Post 29: Stacks w/ Rachel Yanku

I've been thinking about a kind of pathway that I’m going to describe as outside —> inside. The focus here being on what may be a shape or flow or directionality. Somehow, what I want to pinpoint with this framing is the exact feeling I get when I read “2 > 1.” The movement that takes place from the 2 to the 1. (The greater than sign functions as a kind of arrow?) Whatever this is, it feels like a particular category for me right now, a mode that I've taken up--bringing something from the outside in. But it also occurred to me that this is how I understand stacks, which is a term Rachel Yanku put into my mind when we had this little exchange about her work.

This is where we started:

(One of us had never thought about stacks before. The other: living a life immersed in stack thoughts.)

Rachel then defined stack for me:

I liked that stacking was a way to see, while also being a way to act on something you were seeing. This is where I relate it to this outside/inside thing. To stack is to make insides of an outside. But stacking also feels uncomplicated in the sense that even though it may be about something being brought in, it’s not about something becoming internal. Stacks actually feel like forms with no internal logic to them--they contain no possibility of conflicting inner messaging; a stack couldn’t say one thing and feel something different. A stack is a stand-up guy.

I’ve been mulling over stack as an action word, and in thinking of a way to work through this, have been throwing the word onto various configurations I see, and trying to notice what takes place when I do:

Here it brought out the weight in something that already had a palpable sense of weight. I can feel these objects move down, become heavier even. (Perhaps the word became realized in a situation where one thing was already on top of another.)

Interjection to say that even though I was only thinking of stacks in a physical, three-dimensional way, Rachel has many lenses for seeing stacks--locating them (even not-yet-existing versions of them) in larger structures--aside from a lens that enables one to think about turning structures into stacks, which is what I seemed to be carrying out.

Exhibit A, B, and C (Rachel's photo-drawings):

RY: I took these last two photos in Vermont. Barns and cool Victorian homes with new renovations added on were everywhere. I was fascinated with this approach, like loyalty to landmarks and historical architecture and probably laws in place, but the desire and necessity to add on and renovate. Stairs and balconies weathered away in 100-year-old homes with a Home Depot quick fix slabbed right on top of it. This barn's design was just interesting to me because it almost feels unecessary. Like, why does the yellow paint travel that far 😭?

Okay, back to STACK experiment:

Here it made the dormant quality of stackability in an existing group of boxes come to the forefront.

I also found that it brought out the verticality of a given arrangement. (Despite the salt shakers really pushing for horizontality.)

It made me focus on the spaces between forms in this painting, and sense the substance holding these tangible groupings in suspension. Once again, the term working as a kind of gravity meter.

I felt it had less authority when directed at a single item. But, I thought it made the sidewalk squares really adhere to each other, their edges becoming tense and actionable. They became validated as a group, with my attention pulling toward the fact that they all surrounded one another.

Stacks are Marty’s universe, so he was happy.

Ultimately, the prevailing feeling of this small investigation was the way the word stack in and of itself took on the nature of a thing that you're able to throw. This feels fitting for Rachel’s work--its look of embodied external action.

Asking the big question:

Maybe it's because stacks seem to concern only the edges of things that gives form to the idea in me that there’s an internalness that doesn’t seem to exist or matter with them. Stacks are outlines moving toward unification in order for the stacking process to continue on.

They feel like recipes with no necessary ingredients. How could anything be essential to a stack? They're too easygoing for that. Though, does this mean that a combination of any and all singulars could be considered a stack? Is there a limit to the term?

RY: I feel like stacks are such an intuitive impulse. We do it with everything we do. A to-do list, for an example, is a way to stack things to manage time. It could be existential, but it’s also mundane. Stacking bricks, it’s just how gravity works so of course stacking works best. It’s strong and grounded and in sculptural terms can end up looking like a building or a figure because it’s how our anatomy works. Bones and vertebrae in our spine stack too. Floors of buildings are also stacks. Designs mostly come out of intuitive impulses to work with our body and space. This is true for a good architect or a good dancer, and for someone just going with their natural grain.