some studio work

3d tiles
10,000 Things Rise And Fall While The Self Watches Their Return, Eli Simon 2009 Colored Pencil

The Word for World is Forest

The Word for World is Forest

Eli Simon

12"x12"x12"

Providence, RI

2009

The Word for World is Forest is an ambiguous statement concerning our dissociative relationship with nature. It is also about the predatory quality of our symbiotic role in the ecosystem. Our position at the top of the food chain is so extreme and so far out of proportion, that it is largely through commodified resources, products, activities and spaces that we encounter the symbiotic cycles in nature.

As a reactionary activity a unit of nature has been gathered and given to the public. This unit represents a commoditization. The packing and creation of the unit is about the grinding and reducing of raw material into what our society recognizes as a useable increment. In other words, as a society we tend to understand things in units because that is how things are bought and sold.

The perhaps abstract or esoteric phrase “The Word for World is Forest” is the title of an out of print novella by Ursula K. Le Guin. The book is about the colonization and destruction of an agrarian planet and its people. I love this phrase because the term ‘word’ can refer to a singular thing, or unit. In the title, the equation of ‘word’ to ‘world’ suggest the idea of a society as a unit or modularity- A thing that can be acquired, occupied and disposed of . Then by making the terms ‘world’ and ‘forest’ synonymous, the unitization or modularity of nature can be implied. As if to say nature is a resource that can be bought, sold, occupied, and disposed of but not necessarily perpetuated.

36 Directional Tiles

36 Directional Tiles by Eli Simon at the RISD Graduate Ceramics Expo at the Sol Koffler Gallery, 169 Weybossett St, Providence RI. Up until Dec 13.

Tamam Shud

Lovecraft

Production

5 Molds, 50 Tiles

Building

The nexus of function and available materials = a building with a heartbeat.

"CRACKED"

"CRACKED" The RISD Graduate Ceramics Exhibition at the Sol Koffler Gallery will be open November 13 through December 13. Opening reception Thursday November 12 from 7pm-9pm. The Sol Koffler Gallery is located 169 Weybosset st on the first floor of the CIT building.

"CRACKED" is innovative, traditional, analytical, and performance based work concerning modern ceramics, processes, fantasy, and materiality.

Food and Alcohol will be served!

Draw More

Ever since I worked in Irv Teppers studio I've been trying to draw more. Specifically using it as a way to explore the parameters of an idea. The point, perhaps, is that good artwork is not necessarily about exacting an object or a design, rather creating the object or design as you see it. My favorite example of this is Giaccometti:The result is not a likeness rendered, but the artist effort to find what he percieves as the finished image. It's hard to tell from this pic, but there is a ton of paint on this canvas. He must have painted it on and scratched it out over and over. In the end what we see in the figures features is really a time lapse of Giacommetti's process of bringing what only he can see in to focus. Awesome

objects in love with sculpture in love with architecture

As I am gearing up to make the 100lb batch of high fire stoneware it's going to take to take to cast 4o of these tiles, I've been able to generate a few and start playing around with them. These two hot shots Tom Lauerman and Fabio Fernandez visited my studio after giving a talk at RISD. Lets just say they are on the level, and should probably let me into their little club. I spoke to them about being concerned that the project was a little safe and that the outcome was predictable. As a first year grad student shouldn't I be more experimental? Tom's reaction was that clay is rather unpredictable and you never know whats going to come out. Let it happen, and allow whatever flaws arise to carry you to the next step. Very Wabi Sabi. Check out Tom and Fabio's collaboration, Sculptures in love with Architecture.

The Great Irv Tepper

There are two things the great Irv Tepper knows a lot about.

1) Mugs. In addition to making porcelain cups of all sizes that explore the visual language and character of fragility through controlled deformation, Irv also collects cups as well. Lets just say they are like wet Mogwai- they're everywhere.

2) The ability to completely and totally ignore a refrigerator full of smoked whitefish and broccoli, for a month. To be fair it was in fact architect Richard Rappaport who opened the unplugged refrigerator, spilling its unsavory contents across the studio floor. Pandora's stinky stinky box...

Creepy Baby

I found this creepy Asian doll head mold in the plaster room. It's one of those industrially produced doll parts molds. Granted the doll parts/assemblage thing is pretty much ubiquitous, I just couldn't help myself. Perhaps it is a rite of passage, or an itch one simply must scratch until it bleeds. After opening the mold from the first cast I said, "Oh man, I am totally gonna cut those eyes out.". Shannon Goff, who was standing next to me said "Do it". Maybe it was a guilty pleasure, but it felt so right.

Minimalism

I have determined that an equilateral footprint with a rectangular lofted surface is preferable to an equilateral surface. Unfortunately I have also determined that I'll need 36 just to execute the design properly. Question: wall or floor? Perhaps both?

Terunobu Fujimori

Chainsaw Please.

Take a Trip with Billy Pilgrim.

Yesterday after a few graduate crits I came to one of those conclusions that I keep coming back to. I need to stop worrying about refinement. It can come later. There is no real need to polish a thought before you dive into the making. Follow the yellow brick road, take a trip with Billy Pilgrim.
This sink is a perfect example analytical design purism. Check it: Line, plane, volume in near academic proportions and thus pleasing to the eye- Dominant, sub dominant, subordinate. Yet, it is cold, and well, finished. Its done, and can be remade over and over again with whatever proportional variations one chooses. For this we must beware. As Riders of the Storm, or the Purple Sage, we must be willing venture into the dark and break from formal tradition, even such proven groupings as this.

Interstices!

Let me back up a little. I have been chewing on this tile project for awhile. The origins of it probably date back to ID 3D classes from my undergraduate- Analytical exercises, no doubt. One problem I always had with 3D exercises is that they have a way being essentially a pipeline to some sort of product. Can't a functionless form exist without alluding to a future coffee maker, cell phone, or dear god- a lamp? (shit, anything can be a frackin lamp) . Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, there are a lot of shitty tiles out there, and few really interesting ones. So I put some basic 3D skills to the test to see what can be done with tiling.
When grouped these become a collection of planes of light and shadow. This will change a bit when I glaze them, so we'll have to wait and see. In addition there is some interesting movement from the interstices as the base of each form is lofted and drafted to it's secondary surface.

Heavy Hitters

Heavy Hitters. It's hard to compete with famous people. At times I think should never see, hear, or read their work again, as I can never create such daring and powerful output. But then, I would never be able to return to the things I have loved. These very same things have lured me down darkest rabbit holes, where I have often found almost indiscernible fragments of my own self. These very fragments whose images and dimensional properties continually appear one moment, then vaporize the next like an apparition. It is through this esoteric exercise that i begin to understand why Brancusi worked so much in stone and wood. They are real and exist with such tangible and knowable certainty- reductively hewn into form by the most powerfully willed little Rumanian ever to have sulked the earth. Right right feed your head.

It Begins

Well, well, well...

The Rhode Island of School of Design has graciously accepted the Hawkline Monster into their graduate ceramics program. Such Vision... The Monster begins by erecting a usable studio space followed by the usual mug production and a three dimensional tile project.