enter.

Mary Mikel Stump
post/lintel
wood, gesso, graphite, acrylic paint, plumb-bob, string, branch, metal tubing


















enter. (verb)

1. to go in.

2. to be admitted into a school, competition, etc.

3. to make a beginning.

4. to move upon the stage (as in stage directions.)

Well, there you have it. ENTER. The word itself implies moving through some sort of portal, be it real or metaphor. That one little word is my own personal battle cry for this, my 46th year on the earth. As an artist who practices in quasi-obscurity, it's hard to not seek solace in the saying, "...if you build it, they will come." Guess what? It just isn't so.

After subtle encouragement from the universe, I have promised myself that I would make efforts to show more often and respond to more Call for Entries. Whether the work is accepted or not is insignificant. This is about setting goals and carrying through. This is about doing the things that it will take to encourage myself to continue to grow as an artist. This is about looking at the work through a critical eye - either mine or the eye of the critic or curator who accepts or denies it. This, ultimately, is about what Robert Henri called The Art Spirit. Henri (1865 - 1929), who led the Ashcan School movement in art, and attracted a large, intensely personal group of followers, would not relate directly to his students while they were working; instead he would return to the classroom when it was empty, observe the various works of his students, and leave them notes to encourage and give direction to their work. Mostly these notes were poetic, metaphorical, oblique to the actual work. That is what we cannot give ourselves when we try to be our own critics. So instead, I have set forth on a course that I hope will give me small "notes" by which I can navigate my creative practice.

I decided to start by entering the work pictured here, post/lintel, which is by far the most formal of the body of work from which it comes. It refers to the most basic of structural relationships in architecture - and metaphorically, the most basic of human relationships in society. The post and lintel system is one in which two upright members, the posts, hold up a third member, the lintel, laid horizontally across their top surfaces. The lintel must bear loads that rest on it as well as its own load without deforming or breaking. It also refers to our ever changing relationship to the natural world, as we change our perceptions of nature by the ways in which we increasingly view it through our manipulation of the world, manifested in the built form. I could go on and on about what the work means - illuminating each little detail. I could talk about how the use of white obscures the detail of the built form and reduces it to a mere series of subtly changing values. I could talk about the colors selected and the way they layer upon each other on a basic tool of construction like the plumb-bob speaks to the thickening of our influence based on the next "trend in building." I could talk about the relationship between that plumb-bob that exists in the "interior" space of the work and it's physical connection to the "exterior" in the way it "pours" out the back of the sculptural structure. However, when it is all said and done, my descriptions, explanations and justifications matter not if those things are not apparent to the viewer.

And so it goes...my experiment to put myself...uh, I mean my work...out there to see what is resonant and what is not. It's an exciting practice.
I can't wait to see what comes of it.