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June Issue 2007
A Review of the Thomas Sayre Exhibition
at Artspace in Raleigh, NC - Out of the Ground: New Earthcasting
by Thomas Sayre
May 4 - June 30, 2007
by Andrea Gomez
When I was 6 years old, I organized my buddies into a summer-long dig. We were going to find China, straight through the hold in the back yard. It didn't take much to encourage us. We were fascinated with every handful of dirt. Each one contained objects, mystery, fodder for imagination, and a promise. Every stone has history, form, beauty, possibility and concealment. This is precisely the experience of Thomas Sayre's exhibit currently at Raleigh's Artspace: Out of the Ground: New Earthcastings by Thomas Sayre.
Sayre devised a process that allowed him to extract huge plugs of earth and keep them in tact. Although the result may look archeological, the process was closer to civil engineering. Each shape was trenched out and sprayed with concrete (a process called "shotcrete.") They were allowed to cure for a month before extrication, best described in the show's catalogue by artist Brad Thomas, who is also the director and curator of the Van Every/Smith Galleries at Davidson College. In Mr. Thomas' words:
Cables are connected to a number of preset, threaded receptacles that are embedded in the surface of the concrete. The extrication can take up to several hours due to the steady progression of tension that must be placed on the sculptures. *
The earthwork tradition offers two basic vantage points: one from the earth and the other from the air. For instance, one way of seeing Stonehenge may be from the sky - an aerial photograph revealing its intriguing form. Another may be by wandering throughout the stones, closely examining their surfaces, geo-morphic shapes or the spatial relationships among the pillars. (Sadly this is hypothetical as the British government will not allow visitors close viewing.) Twentieth century earthwork artists such as Michael Heizer (Double Negative) and Robert Smithson (Spiral Jetty) were chiefly interested in the sky's view, the monumental aesthetic. I do not find this to be Sayre's interest. In fact, Sayre plays on this very point. We are provoked because we know that out of our view is the open mouth of the vessel. We'd have to be floating in the air to see inside and witness the mystery hiding within. He keeps the mystery hidden from our earthbound eyes.
However, what we are allowed to see is huge. We witness an entire history, even many histories. The pieces, both the vessels and the wall works, are tracks documenting not only where Sayre has been and what he has done, but what existed before Sayre. Layers of earth, each forming a diverse skin of identity, circles the forms of the monoliths, eventually unifying to create the surface. If we understand the language, we may spend hours reading them.
Yet stepping back offers us another perspective. Each monolith presents itself individually with its own idiosyncratic form. They are positioned not only to encourage our wandering through, but also to suggest their visual conversation with each other. Finally (perhaps this is subtly the initial impact, too), we take in how they exist in the space. They are shown in a white-walled gallery, with windows on one side and a brick wall on the other. Despite the windows, the effect is one of enclosure. I may very well have responded to monoliths differently seeing them in an open field, regarding them like Easter Island look-outs or altar stones. How would they change in an arboretum or a stone church? Perhaps this question is intrinsic in all sculpture, but because these forms are earth, it tends to pose the question louder.
Sayre gives us the same handfuls that sent my buddies and me into fits of imaginings and stories, except that he's an artist with a beautiful aesthetic and an intelligent, philosophical vision. Sayre refers to the sites as "wombs" and carefully restores them to level ground, cycling fertility.
In light of this, the monoliths' vessel like shapes are allusions to their origin - the vessel of womb. The process suggests another narrative, one involving Chinese boxes: the earth, the sculpture, the inside mysterious space. The sculpture repeats the likeness of the earth's yielding hole, although as a volume occupying space rather than the empty space left behind. Yet we know the sculpture itself contains negative space, which may also be a yielding womb. Another vessel may exist somewhere. And on and on.
This question was not the only unanswered thought with which I left the gallery. It the entire exhibit has been resolved neatly, tidily, everything making sense, it would have been clever but boring. I wondered about the character of the dark space left behind. I would have loved a ladder down into each cavern, a flashlight - and knowing me - probably a shovel.
* From the essay by Brad Thomas, Immediate Surrounding, from the catalogue for the exhibit, Out of the Ground: New Earthcastings by Thomas Sayre, at Artspace, Raleigh, NC.
Andrea Gomez graduated with a BFA from Tyler School and then worked as an independent animator for some 17 years. Since coming to North Carolina in the late 1980s, she returned to painting as her major artistic medium. In May 2006, she created Arts Ramble, an online interactive blog for the visual arts community of the Triangle area of North Carolina.
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