When looking back on this self-designed project it is clear to me that my initial idea or intention was to make a piece while I was thinking about and trying to focus on a subject that I usually do not pursue when making art. Also, I really saw this project as a way to branch out from the primarily text-based works of my previous two projects – basically I saw this project as a way to push myself on a mental level and then also push my abilities to make a work with a more physical and “permanent” presence then my other works. With those ideas in my mind I decided that with this project I wanted to work on beginning to come to terms with my own thoughts and ideas on the idea/concept of religion – as that has always been a topic I avoid in any of my projects. However, I think a key point in my own ideas of religion, one that I did not think to really focus on early in the development process, was that I do not really understand or feel comfortable with my own knowledge of religion.
However, I did know that as the project began to literally take shape, I was focusing on the aspect of major religions (namely Christianity as that is the religion I grew up with) that have some form of alter or place to take part in some form of worship. So I really thought about how in my own church-going experiences there was always a place/time form members of the congregation to come together to either make a donation or take part in communion. These aspects of this religious experience always centered on some alter or alter-like object (such as an offering basket or communion plate/cup). There is a sense of coming together to become one with or communicate with or focus on some divine presence that is the basis for the whole faith.
So with the creation of this piece, I knew I wanted to bring this aspect of alters/offerings into my own visual language. I decided to create an alter for my own version of offerings to a deity that is unnamed and very much open to the viewer to decide as to what the nature of the alter really is, however, I very much intended for the piece to be viewed as a specific item or site. At the same time I was interested in bringing an aspect of interactivity to the work, as an alter it made sense to me that the viewer would be able to “make an offering” to this new deity. However, as the development progressed I started seeing this work as something of a “snapshot” of this religion – this is an example of this religion’s alter in a realized state. In retrospect, I think that had a I really wanted to make this work interactive I would have need to increase it’s scale dramatically (more vessels and some other container for viewers to take coins from) this way the work would have begun to imitate the Catholic alters with the many candles that can be lit by someone praying.
It is fair to say that the candles that are in my own alter is my interpretation/playing-off of the look of Christian alters/prayer sites. These candles are meant to show that there is a human presence to the work – a minor sense of interaction – through which the alter/site becomes activated. It is also interesting to think of the action of the fire burning and the candles melting adds a sense of time to the work; what happens when the candles go out? What happens when the candle wax pours onto the coins below? I think these questions open up a range of questions as to the purpose of alters and specifically, the purposes of my own alter.
I think that one choice I made during this project that helped me express my desire to create an “alter” that looked to imitate aspects of Christian religious practices, without really spelling out everything for the viewer was looking at the work of Eva Hesse. Specifically, I was inspired by the aesthetic look of her work – very ephemeral, dream-like objects that the viewer can tell are extremely personal, yet are not overly sentimental. That idea and the look of Hesse’s sculptures were very much in my mind as I created the shapes and coloring of my vessels and the “coins” within them. I think that by looking at Hesse’s work and by using materials that are more ephemeral-looking, my piece is able to tap into the idea that this alter is very personal in its purpose (being an alter to my own form of religion) and when the viewer comes across it, they are coming into contact with something very much larger than the alter itself.
Looking back on this whole project is something of a frustrating thing for myself, as I really did not fully understand what I wanted this project to do. In the beginning I said that I wanted this piece to be about “religion,” but since I do not consider myself a very religious person, this statement left me feeling very trapped in the subject matter. At the same time I already had an idea for what I wanted the piece to look like (organic forms with some kind of item inside them). I think that once I realized I wanted to make my own form of an alter, which I now consider to be the necessary physical space for a religion to form around, that it helped to focus my own ideas of what the work should look and possibly function like. I guess I am saying that I feel like I went into this project without a defined sense of purpose and because of that I have a feeling that the work is not as strong as it could have been (I keep thinking of ways that the work could have expanded in scale and in number). However, at the end of this project there is no doubt in my mind that I feel that this is the much needed first step in working with religious content of any type in my own artwork. I should also say that this work was successful in the fact that it really has helped me to begin to understand how I process and understand subjects with which I am uncomfortable and how I should deal with such subjects in the future. I think the next step for this project is to see how people view and react to it to see where this form of religion needs to go next – is interaction necessary? Does the scope need to increase or shrink? Or does the work need to become more direct with its source material?
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