Post 18: Connecting objects

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The problem of connecting one thing to another feels very present in the visual work I set out to make. Connection is always at hand because there’s always more than one component that I’m using (is it true that connection becomes a necessity when you’re dealing with more than one thing?), and a problem is always what I’d call it because connecting things kind of feels like the ultimate impossibility. (At least in the world of making by hand, can you actually make multiple things, multiple materials become one? One as in something with the appearance of a singularity?) Though, maybe it’s just that the methods I use for connecting (gluing, taping, placing next to) are processes that leave a seam in the line of connection--that don’t promote a flawlessness between entities.


Some connections:


A whole and a part















-Doesn’t form something new and nameable.


Two of the (almost) same item













-May be strange and funny because there isn’t actually anything so strange or funny about it?


An almond and a piano











-A combination merely because the form of an almond sits easily on the form of a piano?


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Something I like is that when objects are combined, there’s no “and” between them. If you put a piece of tape on an apple, it’s not “apple and tape,” it’s “appletape.” Objects are just as able to be combined with each other as words can be combined into phrases or sentences, but they lack the structure or logic of doing so. I read visual connections as blunt in this way. They can only connect without being able to say they are connecting.


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