Tacoma, WA
102423
UPS

Assignment 2: Collaboration & Intelligences
Passing Notes
[Wood, Metal, Thread, Paper, & Fishing Line] with Belinda Garrow

Concept

This piece was inspired by the writing of Alva Noë, which discussed the concept of art as a lens to reveal the invisibilities of design. Tools to uncover these strange designs was isolation and change. As a collaboration piece, Belinda and I found it particularly interesting to explore the combination of our personalities in a single, more stripped back piece. 

In the end, our process became very materials driven. When we found this strange school desk, we couldn’t help but be drawn in by it’s design. The desk’s placement behind the chair made it completely absurd in isolation from the row of desks where it would naturally reside. We desided to highlight the idea of strangeness in isolation, and the idea that things (and people) are not designed to exist in solo.

Process

We began as most projects do - with a hearty discussion. As we talked about concepts and art and people and life, we wrote down our musings. These became the fragments of text from which we assembled our poem (a Beau Tomlin poem). From our discussion and our chance encounter with this desk, we landed on the idea of deconstructing the desk and hanging it in place without the frame. It is suspended with fishing wire, and details were added with embroidery thread. The metal that frames our poem is the original metal stabilizing frame of the desk. In our installation of the wooden portions of the desk, we aimed to stay as true to the original form and arrangement of the desk pieces as possible.