Nov 14, 2016
Welcome, come on in, grab your favorite beverage of choice and
hunker down in a comfy seat because today I have a bit of a
different interview for you…..yes it may be a little deep regarding
artistic approaches and creativity with forging. I have
invited Daniel Miller from Waynesville North Carolina to read an
article he wrote and published in the Anvils Ring back in
2002. When I first read, the article titled “The Least of
These” I was emotionally moved and connected to it on so many
levels and I just had to talk to Daniel about reading it for us and
to further discuss his approach to forging. I hope you enjoy it, I
plan to have him read some more of his articles about a few of his
forging projects.
A re-write, done in September of 2016, of the article Daniel
Miller wrote for the Spring 2002 edition of the “Anvil’s Ring”.
“The Least of These” : One smith’s wonderings and wanderings
about why and for whom he keeps doing this work.
By Daniel Miller
“We have taken a great social movement and
turned it into a tiresome little aristocracy working with high
skill for the very rich.”
When I came across this rather despairing and depressing remark
in the lead essay for a catalog which accompanied a recent show at
the American Craft Museum, it jumped off the page at me, for it so
clearly stated a problem that has gnawed at my conscience for many
years. The author of this remark was C. R. Ashbee, one of the
founders of the Arts and Crafts movement in England, which thrived
between the 1880’s and around 1915. He was commenting on the
devolution of that movement, which had originally been envisioned
as a means to ennoble, empower, and enrich the lives of common
people by bringing simple, but beautifully designed and made craft
objects within their reach.
Many of us run into the sad paradox that the better our work
becomes, the less accessible it becomes to anyone whose financial
means remotely resembles our own. My sense of discomfort with
this paradox, and an accompanying sense of guilt, or at least
complicity, grew as I watched what seemed like a commendable desire
on my part—to have each piece I make be better, more complex,
perhaps even more consequential than the last—placing my work
beyond the reach of anyone but “the very rich”. At one point,
when my father asked me about a rather extensive (for me)
architectural project I was doing, I replied, “the assignment is
‘make us something that makes us look much richer than we looked
last year.’” My father chided me for being cynical. I
responded that I was just being accurate, but in hindsight, I
realize that he was right. My discomfort or guilt had started
to express itself as cynicism—that sure sign of emotional retreat
and surrender.
My first response (a knee-jerk one) to my realization about
where this kind of work was taking me was a decision to redirect my
efforts—no more bidding on large ostentatious architectural jobs.
Instead of decorating gigantic architectural wedding cakes
with flourishes of wrought iron icing, I would try to make small
nourishing whole grain wrought iron buns and muffins. I would
excavate my soul and try to bring forth some
nourishment. This change did seem to be a positive
step. I was finally making work that meant much more to
me—some of which seemed to expose my interior to me with more
clarity that I would ever have expected to be possible. But I
soon discovered that it still didn’t address the basic
problem. The sheer work, combined with the new effort of
exploration, innovation, and blind wandering that these pieces
required of me made my “wrought iron icing projects” seem downright
efficient. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but the
bottom line was that the work of my new direction was no more
accessible to people of average, or less than average means than my
earlier work had been. The problem seemed
insoluble. What had once been a simple penchant for
trying to stretch the envelope of my work had become an
addiction. If I wouldn’t allow my work to become simpler,
easier, more efficient, or repeated, my dream of an egalitarian and
accessible art form would fade ever farther into the distance.
As with almost all of the solutions to the consequential
problems in my life, this one was presented to me, not constructed
by me, and as usual, I didn’t recognize it at first. The
Episcopal Cathedral in a nearby city got in touch with me about my
making a Pascal Light for them. I was told that a
Pascal Light is a large candle stand for a very large candle used
as part of the worship service from the night before Easter until
Pentecost. It is also lit and used at all baptisms and all
funerals. I realized, with a bit of trepidation, that I was
being called upon to make a functional object that would be one of
the central symbolic participants in a very public, communal rite
of passage—the Easter service. But I was more concerned that
I was to try to make an object, which, if it did its job, might
bring insight, and lend emotional support to two other much more
personal and private rites of passage—one joy-filled and
celebratory; a baptism: and the other serious and difficult;
a funeral. To do a piece like this justice, I would have to
find, or conjure images and a form that would be able to convey, or
embody, the ideas associated with the various uses of a Pascal
Light. They include both the light and the dark sides of the
Easter observances, as well as the ideas of birth and death, as
seen from the vantage point of the gathering of a family. My job
was to come up with images and forms that could be incorporated
into a Pascal Light, that would be able to express these ideas and
concerns.
I remembered that several years earlier I had made a small table
in which I had explored many of these same ideas. It had been
commissioned by a cousin of mine whom I had re-met, after many
years, at family reunion. Considering our relationship, and
the reunion at which we had re-found each other, it seemed a good
idea to use the making of this table as an opportunity to try to
explore the whole idea of family. At that large family
reunion, I had been struck by the how clearly the family members
there fell into three distinct groups—the children, the parents,
and the grandparents. This is of course not a very remarkable
observation; but I had never noticed it so clearly before because
this was the first reunion I had been to as a member of anything
other than the “children’s’” group, and children—rightfully—are too
busy racing around and having fun to be making observations.
Now that I was in the “parents’” group, and looking at the whole
gathering rather abstractly, I could see that each group had a very
different and separate function or job to do in relation to
this whole thing called family. The children’s function was
much more an issue of being rather than doing. They were that
which gives the family a future—which keeps it alive. The
grandparents’ function (at its best) seemed to me to be an interior
one—an assessment of what life had meant, with the hopes of passing
some insights and genuine help to the parents and children.
Otherwise, they were working on closing the circle of their lives—
hopefully, with grace. And in that particular environment, I
couldn’t help seeing my own function as primarily being the link
between the children and the elders, while at the same time being
called upon to build something that might be called my own
life.
So, it was with these ideas in mind that I set out to make the
table that would be called “Three Generations in A Gyre”. A
“gyre” is a spinning thing. This seemed to be an apt
metaphor for all the families I had known—with each member spinning
out his or her own life, yet always in relation to and influenced
(for better or worse) by the other members spinning out
theirs. And all of this within the edifice of that larger
spinning thing—the family— held together, at the least, by shared
DNA, and at the best (for the lucky ones) by love.
With these ideas in mind it becomes rather easy to “read” this
table. It is of course, first of all, simply a functional
object. But it is also a re-presentation—a snapshot made of
iron—presenting to me again what I observed and then felt, at that
reunion. The three legs give a body to those three noted
generations. The tapered, hoop-like bands give arms to those
bodies, which describe the function or job I saw each generation
trying to do. The elders are just about to close their
circles. My generation is relating the elders to the
children. And the children—without a function that supports
the structure yet—are simply reaching. They stand there with
arms outstretched, in that immediately recognizable “pick me up
right now” pose. The varying lengths, and degree of
completeness of the three hoop, or arm forms give an impression of
growth and upward motion, while the tight twists hint at an
individual and overall spinning motion.
There is surely a risk that the “reading” of the forms and
images in a table like this may become too clear, maybe even a
little dull. But the first time I looked at this table
completed, I couldn’t help sensing the presence of a little serpent
in this garden, which I didn’t understand. The objects toward
which the child’s outstretched arms were reaching looked quite
undeniably like wounds.
It wasn’t until a year later, when I learned that my
father had prostate cancer, that the significance of these
wounds throughout the form of my table about family became clearer.
The table now came to stand for me as an emblem of the
nature of the extremely close relationship my father and I had with
each other. We, of course, knew one another’s strengths—since
everyone is willing to communicate about, and share their
strengths. But, extraordinarily, we so trusted each other
that we were able and willing to share, and expose, and explore one
another’s weaknesses, dark places, and even wounds. So now
the table had become a portrait of my own family—as a very simple
three-legged structure, whose ability to penetrate and be
penetrated, supported a platform upon which a feast could be
served.
The fact that this table, which had so kindly and effectively
helped me deal with a very difficult rite of passage of my own,
would sit silently in the home of the person who had commissioned
it never seemed quite right to me. I felt that if it had
helped me in this way, it might be able to help others, but now it
seemed to be almost hidden. It’s therefore not surprising
that, as I worked on drawings for the Pascal Light, images from
that three-legged portrait of a family, which I had made several
years earlier kept coming to mind.
I had said very little about the symbolism of the table to the
person who had commissioned it. Some images are too
difficult, even if they live only in a symbolic world. So it
was with a bit of trepidation that I showed a picture of this
table, along with my drawings for the Pascal Light to the Dean of
the Cathedral, and to the lady who had originally contacted me
about it, and who also wanted to commission its making. I
realized immediately, to my great relief, that they both were
smitten, not with discomfort, but with a sense of recognition and
familiarity. To my surprise, I found that this image—as
abstract and distilled as it was—served them in exactly the same
way it served me. It seemed to concretize and clarify a few
of the ungraspable emotions which death makes more urgent,
regarding both the potential and the genuine difficulties in
achieving any real communication with our loved ones. Both of
them spoke of how this piece seemed to directly address some of
their own acquaintances and family members—both the fortunate ones,
who had been able not to hide (or hide from) their own weaknesses
and wounds, as well as the less fortunate ones, who had lived
hidden, unshared lives.
This project seemed a kind of milestone for me, in that the
level of clear communication of my own emotions was so high; but I
still thought that it didn’t address the gnawing problem of my best
and most extreme work only being available to people of extreme
means. But even this resolved itself, albeit
unexpectedly. The Dean had asked if I would bring the Pascal
Light to his adult Sunday school class and try to share some of my
ideas about it with them. Before the class convened, the
large group got together for coffee, doughnuts, and
conviviality. As I waited in the cloister, a young woman
haltingly stepped out, spilling half her coffee. She was
homeless, and clearly very mentally and physically
challenged. She limped over to look more closely at this
strange piece of ironwork, and smiled at it, and then at me.
In a flash ,it struck me that this Pascal Light
literally belonged to this woman just as much as it
belonged to the Dean, or to the lady who had commissioned and paid
for it. I couldn’t believe my good fortune: Finally a
solution.
I so wanted to convey my happiness at this realization to the
lady who had commissioned the piece but was a bit concerned that it
might be taken as ingratitude. I decided to risk it, although
I was not at all prepared for her response. “Oh no,” she
said, “it belongs much more to her than it does to me because
she has suffered so much more for it.”
Guest Links:
Daniel Miller's website http://millermetalsmith.com/gallery/index.php
Sponsor for today: ABANA, www.abana.org