How We Connect

Another good thing in my life has been the virtual residency that I was invited to by the local arts council NCLAC and the regional non-profit Ross Lynn Foundation. It was the very first residency for me, and I felt honored and excited about it - but also instantly overwhelmed when I received the invite. More pressure, I thought, more schedules, more stress.

But then it turned out that this residency was exactly what I needed. 19 artists mostly from the area but also from other states came together for eight weeks of zoom meetings in May and June. We shared our works, our processes, our thoughts, our blockages and inspirations. It was good and helpful and enriching.

For the residency, I decided not to make a 2-D collage. I put my "Earth" series on hold for a while too. Instead, I started working on an interactive 3-D object about human connections.

I love making 3-D projects in general but other than as school projects I don't really do them a lot. The last sculpture I made is "Undo" (2016) which is about my relationship to my biological father.

When I think about it, I only work in 3-D when I go through deep painful emotions. When I am finding myself in a deep valley I have the strong urge to work on something that I can not only touch and hold but physically embrace.

In addition to the 3-D aspect, I felt that my residency project should respond to my need to have a work process with lots of repetition. I often use repetitive elements in my work. They seem to make a message louder and shriller. And, according to the common (German) saying, repetition produces truth. I want the project to give me time to reflect. And I hope I will find myself in it.


I had the vague vision of this project when I picked up this large wooden salad bowl from a thrift store years ago. It's a beautiful bowl despite and because of its many imperfections: It has a large crack that obviously someone tried to fix with glue (didn't work), the bottom is uneven, and there are many tiny cracks, chips, scratches, and stains at the rim and on the inside.
 To me, this bowl was an image of a society, and I immediately felt that I wanted to fill it with people.

The bowl has been sitting untouched in my studio ever since I bought it. I was glad to finally use it now. With "How We Connect" I am indeed making a reference to the metaphoric "salad bowls" versus "melting pots" that have been used to describe diverse societies. Obviously there can't be such thing as a melting pot when social and systemic dynamics of a society don't allow or encourage any blending of groups. The image of a salad bowl society seems to fit much better, where all the ingredients are in the same container but stay alongside each other. Some are on top, some in the middle, some at the bottom. Some are at the margin, some are hidden, some are exposed. Some are so small that they will always fall through, no matter where they are. Not all are touching each other, and even if they do, those connections are scant, unstable, temporary. 


However, my project is not about making a specific model of a diverse society. It's about how people connect in general, the groups they form, and about the dynamics of these groups within a changing society. An interactive sculpture about how we are functioning (or not) as a society.

I am making the groups of people using wooden balls which I am covering with names cut from many different paper sources to have a wide variety of old and new names from as many cultures as possible. I have 350 spheres in different sizes, 1/4" to 5", to go into the bowl.

I want to make the bowl very full so that it is difficult to stir in it. Some balls will fall out when you do, while the ones left in the bowl will be getting closer to each other. As I said, the bowl has a wobbly bottom and a crack on the side. Altogether it's a fragile construction.

Work In Progress.