nathalie miebach lecture

I was glad to have attended the Nathalie Miebach lecture last Thursday, if only to be reminded of the importance of remaining objective in the face of creating a body of work. I remember seeing Miebach’s work in the Godine gallery last year, and being intrigued by the concept of weather statistics informing design decisions. During the lecture, I was most struck by Miebach’s collaborative, music-based projects dealing with similar concepts. The audio she shared titled, “Hurricane Noel” was chilling. I found her comment on the powerful nature of music to be valid. I believe she said, “I’ve found that it is so easy to move people through music, and so hard to do this through sculpture.” This idea stuck with me throughout the rest of the lecture, and I found myself trying to imagine what her baskets would sound like if they were translated to a musical score.

I am interested in the idea of using musical tablature as a drawing medium. I’ve seen other artists do this, Louis Bourgeois, for one. I feel like adding the collaborative element of music-making must have required a lot of courage from Miebach, who seems very much involved in her processes to the point that perhaps she’s a little out of touch with her audience. She alludes to the notion of “performance” when she talks about her work, referring to her installation space in the American Craft museum as being “theatrical”. She said her intentions were to make work to make the viewer feel like an actor on a stage, but I don’t know if this was achieved? I suppose I just had to have been there. I’ll take her word for it?

When I consider my own work in relation to that of Miebach’s I can see some similarities. We both make conceptual work, anyway. Miebach kept saying that every design element of her baskets was symbolic for something - every angle, every color, every bead. Everything was intentional, and nothing was decorative. At first I was totally on board with her when she said this: yes, here is contemporary art that is visually striking but conceptually driven – she came up with a working formula! She’s done what I strive to do! But then, after she mentioned this a few more times, I began to wonder: why isn’t there a decorative element? Where is the ambiguity? I mean, it’s there for the viewer upon seeing it: what is it I’m looking at? Why this shape? What is this thing’s function? But, after hearing Miebach talk about the work, I was a little sobered. She seemed to have an answer for everything, which made me wonder, what drives her to continue making this work? I feel like after a certain point, it would get boring! If it were my place to advise her, I would suggest to her to continue exploring the element of “play” she alluded to when she briefly spoke about childhood, and toys. I feel like this would be rewarding for her, as an artist, to maintain objectivity but not to the point where the work loses ambiguity.

Thursday, March 3rd. Observation Hours: 4.