Kristina Pray

kristina Pray interviews renee ricci

Swiss Cheese Knife, Aluminum, acrylic and copper, 10 x 3 in.

The following took place on an evening zoom call under lamp lighting. Afterward, Renee went to work in her studio and Kristina watched A Space Odyssey.

Kristina Pray: I’m curious about how you consider your interactions with the objects you create and collect. In Bill Brown’s Thing Theory he mentions “[confronting] the thingness of objects when they stop working for us”. Is this confrontation something you think about?

Renee Ricci: Yeah, I find that idea very interesting because I’ve just started to delve into non-functional tool objects. Something I’ve also started thinking about recently is the second life of objects. I take a lot of things that have been thrown away. I hate buying stuff to use for making. I’ll call myself the scavenger of the room and go around and take everything. I’ll also pick up rocks outside and think ‘this’ll work!’.

KP: Do you consider these objects precious to you? What emotions come to mind during your creative process?

RR: It’s kind of a euphoria, honestly, making something that is finely crafted and beautiful and has the grace of a tool where you look at it and you think ‘this is a functional object. It has beauty and functionality’. That brings me a lot of joy, but to push an object to a place where it actually doesn’t work, it sort of teases you with functionality. It gives me mischievous happiness. It’s like playing a prank on whoever is viewing my objects (laughs). It’s fun. I think the idea of working through a material and the intentions I have creates preciousness and brings value because I care so much.

KP: Does working with the intention of creating ineffectual objects sometimes cause complications in your metalworking process? Or does it feel more freeing?

RR: It’s a mixture. Everything has to go together really smoothly and I have to make things very precise. Sometimes at the end I’m a little disappointed because I can’t use the thing. I sort of prank myself that way. I have a respect for functional tools, but I think I have a sort of reverence for the nonfunctional ones. They aren’t usable and they don’t have a purpose besides being what they are.

KP: Bill Brown also writes about “the suddenness with which things seem to assert their presence and power. For example, when you cut your finger on a sheet of paper” it “teaches you that the body is a thing among things”. Are there ever times where you feel like your experience transcends being the maker of these objects and you become part of the work?

RR: Definitely. I see everything I make as a self-portrait. It definitely reflects how I feel a lot of the time. My thesis is sort of a combination of memoir and self-portrait. It’s my life history and where I’m trying to bring myself into the future. I really like the idea of experiencing the thingness of your body and I feel like metalworking allows that. You work with your hands so much and they get horribly beat up. These are my tools (holds up hands to camera). I’m constantly like ‘oh, my hand is bleeding again’ and I’ll glue my finger back together. Band aids don’t even work anymore, I have to glue myself back together (laughs).

KP: Sounds like an intense process.

RR: It is, it’s a learning experience of respecting my body which then, in turn, reflects onto respecting my tools and my work. I kind of see the body as a machine through which we experience life and create things.

KP: Do certain materials or processes of manipulating materials relate to certain emotions or memories from your past? Susan Stewart in On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection writes about “imagining the self as place [and object and how the memory of the body is replaced by the memory of the object]”. She goes on to say this object’s “functionality is to envelop the present within the past”. Is this something you’ve thought about?

RR: That ties right into my work. I grew up in the country working with knives a lot of the time. If the power went out, which it frequently did, I would just light a bunch of candles and practice tying knots. I’m trying to pay homage to the things I did as a kid that were so important to me. It was all very based in physicality; connecting with my body and the outdoors.

KP: Are there any processes in metalworking that you feel are critical to your work?

RR: I feel like metalworking is sort of what I was meant to do because it ties in all of my favorite things I’ve been practicing my whole life. Fire, for example, I’ve always been fascinated by fire. There’s a picture of me on my first birthday sitting on my dad’s lap and I’m mesmerized by the candle on my cupcake. I used to have fantasies as a kid that I would be able to touch fire and it wouldn’t hurt me. Growing up and being able to work with fire and growing up with my dad being a mechanic has made metal very important to me. I think the process of using fire in my everyday work and having such an intimate relationship with it is great. Also the process of riveting. I love it. It’s the simplest way of putting two things together and it’s really sturdy; It’ll last forever.

KP: Tracey Bensen in The Museum of the Personal: Souvenirs and Nostalgia speaks about how “[objects are transformed from the moments they embody] becoming a pathway for the owner to create stories and narratives around their experiences of the past”. Would you say the objects you create represent this kind of transformation for you? Do certain materials and processes represent specific parts of your identity?

RR: I take the past and future and sort of meld them into my objects. I feel like a lot of my things go back to my relationship with my parents. Metalworking in general and toolmaking strongly connects me to my father. He was the one who taught me how to use tools. I would watch him work on cars as a kid and I’ll still rummage through his toolbox whenever I see him. The last time I saw him he gave me an

old screwdriver which I’m actually basing a new piece on. Making things helps me process parts of my past. I can think about how it has affected me with that single minded focus while I’m making.

KP: Susan Hagan in The Imagined And The Concrete: What Is an Artifact? when speaking about objects stated “I transformed it from an object with historical importance to an object used for my special purposes”. In your work do you think about recontextualizing the material and how you change the historical functions of objects through the different materials you use?

RR: I think especially with my knives it’s about the deliberate destruction of their functionally and turning them into gazing objects that hint at their use, but don’t actually follow through. I’ve thought about how the knife is probably the first tool that existed besides a rock for hitting things. That’s the biggest part about what I’m doing. I have this feeling about knives, fire and primitive things that make me think about the very beginnings of human history and how far we’ve come. It all ties together. I feel like metalworking is very primal; you’re working with basic elements and it’s a very visceral process. Especially with the knives I’m recontextualizing them so that people will think about this coexistence and relationship we have with tools.

KP: Do you think human interaction and sense of touch is important with your work? Tracey Bensen in The Museum of the Personal: Souvenirs and Nostalgia also talks about “the transference of signification that occurs at the point of contact”. Would you say this relates to your objects?

RR: My objects are meant to be touched and explored. I’ve really been trying to foster a sense of curiosity. I want people to approach my objects thinking ‘I don’t know what this is, but I really want to find out.’ I recently watched A Space Odyssey, from 2001, and the beginning scene is proto humans approaching this big obelisk thing that they start carefully touching in curiosity. I kind of want that to be how people approach my objects. KP: There’s a quote in your artist statement that reads “my work invites others to experience the world through the eyes of a child who has just stepped from one reality to another and is trying to make sense of it.” I’m very interested in this, can you elaborate on this concept?

RR: I think a big thing I’m trying to do is bring people into my world when I was 11. When I was 11 my parents got divorced and I moved from the country to the suburbs, which was really weird and I didn’t like it. It was very hard for me to figure out what was expected of me and how to use the tools I had been given. These objects that can’t be figured out are my way of trying to make people feel that confusion and curiosity. This is my way of turning the tables and saying ‘here are the tools, you can’t figure out how to use them.’

KP: In Voices and Images: Making Connections Between Identity and Art, Catherine Stainton writes “Museum visitors come to view [exhibitions] with their own “entrance narrative” that allows them to make meaning from exhibitions as they look through the lens of their own personal experiences and identity.” ... “What visitors bring with them adds to their experience and helps to supply their side of the dialogue”. If your work were installed in a show would you consider it as an interactive piece that people could touch and, therefore, further their “entrance narratives” with your objects?

RR: Yes, my things currently require touch. It would be disappointing for someone to look at my pieces and not be able to touch them. I’m currently working on making something that looks like a screwdriver handle, but instead of having a screwdriver head at the end it’s just a little hole with threads and you can screw in various objects that wouldn’t work.

KP: Turning the tables on the object itself! Interesting. Could you talk a little bit about how you consider these objects individually versus how they interact as a group? Perhaps that’s getting into a recontextualization of function?

Empty (Rock Sandwich) Rock and copper, 5 x 4 x 4 in. RR: All of my pieces start out as individuals. My bench is full of materials: rocks, metals, asphalt and everything I can find. They’re all together, and I try to find ways to have them interact and make sense in my brain. They’re so much stronger together. There’s a deeper meaning when they have connections to the things around them. I think they feed off the idea of the toolkit versus the individual tool. I like them as individuals because I can hold them and connect with each piece. I think of them as companion objects. They’re like supporting characters.

‘Rock Sandwich’ I split with a rock saw, sanded and oiled. It’s a piece I think of as a primary object. I made the pulley as a complimentary object to suspend it. I was thinking ‘how do I give this object context?’ So I have the primary objects and the supporting objects.

KP: What’s the relationship between the manmade and found material?

RR: It’s definitely an intersection between the two worlds I feel like I inhabit. The technological, much more confusing, complex world of connected society versus a rock in the woods. It’s a melding of the simple and complex; the natural order versus the constructed world.

Benson, Tracey. “The Museum of the Personal: Souvenirs and Nostalgia.” Queensland University of Technology, 2001, pp. 6-7. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/16204/1/Tracey_Benson_ Thesis.pdf. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020.

Brown, Bill. “Thing Theory.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 28, no. 1, 2001, pp. 1–4. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/ stable/1344258. Accessed 13 Nov. 2020.

Hagan, Susan M. “The Imagined And The Concrete: What Is an Artifact?” Artifact, vol. 1, no. 1, 30 Aug. 2007, pp. 23–25. doi:10.1080/17493460600610855. Accessed 13 Nov. 2020.

Stainton, Catherine. “Voices and Images: Making Connections between Identity and Art.” Mar. 2001, pp. 2. www.lrdc.pitt.edu/mlc/documents/mlc-07.pdf. Accessed 13 Nov. 2020.

Stewart, Susan. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Duke University Press, 1993. pp. 132-139, 151. Accessed 13 Nov. 2020.

Rock Sandwich on pulley