Not Beyond Repair

(Not Beyond Repair. 15" x 13" x 13". A collaboration with ceramist Gale Ray.  Broken ceramic shards crudely glued back together; repaired, vintage ceramic glove form; unraveled thread mixed into UV filtering epoxy; and letters clipped from vintage ephemera.  Click on any image to enlarge.)

I've been working on this piece for weeks.  That might sound like a lot of time but it wasn't.  I'd only spent about ten minutes a day.  That's all I could do at any one time.  I wish I could say that this was entirely my idea but it wasn't.  At this point, the story needs to back up a bit!

(Above:  Detail of Not Beyond Repair in progress.)

Months and months ago I applied for a solo show at Park Circle Gallery in North Charleston.  My Found Object Mandalas were accepted for October 4 - 31, 2022. There's even a public reception on October 7, 2022.  The email announcing the selection included the fact that my work would occupy half the space.  The other half was awarded to Gale Ray for her solo show.  Gale Ray is a talented painter and ceramic artist living in Charleston, SC, but until reading my acceptance email, I'd never heard of her.  She got much the same sort of email as I did.  She didn't know me either.  In fact, we still haven't met but we connected on social media and by telephone.  We are looking forward to our joint solo shows.

(Above:  Not Beyond Repair, in progress.)

During our correspondence, Gale suggested some sort of collaboration. Perhaps this idea occurred to her because it put a positive spin on a very negative situation.  One of her large ceramic vessels had recently been broken while traveling to an out-of-state juried show.  The piece was literally "in pieces".  Gale suggested sending the shards to me as the start of a collaboration.  She thought that I might "make a mosaic" but I really don't know how to do that ... not that I have more expertise or knowledge about gluing shards back together but that's what I did.  I also sent Gale a box of strange things for mark-making on a new piece of ceramics (not that she's going to do that ... because ... well ... she might have other ideas too!)

(Above:  Using the attachment to my miniature grinder to remove excess Gorilla glue.)

For two or three days, the shards sat on the top of my dry mount machine.  I tried to think how best to use them.  I attempted to drill a hole through one piece so that I could stitch through them. My 1/16" drill bit refused to do the job.  Finally, I decided to pretend I was in some museum trying to glue together the remains from an archeological dig. (This fantasy propelled the idea!) 

Of course, I don't know what glue would be proper but I do have Gorilla glue.  Of course, I don't know what sort of clamps would be proper but I have some cheap plastic clips. Between the expanding glue and the lack of flexibility in my makeshift clamps, I knew that a proper "reconstruction" wasn't going to happen.  Maybe that's why I didn't start photographing the process until I had most of the shards glued together.  Honestly, I didn't think this approach would work at all ... but it did!  (I really wish now that I'd photographed the "before" scene!)

(Above:  Detail of the letters clipped from vintage ephemera to spell out the title.)

Basically, I glued and clamped together a few pieces every day until they formed a "broken pot".  Toward the end, I started thinking about the word "collaboration".  Gluing shards together might have been "enough" but it certainly didn't meld my fiber art approach with Gale's ceramic approach.  Fibers were needed.  Plus, the piece was rather fragile.  What it needed was "more support".  I had an idea as to how to best proceed.  

For four days in a row, I mixed up almost a quart of UV filtering epoxy with a pile of unraveled thread.  The thread was leftover from my installation Threads: Gathering My Thoughts.  I knew this would work because I'd experimented with thread and epoxy before ... and blogged about it HERE. This couldn't be done in one day because the epoxy isn't formulated for that much density.  Yet, the epoxy would adhere to the inside of the vessel ... reducing the fragility.  Also, I added a repaired, vintage glove form.  After all, this was all "handwork".

(Above:  Detail of Not Beyond Repair.)

More than just "handwork", I added the vintage glove form because it brought a human element and sense of resilience to the collaboration.  Why?  Well, I'd been thinking about a title.  I didn't want something that related to either my fibers or Gale's ceramics but something that spoke to the act of reclamation, of mending, of putting things back together ... of REPAIR.  As I worked, I googled for quotations with the word "repair" and landed on one by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York's 14th congressional district's US representative.  I knew immediately that this was perfect: I just hope that more people will ignore the fatalism of the argument that we are beyond repair. We are not beyond repair. We are never beyond repair.

(Above:  Detail of Not Beyond Repair.)

The final touches to this piece were simple and straight-forward.  I used the attachment to my miniature grinder to sand away the excess Gorilla glue.  I painted the exposed edges of the shards with gold metallic paint mixed with GAC 200, an acrylic hardener that increases adhesion to non-porous surfaces, and added letters clipped from vintage ephemera to spell out the title: Not Beyond Repair.  Gold paint was used as a nod toward the Japanese technique called Kintsugi.  Liquid gold is used to mend broken objects.  Kintsugi "treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise."  I like that!

I don't know what Gale Ray will think of this piece and I don't know what she is doing with the items I sent her, but I look forward to the show in October!  It's going to be exciting to share a gallery and unveil our collaborations.