Fellowship Reflections

Fellowship Reflections: Towards Public Art Furniture - Keren Oertly, May 2024

After Brian Reid / View from the Deck, Thomaston, ME. Photography credit: Keren Oertly.

By Keren Oertly

30 May, 2024

“Wintering.” I had not encountered a season as a verb before reading British writer Katherine May’s book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, at the start of a fellowship alongside collaborator Nick Hardy at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship (CFC), in Rockport, ME. But there was something fruitful in thinking about a season as an action rather than a state, which a noun might propose. May provides a definition of this term: “Wintering is a moment of intuition, our true needs felt as keenly as a knife.”

These words struck me with a sharpness similar to the icy air that swirled outside as I walked through my new neighbourhood in Thomaston; with a tangible immediacy, like the crack of my boots through the snow. A particular force accumulates with the action of wintering, May proposes, drawn from observations of plants and animals in this season: preparation, adaptation, efficiency, withdrawal, bareness, vanishing. I recollected a process of rag rug making in the winter months at home in Aotearoa New Zealand; a lap full of salvaged wool and a repetitive action of hooking instruments; it is possible to ‘disappear’ for a time in a flow of instinct within this active quietude.

Similarly, May suggests that wintering is necessary as a preserving personal or social activity, because through this kind of seasonal consciousness, we might cultivate different things in difficult conditions, which find a deeper elaboration and expansion in time. Alongside a fellowship term focused on designing and developing public art furniture, these ideas had a further resonance, and creative application.

The stark landscape of a mid-coast Maine winter, and the long dark hours accompanying it, was offset by the welcoming appearance of the CFC, on arrival: brightly painted buildings in a deep, botanical red (calling to mind the falun hue of dwellings and barns around Scandinavia), light pouring from the windows indicating the energy and activity inside, and cheerful strung lights signalling entranceways and site boundaries. In another season, I might have been absorbed by other things. But the warmth conveyed by this scene was amplified by the chill intensity of the environment, increasing my anticipation.

This expanded exponentially as we entered the Fellows’ Room in the Jackson Building, to meet the brilliant fellows, visiting artists, and facilities staff we would work alongside for the next 10 weeks: Yuri Kobayashi, Phil Morley, Lin Elkins, Glenn Byers, Mark Juliana, Matt Mclaughlin, and Rob Hiza, to name a few; later, Jomo Tariku, Susan St John and Zac Jurden each added the beauty of their practice to this context also.

Image 1. Testing felt samples for Contact Bench. Photography credit: Oliver Forti Jevremov | Photographer.

Image 2. Establishing the cutting list for Contact Bench ply mockup. Photography credit: Oliver Forti Jevremov | Photographer.

Image 3. Assembling coopered parts for Contact Bench ply mockup. Photography credit: Mark Juliana.

Image 4. A new morning, Whakatū Nelson. Photography credit: Keren Oertly.

Being amongst such a wealth of knowledge, skill and experience with these artists, makers, and educators illuminated my world as someone both new to furniture making, and the wood school community. But the conditions of care had already been established before our arrival, through the guidance, support, and expertise provided by operational staff at the CFC, to signpost our path from international visas and flights, to local accommodation, transport, stipend payments, and more.

French artist Sophie Calle speaks about the sensuality of administration in her conceptual work, bringing letters, notes, phone calls, meetings, diaries, regulations, and protocols explicitly into the scope of her creative practice. Systems and logistics are also raw materials, says Calle, and it is fundamental to design that we ensure these operate as “human mechanisms.” Indeed, I felt a sense of being taken by the hand in all these navigations as this chapter emerged. My thanks to Matt Hoggle, Victoria Allport, Dorrie Butterfield Higbee, Joanne O’Shea, and Karen Vos for their uplifting work.

Some fellows, faculty and a visiting artist in the Fellows’ Room at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship. From left to right: Keren Oertly; Phil Morley; Susan St John; Yuri Kobayashi; Nick Hardy; Jomo Tariku. Photography credit: Rob Hiza.

In A Philosophy of Walking, French philosopher Frédéric Gros states, “...only walking manages to free us from our illusions about the essential.” There is a suspensive freedom, Gros proposes, an almost rebellious disconnection in setting out, holding our world in a bag, to “meet our outer limits.” Unpacking my tools at my allocated workbench at the CFC, I found myself on a similar “vertical axis of life”, and set out with my sketchpad and pencils to draw in the woods near the school and find my footing in a new environment. Sketching was constrained by the freezing temperatures, limited to 5 minute intervals, before I had to return my numb hands intermittently to my gloves. The trees were bare, but for occasional withered leaves clinging to the swaying branches. No animals appeared at all. Only lengths of piedmont blacksenna pierced the snow underfoot, herb heads closed tightly against the cold,

basal leaves hidden. Nonetheless, they formed a basis for some early patterning, which contributed to my growing archive of nature references for detail work. This early activity created an opportunity to drop into what Gros describes as “a good slowness”, similar to a skyline that stays with you all day whilst walking. Being in the landscape without hurrying can have the effect of stretching time and deepening space, says Gros; our bodies can also absorb things - colours, scents, touches - which we might otherwise miss.

We had arrived with a sense of where we were headed. Within the framework of our fellowships, Nick and I were focussed on the design and development of a companion seat for public spaces - an accessible, comfortable and flexible object that might respond to different needs and reflect senses of place through time. Our hope was to create a ‘spacious’ situation, offering conditions of intimacy and ease that might support rest and reflection. We had undertaken some preparatory work at the Centre for Fine Woodworking (CFW) in Wakapuaka, Aotearoa New Zealand, starting with an exploratory bench design developed during the CFW’s Furniture Makers’ Programme the year prior. We developed this through the southern winter months with drawings, maquettes and a full scale mockup. Our terrain of exploration included principles of the New Zealand arts and crafts movement, universal design and accessibility considerations, safe space practices and their possible applications to public art furniture in our home town of Whakatū Nelson. There was much to learn in an effort to get situated. Our community helped us with our research, access to benches and machines, curatorial guidance, technical support and sourcing public feedback - Brian Reid, Monica Chau, Helen Gerry, Leonie Allen, Daniel Allen, Lydia Zanetti and the Nelson Arts Festival team were all instrumental in this pursuit. Yet even with this foundation, we encountered new dimensions, new tensions in navigating ideas and interpretations of place, particularly from a distance. The values established at the outset of the project - honesty, patience, cooperation, cheerfulness - became our guide to find the work through dialogue, negotiation, experimentation and reflection.

In her article “Cultivating the Art of Safe Space”, Australian applied theatre practitioner Dr. Mary Anne Hunter explores how “moments of presence” have the greatest impact in peace-building performances in a community context. While ephemeral, Hunter suggests, these moments offer up something decisive, sometimes revelatory, in their passage. The work of design and construction in collaboration also carried an aspect of performance, giving physical expression to a shared or agreed vocabulary and creating work in tandem. We felt that the quality of our work would be contingent on the quality of our working relationship; perhaps in this way we might make an object that could extend beyond ourselves and reach others. I felt an echo of Swiss artist Paul Klee’s conception of the maker as a conduit, like the trunk of a tree, gathering and passing on what comes from the root depths, towards the beauty at the leafy crown above. Feeling more twig than trunk, I nonetheless felt the impetus towards finding what Klee describes as “a conception of a whole, constructed of parts belonging to different dimensions.” In our endeavour, we benefited from recurring fellowship structures put in place by the CFC to foster such “moments of presence”, and in the investment by other makers and facilitators in relational dynamics that encouraged experimentation and risk taking. Fortnightly critiques, scheduled outings, faculty and artist presentations, informal sharing with tour groups, family and community meals, spontaneous conversations, along with weekly duties – all became critical movements, of exchange and service, which guided us to the heart of the work.

In The Lure of the Local, American art critic Lucy Lippard shares her belief that “connection to place is a necessary component of feeling close to people, and to the earth.” To give shape to this feeling, Lippard proposes, we must find a balance between how landscape acts on us and how we “produce landscape” ourselves. Many voices helped us respond to this prompt, attesting to the generosity, grace and mutuality which circulate within the CFC’s fellowship programme. Some broke through at a particularly arduous point in our exploration, or proposed criteria for evaluating our options, or gave us another lens to view our progress. For example, Peter Korn challenged us early on to find the form beyond words - a difficult undertaking for me, as I tended to hold off on making until the language of the work was established. This proposed a hands-led approach, which suspended explanations for a time, while I drew, assembled materials, taped up furniture footprints on the floor, and began testing components at quarter scale until a kind of object logic emerged. Yuri Kobayashi encouraged us to pursue more specifically what ‘locality’ meant to us as we sought to articulate a regional design vernacular. Honing in on a site for our public art bench, and researching the natural history and story layers of that place, helped guide us to the details that grounded the work. Bruce Beeken encouraged us to lean into the serpentine curvature of the traditional companion or courting chairs which were the initial basis for our design - a feature which seemed elusive during small scale iteration, but was concretely found during full scale exploration. Later, Adam Markowitz shook us out of our comfort zone again, advising us not to take any seemingly ‘resolved’ design element for granted. With one change, he reminded us, everything has to be reconsidered. While it was disconcerting to risk the known through altering aesthetic elements, it proved to be crucial to return to the drawing board - even at an advanced stage - and find a solution that had eluded us up to that point, before beginning the build. These, and other, observations and interventions encouraged us towards a more open-ended, process-based approach, which Hunter describes as “a means to a further means”, in an ever-expanding creative horizon.

In “Yes! No!”, American poet Mary Oliver draws from the actions of natural phenomena - a plum tree, the green mosses, a swan - that we each have a calling: “To pay attention / This is our endless and proper work.” This was a lesson of my wintering in Maine: that we can find the materials to build our answers in the space around us, in our relationships, in ourselves. And in a new season, we might come to know our world in a new way.

Journal entry, 12 May 2024. Before the morning sun rises over the crest of the soft, dark hills, the garden birds sing intermittently, but slowly they increase their song and expand their chorus with the light. I’ve been away for a while, and my senses, attuned to winter, are abruptly aware of the change. Outside, the dew, which has gathered on the rafters, catches the sun as it falls; the moisture, which has pooled below, begins to lift gently into the air.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gros, F., “Freedoms” and “Slowness”, in A Philosophy of Walking, (London/NY: Verso, 2014), 4-6; 36-38.
Hunter, M. A., “Cultivating the Art of Safe Space”, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 2008, 13:1, 5-21.

Ives, L., “Lucy Ives Gives Sophie Calle a Call”, in Frieze: Thematic Essays [Online], Issue 223, published 19 November 2021.
Klee, P. with Read, H., Paul Klee on Modern Art (London: Faber and Faber, 1945), 15. Korn, P., Why We Make Things and Why It Matters (Boston: David R. Godine Publisher, 2013), 5th printing 2020, 113-119.

Lippard, L. R., The Lure of the Local: Sense of Place in a Multicentered Society (NY: The New Press, 1998).
May, K., Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times (London: Ebury Publishing, 2020).

Oliver, M., “Yes! No!” in White Pine: Poems and Prose Poems (Boston: Mariner Books, 1994), 8.