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WHERE THE HEART IS

By

LAUREN ANNE HILL

SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE:

RON JANOWICH, CHAIR JULIA MORRISROE, MEMBER BETHANY TAYLOR, MEMBER

A PROJECT IN LIEU OF THESIS PRESENTED TO THE COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT

OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF FINE ARTS

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2011

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2011 Lauren Hill

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To my mom and dad

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my supervisory committee chair, Ron Janowich, for being so

insightful and understanding. I would also like to thank Julia Morrisroe, for her constant

consideration, thoughtfulness and support of my work and my graduate experience, and

Bethany Taylor, for all of her valuable input and feedback. I thank Richard Heipp and

Jerry Cutler for their challenging questions and demand of excellence. In addition, this

project, as well as my personal growth, could not have happened without the friendship

and support of the cool painter kids, Chisum Justus, Andrew Hendrixson, and Sara

Bausola. Finally, I would like to thank my mother and father for their never-ending

patience and love.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………………………………………….4 LIST OF PLATES………………………………………………………………………………………………………………6 ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..7 PROJECT REPORT…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..9 PLATES………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….21 LIST OF REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………………………………….32 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH………………………………………………………………………………………………..33

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LIST OF PLATES

Plate 1. King. 2009. Pen, watercolor on paper; 11” x 13”. Plate 2. Secret Box. 2009. Pen, chalk on paper; 12” x 10”. Plate 3. Dependence. 2010. Pillows, needles, pantyhose, rope; 84” x 28” x 30”. Plate 4. Self-Portrait (I). 2010. Child’s costume, sheets, plaster; 72” x 32” x 38”. Plate 5. The Boat. 2011. Bed sheets, clothes, faux velvet, banisters, molding, thread, yarn, copper strips; 6’ x 4’ x 4’. Plate 6. The Boat (detail). 2011. Bed sheets, clothes, faux velvet, banisters, molding, thread, yarn, copper strips. Plate 7. The Boat (detail). 2011. Bed sheets, clothes, faux velvet, banisters, molding, thread, yarn, copper strips. Plate 8. The Shrine. 2011. Bronze, fabric, ceramic. Dimensions variable. Plate 9. The Shrine (detail). 2011. Bronze, fabric, ceramic. Plate 10. The Shrine (detail). 2011. Bronze, fabric, ceramic. Plate 11. The Shrine (detail). 2011. Bronze, fabric, ceramic. Plate 12. The Ladder. 2011. Candle holders, wood, glass vases, fabric, clothing, thread, yarn, ribbon. 62’ x 3’. Plate 13. The Ladder (detail). 2011. Candle holders, wood, glass vases, fabric, clothing, thread, yarn, ribbon. Plate 14. The Ladder (detail). 2011. Candle holders, wood, glass vases, fabric, clothing, thread, yarn, ribbon. Plate 15. Installation shot. 2011.

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Summary of Project in Lieu of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts

WHERE THE HEART IS

By

Lauren Anne Hill

May 2011

Chair: Ron Janowich Major: Art

A series of sculptures, Where the Heart Is, reflects on abruptly severed romantic

bonds and unfulfilled familial roles. Drawing influence from Louise Bourgeois’ and

Janine Antoni’s mode of working, this project delves into autobiographical instances of

psychological trauma resulting from broken relationships. Contrasting household items

with materials of value, the sculptures that constitute Where the Heart Is

simultaneously celebrate the idea of home and mourn its absence.

The dichotomies of hope and futility thread through the imagery and materiality

I choose to work with. Materials that refer to the domestic realm conjure ideas of home

and family, but I distort their usual function by altering them to create sculptures. This

distortion of the material’s original function suggests that what I value is currently

unattainable; these materials are superfluous. I select sheets, dining room chairs,

molding, and pillows, which display experience and use. The sadly majestic sculptures,

whether boat, ladder, or shrine, enable these worn items to transcend their innate

banality. While these materials are not specific or personal, they suggest an intimate

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and shared experience. I am creating a fictitious past, or thinking about a family

structure that I have not participated in. I emphasize home and family to make them

seem as valuable as I imagine they could have been, and could potentially be.

This project embodies an attempt to reconcile past emotional and psychological

pain with the present. By encompassing formal and conceptual dichotomies, Where the

Heart Is asks the viewer to ponder the potential of domestic experience, as well as

melancholy caused by absence of this shared experience. Through juxtaposition of

material and form, the work evokes questions of how to negotiate possibility and

futility, hope and sorrow within the traditional familial realm.

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WHERE THE HEART IS An artist must seek an audience or a constituency, and I think they are to be found among the wounded. The wounded in our society are everywhere but we are schooled in denial, so I believe the hard task is to break the denial, so people can get in touch with their own pain. I believe that art both ministers to people at the point of their pain but may also be a way of penetrating the denial to have a conversation about it in the first place.

-Walter Brueggemann

This speech by Walter Brueggemann is revelatory in its insight, and influential to

the project, Where the Heart Is. Over the past three years, I’ve continually created

visual representations dealing with emotional and psychological pain, while hoping

these works will ‘minister to people at the point of their pain,’ or at least cause one to

question his or her emotional response to the work. Drawing influence from Louise

Bourgeois’ and Janine Antoni’s mode of working, this project delves into

autobiographical instances of psychological trauma resulting from broken relationships.

By exploring my psyche through art practice, I hope to find commonalities in the

viewer’s psyche, and initiate dialogue about emotional and poetic interpretations of

these states. I have used varying disciplines such as drawing, painting and sculpture, to

explore possibility and potential while reflecting on loss in relationships. This study has

led me to a highly personal group of work based on familial and domestic roles in my

life.

Chronology of Work

In order to access and dissect emotional pain, psychology and the study of

human behavior has greatly motivated my practice. Carl G. Jung, author of Man and His

Symbols, expanded upon the definition of the unconscious and the psyche in a way that

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informs my approach to art making. Jung hypothesized that emotional troubles stored

in the unconscious would, if not reconciled, manifest through different outlets such as

disruptive dreams or neuroses.1 Although fortunately absent of any neurotic symptoms

or terribly disruptive dreams, I still desired to tap into the emotional pain that I knew

resided in my psyche. Events surrounding romantic and familial relationships instigated

this grief; to properly explore it, I drew on personal experience and intimate

relationships as a motivating source of my practice.

Initially, small drawings executed in pen and watercolor, such as King (Plate 1),

served as a useful way to explore my psyche and personal experiences; the automatic

drawing method formulated during the Surrealist movement influenced this process. As

Andre Breton wrote,

The absolute rationalism which remains in fashion allows for the consideration of only those facts narrowly relevant to our experience.2

The characters that developed from this drawing technique assumed certain traits;

exaggerations of harmful qualities I had experienced with people from past

relationships, as well as disadvantageous qualities I possessed. In this way, my work

became intimately concerned with how value systems played out in my personal life.

Although the Surrealist method worked to a degree, there were contradictions in

the process of automatic drawing for my purposes. Defined as “thought dictated in the

absence of all control exerted by reason, and outside all aesthetic or moral

1 Jung 8. 2 Breton 14.

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preoccupations,”3 it fell short as an appropriate method to communicate specific

motivations—value systems, morality, and romantic relationships—as well as a device

for the orchestration of formally and aesthetically engaging works.

As a way to more specifically explore the psychological fluctuations of sexual

relationships, I executed premeditated drawings with bodily forms to replace the

simple, fantastical characters of my imagination. The corporeal forms morphed into

each other in a slow, methodical, seemingly violent way, and suggested unspecified

erotic activity, as in Secret Box (Plate 2). While the drawings showed specificity with one

type of relationship that initiated internal pain, the subject matter became too general,

not serving as a bridge between my experience and the viewer’s; I was thinking of the

dichotomies of violence and pleasure in any romantic relationship. I compared the

value of relationships to the effort and psychological risk involved, but although these

dichotomies were significant, the indirect, cold process was further than ever from

communicating any emotion.

Louise Bourgeois once asserted, “The search for truth is what has kept me going.

The secret of my anxiety.4 ” This statement inspired me to question how I would find

appropriate and poignant ways to communicate sorrow and loss in a non-sentimental

way. As I will expound upon in the following section, three-dimensional work served as

a necessary vehicle for this expression.

3 Breton 15. 4 Bourgeois 38.

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Sculptural Works and the Home

During my first two years of graduate school, I frequently experimented with

objects and materials such as stuffed animals, fabric, clay, pillows, and thread (See Plate

3). Nothing integral blossomed primarily, but I continued to experiment, and expand

the range of material from thrift shops and flea markets. Simultaneously, my research

developed to include such artists as Louise Bourgeois and Rona Pondick. Through

studying their work, I became much more sensitive to the diversity of surfaces and

textures that these collected materials contained. Potential lay in juxtaposing soft

materials with hard substances, and airy with dense, through interesting visual

interaction as well as absurdity that some juxtapositions inherently contained.

In response to my collection of materials, my working method enveloped Jung’s

definition of intuition as a ‘hunch’; that is, the “product of an involuntary event, which

depends upon different external or internal circumstances instead of an act of

judgment.”5 I reacted to the materials through an intuitive process, as another method

of accessing the unconscious part of my psyche. Similarly, Rona Pondick has stated of

her working method, “I know I need to be making art for my own sanity. But I find it

helpful not to analyze or figure things out too specifically.”6

Sculpture, as a way to explore innate connotations of particular materials,

provided opportunities that I did not find in painting and drawing. As Glenn Adamson

succinctly states,

5 Jung 18. 6 Pondick 37.

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And yet, since the days of the “Greenberg effect,” material specificity, like supplementarity, has been an indispensable point of reference.7

By using a material for the specific references it embodies, one can appropriate these

qualities to reinforce an idea. For example, bed sheets conjure ideas of intimacy and

relationships that are obviously not innate to paint. As is said of Janine Antoni, who is

also highly influential to this project, she “successively reconciles contradictory

impulses, while creating a narrative that seems to be imbedded in the materials

themselves.”8 Opportunity lay within the material to play on the viewer’s expectations.

By either transforming a material’s function or juxtaposing contradictory materials

together, I began to manipulate materials based on my own emotional response, and as

a result initiated emotional reactions within the viewer. The material acted as the

bridge between the viewer’s and my emotions and expectations.

The sculpture Self-Portrait (I) (Plate 4) was a pivotal piece to my practice. This

sculpture revealed to me ways to create empathy within the viewer, through form and

material. Self-Portrait (I), a hanging child’s costume with a plaster face cast and a cape,

became so strangely pathetic and absurd that one couldn’t help but consider the sad

comedy it portrayed. Empathy signified a way to communicate a feeling, not an event.

In this way, compassion and understanding are more likely to exist without judgment. I

found this sculpture to have potential as a vehicle that relates the feeling of my

experience to the world.

7 Adamson 42. 8 Cameron 26.

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The Poetics of Space, by Gaston Bachelard, highly influenced the three

subsequent sculptures in the project, Where the Heart Is. Material choices, such as bed

sheets, clothing, dining chairs, yarn, molding, and furniture remnants, largely resulted

from his discussions on the idea of home. Bachelard premised that the home embodied

emotions surpassing mere architecture:

But transposition to the human plane takes place immediately whenever a house is considered as space for cheer and intimacy, space that is supposed to condense and defend intimacy.

-Gaston Bachelard9

The home exemplifies intimacy. Residue of bonds and actions that seem so mundane,

but are the basis of intimacy, may be transferred onto objects kept in the home. The

house contains shared experience of familial and matrimonial relationships, and

provides a metaphor for reconciliation of sorrow and loss with the present. In addition

to Bachelard’s discussion of the home, his thought that the poetic image exceeds the

mere definition of words or images and exists as a subsequent feeling or emotion

resulting from the sum of their arrangement, inspired me to create multi-layered work

on a more poetic level. 10 These two topics formed the foundation for this project.

Consequently, the multiple paths that my work has taken have all converged at

the juxtaposition of domestic items with valuable materials such as bronze. On the

premise that I can explore my emotional state through a series of reactions to the

material, as well as play on the viewer’s empathy through material manipulation, I

exploit the intimacy of domestic materials. The sculptures in this project—whether

9 Bachelard 48. 10 Bachelard 15.

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through the absurd quietude of The Shrine, the illogical length of the non-functional

Ladder, or the dream-image of The Boat—unexpectedly contrast material and form.

The Boat

The Boat, (Plates 5 – 7) a six foot by four foot by four foot dysfunctional boat

supported by wooden oars, embodies many references. Materials used in its

construction include sheets, clothes, banisters, molding, red velvet, copper strips, and

thread. The form itself implies animal-like movement, and the weight of the pillow

stuffing in the boat shape causes it to resemble an impregnated beast. It appears to be

in the process of lumbering through the ocean. The interior of the boat concaves into a

ribbed velvet hollow; a space of vulnerability and transportation.

One could say that this dream picture was symbolic, for it did not state the situation directly but expressed the point indirectly by means of a metaphor that I could not at first understand. When this happens (as it so often does) it is not deliberate “disguise” by a dream; it simply reflects the deficiencies in our understanding of emotionally charged pictorial language. For in our daily experience, we need to state things as accurately as possible, and we have learned to discard the trimmings of fantasy both in our language and in our thoughts.

-Carl Jung11

The materials and form of the boat operate as a way to reinvestigate the

‘trimmings of fantasy’ that has been discarded in the efficiency of everyday life. As Jung

hypothesized, dreams serve as spontaneous symbols delivered to our conscious from

our unconscious.12 In the boat’s totality, it reminds one of an image from a dream. The

absurdity of material in its construction reinforces this dream-like quality. The Boat

11 Jung 48. 12 Jung 16.

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becomes important as a dream image because of its association with the unconscious,

and as a way to investigate ‘emotionally charged pictorial language’, as the form

reminisces of melancholy and sad grandeur. In constructing the boat, I continually

negotiated material and form by responding to intuition.

The Boat conjures ideas of transporter. It becomes the bearer of responsibility

for the load it carries and represents provider, accountable for the safety of whatever

cargo might find its way into the hull. The structure and scale of the boat, as well as the

red concaved center, suggests viscera. As a stand in for the body, the interior of the

boat reminds one of a ribcage, and the oars function as limbs. The weathered copper

strips show the effects of time and experience; they display consequence and impact.

One empathizes with its worn demeanor; the sculpture’s movement conjures

compassion.

Notions of absurdity and fantasy manifest through The Boat’s material and form.

This sculpture serves as a symbol of an attempt to manage sadness contained in my

unconscious. The Boat functions as a vehicle to reveal epic sorrow in the aftermath of

severed relationships, but also, through its construction and color, serves as a grand

gesture to maintain faith in the future.

The Shrine

The Shrine (Plates 8 – 11) consists of 15 bronze candles placed in used ceramic

soap dishes and toothbrush holders. The bronze candles each hold in place a banner of

fabric reaching to the floor where it piles on the ground. Aside from the literal

bathroom fixtures, the fabric banners flowing to the floor suggest the bathroom by

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referencing toilet paper or imitating the gravity of falling water. The candles are

reminiscent of bronze baby shoes; they are frozen in time at differing levels of melting,

and serve to commemorate domestic life.

Memories of the outside world will never have the same tonality as those of the home and, by recalling these memories, we add to our store of dreams; we are never real historians but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost.

-Gaston Bachelard13

Through this quote, Bachelard touches upon many elements in The Shrine. The

bronze candles are associated with memory and time, and indicate, without specificity,

an event from the past; also, through their juxtaposition with ceramic soap dishes, recall

the idea of home. The combination of cloth, bronze, and ceramic dishes contribute to

the elegance of the sculpture, as well as the graceful movement of the cloth as it drapes

to the floor. In its entirety, The Shrine serves as a melancholic vehicle for the

‘expression of a poetry that was lost.’

Another important aspect of The Shrine lies in attributing significance to banal

material. The sculpture calls to mind the space of the bathroom, the most private but

necessary of spaces. The soap and toothbrush holders are transformed into vehicles of

meditation and reflection, and require the viewer to ponder the importance of

mundane activities performed in the bathroom and home. There is an absurd quality to

the material combination; one would not think of the bathroom as a place of elegance

and beauty, but as Bachelard writes, “if we look at it intimately, the humblest dwelling

13 Bachelard 47.

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has beauty ”.14 Through these contrasting ideas, the viewer’s expectations are

subverted; The Shrine demonstrates that banality contained in domestic life is as

valuable as I imagine it could be.

The Ladder

The Ladder (Plates 12 – 14) serves as a bridge between the familiar and the new.

A rope ladder that is constructed from remnants of dining room chairs, placemats,

molding, candle holders, fabric, and thread, this vehicle fluctuates between the known

and the unknown, the domestic and the adventurous. The Ladder’s length spans further

than most functional rope ladders find necessary, and seems to be continuing into

oblivion. This implicates its potential for adventure; the viewer imagines maneuvering

along its precarious path, becoming a participant in an unfamiliar journey.

It was the custom in those days for passengers leaving for America to bring balls of yarn on deck. Relatives on the pier held the loose ends. As the Giulia blew its horn and moved away from the dock, a few hundred strings of yarn stretched across the water. People shouted farewells, waved furiously, held up babies for last looks they wouldn’t remember. Propellers churned; handkerchiefs fluttered, and, up on deck, the balls of yarn began to spin. Red, yellow, blue, green, they untangled toward the pier, slowly at first, one revolution every ten seconds, then faster and faster as the boat picked up speed. Passengers held the yarn as long as possible, maintaining the connection to the faces disappearing onshore. But finally, one by one, the balls ran out. The strings flew free, rising on the breeze. -Jeffrey Eugenides15

As an extension of Eugenide’s anecdote in Middlesex, The Ladder connects the

familiar that is found in relationships with loved ones to domestic materials used in its

construction. The potential found in the unknown as the people sail off correlates to

14 Bachelard 4. 15 Eugenides 64.

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the unknown of the ladder’s destination as it disappears into oblivion. Despite its epic

non-functionality, The Ladder symbolizes reconciliation with the past, and my desire to

let go.

The parallels between the symbolic nature of the yarn in the story of the Guilia

and the connotations of the household items in The Ladder expand also to Janine

Antoni’s Moor. Moor is a rope that is magnificent in its length and its construct.

Assembled from objects gathered from her friends, the rope becomes a record of

acquaintances and loved ones. Although the materials used in The Ladder don’t have

personal significance, the ladder signifies possibility by using the materials that

represent shared experience in the domestic realm.

Conclusion

My work has consistently been a meditation on emotional and psychological

pain, consequently leading to an exploration of how to reconcile this pain with the

present. By selecting specific tactics from Surrealist practices, I delve into my psyche as

a method to resolve psychological pain caused by severed romantic and familial

relationships.

The series of sculptures in Where the Heart Is are based on poetic responses to

reflection on domestic life. On the premise that worn household items connote

relationships that are experienced in the home, the sculptures embody the possibilities

that these items, as well as the home, can facilitate. By encompassing formal and

conceptual dichotomies, Where the Heart Is asks the viewer to ponder the potential of

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domestic experience, as well as melancholy caused by absence of this shared

experience. Through juxtaposition of material and form, the work evokes questions of

how to negotiate possibility and futility, hope and sorrow within the traditional familial

realm.

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PLATES

Pages 22 – 31

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Plate 1

Plate 2

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Plate 3

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Plate 4

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Plate 5

Plate 6

26

Plate 7

Plate 8

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Plate 9

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Plate 10

Plate 11

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Plate 12

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Plate 13

Plate 14

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Plate 15

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LIST OF REFERENCES Adamson, Glenn. Thinking through Craft. English ed. Oxford; New York: Berg, 2007. Antoni, Janine. Janine Antoni. Special ed. Kusnacht, Switzerland; New York: Ink Tree; Distributed in the US by DAP, Distributed Art Publishers, 2000. Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969. Breton, Andre. Manifestes Du Surrealisme. Paris: Gallimard, 1985. Eugenides, Jeffrey. Middlesex. New York: Picador, 2002. Jung, C. G., Marie Luise von Franz, and C. G. Jung. Man and His Symbols. New York: Dell, 1964. Kellein, Thomas, et al. Louise Bourgeois: La Famille. Koln; New York: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter Konig; Distributed in North America by DAP, 2006. Pondick, Rona, and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. Rona Pondick: Works 1986 – 2001. New York: Sonnabend Press, 2002.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Lauren Hill was born in Gainesville and raised in Ocala, Florida. Upon graduating

high school, she travelled extensively, and proceeded to complete her Bachelor of Fine

Art at Flagler College in 2007, in St. Augustine, Florida. In fall of 2008, she entered the

graduate program at the University of Florida (Gainesville), where she earned her MFA

in 2011.