Forget me knot

in the series ‘The ties that bind’

An outdoor installation of 1000 knots, slip cast from 11 seven-piece molds. Approximate size each knot (h/l/w): 5"/6.5"/11", 13cm/17cm/28cm.

A project about memory and loss. First installed at the French Legation in Austin in 2013 and later for several Big Medium “West Austin Studio Tours.” In 2020, after losing a dear friend in the Netherlands, whose funeral I would not be able to attend due to the Covid pandemic, I decided to dust these off, once more, and installed them with help of Brandon Greig. A photo of this installation, in Alamo, Ca., will be added shortly.

While making maquettes of knots, I remembered reading a story about an older man, somewhere in war territory, who would use large artillery shells to line main street in his village. He filled the shells with flowers. Significant? Yes!

Forget-me-nots are symbols of remembrance, and - long before the use of cell phones - knots in handkerchiefs were used to recollect thoughts. I still have a relative who carries a small piece of rope in his pocket for that same purpose. So, here I am lining the streets with Forget Me Knots, creating seemingly senseless landscapes, in search of simple joy and beauty, while memorializing the ties that bind.

I created this work with help from Christina Coleman and Curtis Lund. We built complicated molds and planned production in a wonderful small workspace. We also learned a lot about making our own low-fire glazes. We experienced all that can go wrong when making art that requires a production of over 1,000 pieces. Weeks of testing, of being sure we had it solved, only to open the mold or the kiln and know we had not reached the top yet. A stressful and worthwhile process.

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Airborne

In the series 'The ties that bind'

Approx. size (h/l/w): 22"/26"/17", 56cm/66cm/43cm

I was reading Simon Schama's "Embarrassment of Riches," an interpretation of Dutch culture in the Golden Age. Schama describes some seemingly insignificant habits of the Dutch which of course resonated with me. One was the polishing of the brass knobs on the entry doors to our houses. Two hundred and fifty years later, my mother still polished our doorknob weekly. The other habit Schama talked about was kids playing with balloons, made of animal organ skin. And playing with balloons, we did that too, upstairs, in a short and narrow corridor, transformed into a volleyball court by a single rope. Sweet childhood memories.

I progressed by building a small maquette of this knot, this tip of a balloon, after having photographed it in the round. I then enlarged it, using slabs of clay with the photos as reference. Two jointed hollow segments. This way I could fit each segment in the kiln. While constructing this work, the biggest problem encountered was building the top curvature, the mass past the knot, which extends quite a distance from its core. Slabs of wet clay do not like to be pleated and then suspended in mid air. The solution was to have these slabs dry a bit before use, by hanging them in a loosely curved sheet stapled to two tables. The top was then more or less built in three parts: a bowl, its top, and a ring, and these segments were intermittently supported by wood. Clay shrinks, wood does not, so monitor carefully, and remove the wood timely, before cracks form in your work.

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Convictions

in the series ‘The ties that bind”

Approximate size (h/l/w): 72"/21"/14", 182cm/53cm/35cm

A project about capital punishment. Soon after my arrival in America, I lived in Manhattan, and I was shocked to I read a newspaper article about an execution "gone wrong" in Florida. I spent weeks creating a large pointillism drawing of an electric chair. Execution was not a current subject to me growing up in the Netherlands. I was and still am against capital punishment. But it is easy to have an opinion in a void. Little did I know then, that a few years after having finished this sculpture, this void would be filled and that I, and others close to me, had to learn or re-learn to come to grips with the effects of yet another gruesome murder. 

While working on "The ties that bind," I purchased a book which shows how different knots are made. One of these knots was a noose. I tied the knot many times with regular rope, learning about the inner structure. It prompted research on current day hangings. In the midst of that, a friend brought to my attention that the U.S. Supreme Court had formally recognized the noose as a symbol of racism as well.

Considering that my kids are Dutch Americans, born from an inter-racial relationship, and that the South-African word "apartheid" is undeniably rooted in the Dutch language, one can understand that I am "bound" to the noose - by geography, language, and culture, and now by personal tragedy.

I drew the noose numerous times before building it from the bottom up from slabs of clay. I needed to understand what happened with the rope going around its core. I drew the bottom of the “column,” a wonderful flower like image. I wanted to build it large to contradict the quiet around the regular executions taking place once or twice a month in Huntsville, Texas. I thought I needed that to attract attention, being so large that it could not be denied, demanding from the viewer a reflection on the subject matter. I had tried to make a small maquette for reference but abandoned it. I struggled. In the end, I was not really sure what I was going to do with the overall piece, until I disconnected the noose and opened the knot up at the top, showing the inner structure of the rope folding within itself a couple of times. It was a depressing time, seeing too many photos of hangings in foreign countries, not being able to forget the vibrant colors of nylon ropes, neon pink and green. If I were to build it again, I would eliminate most of the structure, zooming in to where I made it come apart, and highlighting the work in neon.

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Borderline

In the series 'The ties that bind'

Approx. size (h/l/w): 15"/17"/17", 38cm/43cm/43cm

You can't escape barbed wire living in Texas. It is wonderful to use your camera and zoom into these knots. Or the history of it. There are many, many different kinds, used in different periods in time. But neither can you ignore the building of walls and fences near its borders. A world filled with complexities, drawing the attention of a long-time permanent resident, an immigrant mother. It is interesting how often I think the work (and the world) should be redone, just slightly different. It is that yearning for improvement that starts the next project. And then years later, the piece I liked the least when finished, starts finally talking and making sense to me. I just wish I had not thrown out the large, plasticine built maquette, it was a stronger version.

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Descendant

In the series 'The ties that bind'

Approx. size (h/l/w): 56.5"/11"/9", 143cm/28cm/23cm

My inspiration for this piece is simple, I gave birth to two children. Each one of them is a personal tie that binds, and they do, they bind. For a long time I was not sure how to portray that tie, that knot, and I did not want it to be child or gender specific, each one of them being as important as the other. And it was also significant to me to set the relationship of mother and child in a larger context, not to give image to Madonna nursing a baby, but to include the prior generations, the grandmother, the great-grandmother, an image of roots, one of strength and endurance, one of pillars, and cultures and places. So the idea arose of a knot, a knot in an umbilical cord, but here the knot was going to be represented as a baby, a descending baby; the one always arriving. In researching umbilical cords and what they looked like, the images I found struck me as being similar to bulging repetitions, like spirals in columns I had seen elsewhere. I found a very small architectural sketch of such a spiral column, similar to the bronze ones of Bernini's High Altar of St. Peter's in Rome. I used it to make sketches and incorporated images of a small plasticine sculpture I had made of a baby years ago.

Building a hollow, large sculpture with slabs of wet clay, does not allow for the accuracy needed in the repetition of the Italian spiral column. So, the architectural drawing was enlarged and used to calculate and map the spirals. The profile of this spiral was used to draw and cut a metal form, and this form was used to check the accuracy of a similar plasticine column I was building. I could rotate that column by a wooden stick in its center. A large two-piece plaster mold was then made of this plasticine spiral column. And this plaster mold, after it dried, was then used to form my wet sheets of clay. The plaster mold absorbed the water in the clay to a point where I could remove it, join it, and have the column stand vertically. In the meantime, I had built the hollow baby, using slabs of wet clay as well. And in the end, it was a matter of putting all pieces together, the base, the bottom column, the baby, the top section, and the capital. When building large ceramic pieces it is important to remember that clay shrinks and that you want the whole piece to shrink evenly. To avoid cracks, one aims to put together pieces with similar moisture content.

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Figurative work:

Chantal

Approx. size (h/l/w): 37"/20"/15", 94cm/51cm/38cm

Figurative work:

No title

Approx. size (h/l/w): 43"/25"/17", 109cm/63cm/43cm

Figurative work:

No title

Approx. size (h/l/w): 43"/25"/17", 109cm/63cm/43cm

Figurative work:

My side of the river

Approx. size (h/l/w): 60"/23"/16", 152cm/58cm/41cm

The previous torsos and the life-size sitting female, shown here, were study pieces to learn the "slab" method of building with clay. With those lessons learned, I can now create other hollow, clay forms. Small solid clay maquettes, hollowed out before firing, sometimes created in live modeling sessions, are used as reference points while building the larger structures. The torsos are built in two pieces, the top and bottom each having a joint designed for the segments to fit together and not weigh too much. Because each piece can be fired separately, it allows me to build larger work, larger than the size of my kiln. The life-size sitting female is made of five interlocking segments.

Prior to working this large, I also sculpted figurative pieces in plasticine, made large plaster molds to create a wax positive and invested the wax sculpture in preparation of the bronze pour. Suiting up to pouring at the local foundry was a thrill.

Sculpting the human body trains my hands to see better. This exploration has been an on-going process.

Self portrait

Approx. size (h/l/w): 17"/11"/12", 44cm/28cm/31cm

There came a time in my life, illnesses and wear and tear, that forced me to pause and reflect. A good time to take a look in the mirror, a bit more difficult to do when getting older and when plastic surgery is not for you. A different clay with all its own characteristics. She reminds me of those stoic women in 17th century Dutch art. I am learning to live with her. The arrival of a most wonderful grandson made life easier and more magical.