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Judith Russi Kirshner: In the last ten years you have worked with a stunning variety of materials—natural liquids, glass, stone, steel, and even light. Could you talk about some themes or ideas that have interested you during this period?
Thomas Skomski:Well, as I look back over this body of work what I see in almost all the pieces is a relationship between the substance of the piece and the process that is going on in the piece. It seems that those two things exist inseparably in all the work. They mutually support each other.
JRK: The sculpture that you have been producing over the past years often seems to be about a way of seeing. It is as if you use your sculpture as a way of looking, as actually perceiving something, as visualizing something that is not merely spatial or formal.
TS:Yes, it definitely is about a way of seeing. That is an important aspect to every piece. I’m not making a distinction in material between a generic container and a stone. I’ll frequently use objects or materials that strike me as interesting on one level
or another and then integrate them into the work. The choices aren’t arbitrary, they’re very intentional—there’s just not a lot of predetermined limitations placed on what qualifies as material.
JRK: Do you see your sculpture as being driven by perceptual problems as much as it is informed by traditional problems of spatial relationships, scale, and architectural concerns? It appears that much of your work is about taking an object, in a particular circumstance, like a bottle that normally contains apple juice, but “seeing” it as a filter for the more abstract, the larger percptual experiences that you describe with Infinity . Is that a constant in your work—moving from a stone that one might find on a path and surrounding it with mesh or a bottle and then moving it to another perceptual state?
TS:If I understand your question, you’re asking if it is a question of relationships about perception, the act of perceiving, to otther sculptural concens?
JRK: Yes, let’s, talk more specifically about certain pieces so that the relationship between substance and process is more clearly articulated; for example, theBottle series or theInfinity series.
TS:The Bottlewas originally chosen as a metaphor for the body. In 1984 the first bottle piece, “Elizabeth’s Filter,” was accompanied by the statement, “70% of the fat-free body weight is water,” to help clarify the metaphor. I used a generic glass gallon bottle filled with water and sealed with wax and placed an “X” form behind it. As you look through the bottle, light refraction causes the “X” to be transformed into an infiinty sign. The water carries the process aspect and alters the static form.
JRK: Was that important to you—the relationship
in the body?
TS:Yes, I wnated to relate it to body as ground of experience. The entire body functions as a filter in the same way that the bottle functions as a filter. For example, if you and I experience the same thing, our perceptions are likely to differ due to being filtered through our individual conditions.
JRK: Do you begin with the materials in your working process?
TS:Yes, I have developed a vocabulary of different materials that I turn to frequently. For example, I began using wax because of its tactile quality. It has a softness that serves as a good balance to the steel I was using with it, and it was a beautiful substance. I’ve always perceived it as a humanizing element. Other material choices originate from their function—what they can do.
JRK: And do you consider light as one of your materials?
TS:Yes. I’ve made a series of light channels where, without the introduction of an external light source (whether it be the sun or artificial lighting), the pieces don’t work. The light is an integral material, somthing insubstantial that ends up becoming substantial.
JRK: Could you describe the fire pieces?
TS:The fire pieces were part of the More Equalseries. In the piece entitled Interminable, a wax slab is mounted on the wall above a cage that contains thin copper sheets and fragments of slate. When light is projected onto the piece it is reflected off the copper and onto the wall creating the illusion of fire below the wax. Here again the process enters the piece, this time implied by the image of the fire.
JRK: When you describe these pieces that are, by definition, sculptural, you refer to them as an image. It is interesting to me that so much of your expression seems to be driven by a visual field. Even the way you call them images is striking to me now.
TS:I think that has to do with the working process. It’s a reflection of the working process more than anything else, and interestingly enough I am looking now toward changing my process somewhat because I want to integrate—it’s a little hard to describe—but I want to integrate what I perceive as process in the pieces into the actual creation of them.
JRK: That seems to be one of the fundamental contributions of your work. You use those aspects of nature that are insubstantial—like light or water—that don’t have a form. You transubstantiate or give them new form in sculpture that relies on process and perception, or the ability to be understood in a visual field.
TS:I think you can say that even if you only “see” something and are not able to move through it, that seeing is not isolated from the rest of the body experience. In all likelihood it is immediately connected to a body presence. With the light and fire pieces in the gallery setting, I saw viewers come in and interact with the work in a physical manner, trying to understand how the pieces operated. The works invited an exploration and, by physically interacting with them, people understood them more completely. They found the need to relate to what was happning there, to try to grasp the illusion, to somehow penetrate the phenomenal aspect.
JRK: Let’s continue just a minute on the issue of sculpture being involved in acts of perception. There are
I think you can say that seeing is not isolated from the rest of the body experience.
I don’t like trying to carry a singular overt message in my work.
other artists who work in this tradition, particularly on the West Coast in the 1970s—artists like Robert Irwin. Do you see your work belonging to that experimental context of experience and visual illusion?
TS:I do insofar as I use the aspects of illusion and perception as a means to almost seduce the viewer into the experience of the work, but the relationships that exist within each individual piece go beyond that orginal seduction. There is someting else there in addition to the perception. Those percptual things are kind of an access point.
JRK: What sorts of messages are you interested in having these experiences deliver—in the cage pieces, for example?
TS:The cages came out of a piece I did in which I wrapped a stone with window screen. The stone retained its original identity but was clearly transformed by the process of enclosing it in the screen. I didn’t realize it at the time (1983) but it was a precursor to the more overt cages I’m currently making. Gradually I moved from using window screen to heavier gauge wire mess, to fabricating cages out of steel wire and rod. Now I move back and forth between the different scales
JRK: Does your work relate to some of the current politiacl, social, or ecological critques that many artists have imbedded into their work?
TS:Not in a direct way. A lot of the materials I choose have a particular resonance that automatically attunes one to a certain issue. For example, if clear water is contained in a bottle, there is no escaping the reality of the purity in that image in contrast to, say, polluted water. But personally, I don’t like trying to carry a singular overt message in my work. I’ve never learned much that way
myself and, in fact, have shied away from things that try to do that. Every once in a while I get desperate enough about a certain circumstance or situation to try to plead my case, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the most effective way of communicating.
JRK: Still there is an idea or notion of containment or imprisonment in these cage forms. Can you elaborate on what possible cultural or political or even subjective interpretation that you might have?
TS:The image of containment or confinement works on several different levels for me. The original level is seeing the cage metaphorically. I recognized how subject I am to being caught in particular ideas or particular feeling states, caught in psychological concepts, it’s part of the human condition. Sometimes just having an awareness of that automatically evokes liberation from it, and the cage functons in that manner. At the same time imprisonment has become an amazingly dominant image that still exists in the shadows even though it’s so massively prevalent in our culture.
JRK: Before we go too far along the road of political correctness, perhaps you could explain what you were thinking in the 1991-92 work,Pietá.
TS:The piece consists of an almost 8-foot tall cage, about 6-1/2 feet square. Within the interior of the cage is a 1/8th-inch steel plate approximately the same size as the floor of the cage. The plate is turned on a slight angle so the sides of the cage hold it in place around 18 inches off the ground. The weight of the plate causes it to bow from its four suspended corners and the entire surface of the plate is covered with a layer of dried blood. The title Pieatá draws on the Christian iconography in which
the positive mother’s love embrace is archetypally expressed. My intention with the title was to extend the reading of the cage to include the shadow aspect of the mother’s embrace.
JRK: I want to talk about the dried blood that covers the large steel plate that is balanced in the container of the large cage-like structure titledPietá. Could you elaborate on how you chose that material?
TS:I chose it because it was blood. It was a visceral response. I liked the way it looked and I liked the way it smelled; it had an immediacy about it. I built the cage first, then worked with the interior space. After that part was resoved, I began playing with the surface of the plate. I tried everything under the sun before I came to the blood. Although I had used dried blood in one other piece it didn’t occur to me to use it in this piece. I liked the way it pulled in the relationship to the body. Only after that did I decide on the title.
JRK: There is a striking, theatrical realization of a larger tradition of Christian iconography because of the title you have given it, but I wonder if there isn’t another shading of the spiritual reading that might be located in an Eastern context or in Eastern ways of thinking. Could you elaborate on that?
TS:Yes, I’ve been strongly influenced by Buddhist thought in my work. I think one way that influence manifests itself is through the simultaneous existence of opposites in a large number of the pieces. For example, in Elizabeth’s Filter,what is placed behind the gallon jug is an “X,” but when you look throught the bottle what you see is an infinity sign. Seen from the front you see the illusion, and, as you peer behind the bottle, you see the reality of the “X.” They virtually exist back to back. It’s that kind of
relationship that I look for in many of the pieces.
JRK: How do you look for it?
TS:It’s certainly not a linear process. It’s quite an intuitive process. I like to enter into the work from the position of not knowing what’s going to happen. What that does is help me get beyond my expectations of the piece, and I think the result is that there is a greater degree of vitality in the work because it’s not predetermined. It’s like saying I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I know when I’ve found it.
JRK: I think I read somewhere that you described your work as nonempirical experiments with a sense of unexpected consequences of illusion and reality.
TS:I wouldn’t call my works experiments, but I do see them as being nonempirical in nature. What I like about that description is that it recognizes the fact that there is more in experience than meets the empirical eye. It allows for that which is ignored or forgotten or repressed. It’s really a force for creativity. An example of how all this might function is the Mound Inversion series of 1989. What physically happens in that series is a square hole is cut into a square platform and the platform rests on top of a low cage. A mound is poured onto the platform and the central part of the mound falls through the hole and into the cage. The bottom half of the mound is left on the platform and forms an aureole of granular material.
JRK: Now is that a literal simultaneity of opposites?
TS:Yes, I think so, also you see that there is both substance and process occurring simultaneouly, there isn’t a way of separating one from the other.
JRK: What about the relationship between the elements—whether it’s illusion or reality? Does the meaning reside in the relationship between any two or more of these ideas?
TS:I would say that’s where the tension resides. It’s not one thing or the other. It keys into the notion of the “middle way” in which one holds the tension that exists between opposites, not identifying with either side. It’s more akin to how I perceve reality.
JRK: What lies beyond the illusion? What exists after one has walked away from the phenomenal change?
TS:It is less a matter of what lies beyond the illusion and more a matter of the relationship between reality and illusion. By relativizing what we understand to be real, I think we open up a situation that we might otherwise overlook or devalue in some way.
JRK: How do you perceive reality?
TS:It is a constantly changing transient experience, full of contradiction and uncertainty with occasional moments of insight.
JRK: On the other hand, these pieces, because of a certain strong landscape reference, recall on a smaller scale some of the earth art experiments of artists like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer.
TS:I’ve never worked in the landscape per se but I have taken qualities from the landscape and intergrated them into my work. The quality of vastness serves as a kind of foundation; it underlies my relationship to my work.
JRK: So it grounds some of the metaphysical concerns that you might be trasferring from some of your readings in Eastern philosophies as balanced or
contradicted by, or juxtaposed with, a very real experience in the landscape.
TS:Right, it’s the real experience of the landscape and also the grounding of experience in a regular Zen sitting practice.
JRK: Are you interested or informed by the earth works, process, artists or concptual art?
TS:For me, Smithson opened up a whole new vocabulary, but as far as the body of conceptual work goes I persnally try to move away from the process of conceptualization.
JRK: Why is that?
TS:It relates to the image of the cages—how one gets caught in ideas.
JRK: So is it like a talisman if you make a cage or container then you won’t be caught by your own ideas?
TS:Yes, in part, it holds the possibility of getting caught, where you can see it.
JRK: Do you believe in 1992 that it’s still possible to make esthedtic statements that are not all overshadowed by ecological, cultural, and social realities?
TS:I feel very strongly about that. I think it’s definitely possible and not only possible but important to do it.
JRK: Why is it important?
TS:Because it is important to have a space that is free of manipulation. It has something to do with the subject of a conversation I had recently with a corrections officer from a nearby prison. He was telling me how important the volunteer program is at the prison. He said that all their lives the inmates have either been manipulated by or tried to
It is important to have a space that is free of manipulation.
manipulate someone. Their world had been this co-dependent mess. When a volunteer comes in without wanting something or promising anything, it is a totally new way of relating for them. He said you can’t imagine what that means to some of these guys, I think there is a real similarity there with work that doesn’t have an overt agenda but can still be intellectually and emotionally strong.
Thomas Skomski is a sculptor who lieves and works in Chicago. He is on the
faculty of the The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Judith Russi Kirshner is a critic and Director of the School of Art and
Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago.