Handmade things tend to be so expensive that only a small part of the population can afford them. And yet making things with hands is such an essential part of being human. Jessica Stockholder More Quotes by Jessica Stockholder More Quotes From Jessica Stockholder Your hands learn to do things that you could spend a whole day trying to write about and articulate. There's a discomfort associated with trying to put all those different ways the brain works together. I kind of like to avail myself of that discomfort. Jessica Stockholder brain writing hands I don't think there's any single finished point for a work. It's done when something's happening with the work that feels like a balanced, coherent disharmony. That's one way to say it. And where if I keep working on it, to discover and struggle with new problems, I'll obliterate the ones I was working on. I could keep working on it, but it'd become something different. And I value what's here, at the moment. Jessica Stockholder struggle way thinking There's something about materials like copper, woods, stone, trees, shells. You walk outside and these materials are part of the world before we touched anything. There's a feeling of pleasure that many of us have in materials that have some presence before us, like clay and wood and copper. Jessica Stockholder clay feelings tree Looking at younger artists, like Varda Caivano and Kerstin Bratsch, I see that their work has something in common that is new to my generation. There's an effort to value the evidence of the hand and the handmade thing while also acknowledging the way in which the making of things with hands has such a complex, alienated place in our culture. Jessica Stockholder looking effort work culture I make things complicated for myself and chaotic, so I feel unsettled, and then the challenge is to make something structured and complete emerge from that. Jessica Stockholder challenge feel myself complicated It doesn't matter what I use. It can be anything. What's interesting is how what I'm doing meets with the stuff I use. Jessica Stockholder doing how matter interesting I suppose I consider my work a kind of picture making. Jessica Stockholder making picture kind work I love the way painting is so full of illusionistic possibilities. Jessica Stockholder possibilities painting love way I've always loved color because it's a little bit like music. I love that it seems to be both physical and ephemeral and engages us as a metaphor for our feeling lives. Jessica Stockholder loved feeling music love I feel a bit like a magpie attracted to shiny things. Jessica Stockholder i-feel feel things like I don't have assistants and things in the studio. Jessica Stockholder studio things assistants I work in response to the limitations of any situation and in relationship to what's possible. Jessica Stockholder possible situation work relationship In a park, you are not working with studio materials or a flat piece of paper. You have grass and the people and the city and the daylight. Jessica Stockholder city you grass people Pictures often sit inside of pictures, but the edges of pictures and objects are rarely subjected to serious challenge; we are presented with distinct, whole pictures and objects. Jessica Stockholder pictures inside challenge serious I am more interested in asking questions about the edges of things and thoughts. So the objects I use are not initially the subjects of the work; they are its ground. Jessica Stockholder thoughts i-am questions work Focused attention necessarily has an edge, but as focus changes, the edge shifts. Jessica Stockholder changes focused focus attention The very formal, beautiful, composed order that I make with paint and color is freighted with objects, but like leaves falling from a tree onto a lawnmower below, the edges of this 'thing' have a certain serendipity. Jessica Stockholder like color tree beautiful My idea is to fill an intersection with color. That will include the road and the sidewalk and up the building, so there's a cubic volume of color in the intersection wedged between four corners and four buildings. Jessica Stockholder buildings road building color I think what kids do is play. Jessica Stockholder i-think think play kids My work participates in that really quick and easy and inexpensive material that's part of our culture. In that way, my work engages the means of production that we live with, even while it's classical and embodies some things from a very long time ago. Jessica Stockholder work time long culture
