Comment

Comment by Brigitte Martin on July 26, 2008 at 7:24am

Kristin:

Thank you so much for taking the time and giving me a really in-depth response. No, this was not more info than I wanted but precisely the background I was hoping for.

I think that the bunch of issues you address are very important and most interesting to boot. Would you consider putting some of this up as a new blog ?

Brigitte

Comment by Kristin Mitsu Shiga on July 23, 2008 at 2:41pm

Hi Brigitte -
I am so pleased that you like this work. This is some of my favorite newer work, from a series called, "Unfinished, Damaged and Broken." The plates are an ode to the tinkerer's art. Before the Industrial Revolution, people did not just throw out a cup or plate when it got a crack in it, or replace it with one from Target! An itinerant craftsman called a tinkerer made a living by fixing these objects with steel wire. After mass production came into play, the art became more decorative than functional, and this is a reference to that, as well. Many of the plates I found with cracks pre-existing, some came from friends during my call for Unfinished, Damaged and Broken objects.

Here's a bit more of the thinking behind the series...
My mother has a table in her dining room. It’s the same one we had in our kitchen when I was growing up, and it bears the marks of three children learning to hammer, write and sew. Over the years, its joints have loosened, and the way she keeps the whole table from listing is to shim the legs with cardboard. As the misshapen little squares of cardboard are compressed, they shimmy out of place, and get kicked across the hardwood floor. In a ritual-like process every few days she collects them all again, adding a new one from time to time, and props the table up again. In this way, she has learned to live with this thing. I doubt it has ever crossed her mind to repair or replace it.

How many of us live with objects like this – things that don’t quite work anymore, or maybe never did, but we adapt to them and make them work, never noticing our own sometimes Herculean efforts to do so. It’s these little liabilities and handicaps that we live with every day, and the adjustments we make to accommodate them, that intrigue me.

What does it mean that so many of us get into the habit of starting things that we can’t, or don’t finish? We end up with the flotsam and jetsam of unfinishedness hanging all around us – eventually forming tangled barricades between us and the ability to complete anything. And when we know how good the accomplishment of finishing really feels, why do we procrastinate and handicap ourselves by constantly overfilling our plates?

When are things that are not whole still recognizable? How many, and which elements need to be there before we know the name of a thing? With objects, I think it is more obvious when a loss has occurred; when something is missing it’s a tangible thing. But there are a lot of people walking around with big chunks torn from themselves, and you still recognize them as people.

How many things do we have in our lives that fit the description of unfinished, damaged or broken? How many parts of ourselves can be described as such? We shove them in drawers and boxes, out of sight, and ignore them. But they are there, filling our inner worlds with imaginings of elements that finish them. Inside, we are striving to fill those voids all the time. When we turn our focus to them, we can mend them with little effort, and the clutter is cleared away.

So, that's probably way more information than you were looking for. This is a project that is still in process, and very close to my heart. Thanks for asking about it!
-Kristin

Comment by Brigitte Martin on July 22, 2008 at 1:03pm

Kristin:

I am hoping you could give me a little bit of background on this piece, please ? What inspired you to come up with the stitching on the plate ? Was the plate broken when you found it ? Why the use of steel rather than - say a fiber thread to keep it together and add floral elements ? I am very much interested in the influential/inspirational "part" of art.

Thanks. Brigitte