some point, I realized that when you crush a piece of paper you’re not creating chaos, but an interdependent system, an ecology, that’s unique and far too complex for humans to understand. So in an abstract way, I was getting there; I was fed up with an anthropocentric culture and was breaking down geometry with these systems, with handmade and natural elements colliding violently with mechanical ones. And that makes total sense with what I’m making now! It was a sort of sketching process. But it’s hard to make those giant transitions in isolation, and I’m really grateful for the set of forward-thinking faculty who opened the door for that to get to where it was going. There’s also some really exciting sustainability work going on at SUNY that I’ve had access to as a Graduate Faculty member.

CP: I’m curious if there is any person in particular that has informed your practice? I think there are some really interesting connections between your work and works of minimalism and I was wondering if that has any influence on what you create.

EH: Absolutely—so many! The professors I’ve worked with in the sculpture department have been hugely influential in the way that they think about the world, and Linda Weintraub, who is a force of nature herself. But also something like that piece by Agnes Denes where she planted a wheat field in New York City—just an incredibly simple but huge, beautiful statement, you know? You can’t unsee that kind of thing. Also, imagine the experience of that in the 1970s, and then to think about what that land looks like now... It’s pretty staggering. I’m also enjoying reacting against artists. Using these geometric forms is definitely in conversation with minimalism, with male-centric, white cube gallery pieces. And I love many of those works! But this is taking that and flipping it upside down. Putting those shapes in the forest, for example, exposes them as jarringly simple against the trees—which, again, are just too complex for us to understand, so we assume they are chaotic, but it’s not at all the case. Hopefully it also makes people think about what kind of spaces art is for, and why we think that these forms are normal.

Wall writing from DIRT: Inside Landscapes at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, 2021. Photo: Emilie Houssart/Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art

AC: Do you have any goals, or ambitions, or dreams of how your work or DIRT can be shared with audiences?

EH: It’s been very exciting to do workshops, and I think that has become part of my practice now. I’m just at the beginning of this journey, trying to figure this out for the first time, but that feels like some of the most meaningful stuff that has happened. As a privileged white person, I think that educating polluters, people like me, is in my scope. And I think education with school kids is a really important way of engagement. Not in a didactic way, but by showing that the dirt, or the earth, or the soil—whatever you call it—is a living thing; so what does that mean in terms of our relationship to it? Can you own something that’s alive? Is the dirt near you safe, and is that fair? This whole residency is a learning project for me, learning what works, what I should be doing more of, and what didn’t really work... how I can be helpful in different spaces going forward. My current project for Owning Earth at Unison Arts Center needs to be made in the forest, but can then be disseminated online, and as a publication. And, increasingly, the audiences are part of the work. I’m learning to embrace performance as a key part of these projects.

CP: I was curious if you think your use of social media for this exhibition has changed how you view accessibility or informed other aspects of your practice.

EH: Yeah! It’s not something that I was drawn to beforehand, but it’s actually a more democratizing way of disseminating work. I had hoped to have a Dorsky kiosk in the supermarket, getting people to come and draw something—maybe an industrially farmed potato—while we talked about the health of the ‘wild’, and just see where that led. That wasn’t possible during COVID. The call for people to participate in DIRT started very locally, just trying to get people to come into the museum, but that didn’t feel satisfying at all because only a very small segment of the population would actually come. So that call has now been extended through Instagram, and through Nextdoor and Facebook community pages for Poughkeepsie and New Paltz. People have such varied experiences of dirt, both recreationally and professionally, and I’ve had some amazing feedback through social media. This project is just beginning, and I intend to keep it growing beyond the life of the residency. It feels like something that’s simple and important that I haven’t fully understood yet. This kind of socially engaged work is messy, and that’s great! It just needs to get bigger and continue to open up, regardless of my expectations of where it might go.

DIRT: Inside Landscapes is on view thru July 11, 2021 All Hudson Valley residents are welcome to participate. Follow along on instagram @dirt.scapes

DIRT Dinner Party Workshop, in conjunction with DIRT: Inside Landscapes at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, 2021. Photo: Emilie Houssart/Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art