Artists’ essays are a mixed bag, some are awkward but authentic, some are bizarre and others are supremely pretentious screeds by an individual trying to write their ticket to the top of the art tree. Even so, now and again, an essay arrives which layers a sheen of words atop the art. Both glow from the contact. That is the case with Chicago artist Eric Mirabito’s essay below that accompanies images of his art. At first we thought this had to be edited for the web but we finally decided that it has to be enjoyed, every word of it. This is part one. Mirabito explains his signifiers but without subtracting from their visual potency. His text accompanies images of his works below. It’s a great read, so give it time.
“The reality of these events does not consist in the fact that they occurred but that first of all, they were remembered, and, second, that they are capable of finding a place in a chronologically ordered sequence.” — H. White (1980)
We are susceptible to the effects of signifiers even at a young age. My fascination lies with the faculties of the brain and the way in which we catalogue our memories. The visual history of our memories and our processes of recognition are theories at the core of the content of my work.
This sets up a condition where a conversation can take place. The thoughts begin to grow and take shape and one finds themselves immersed in memory. Thoughts are triggered by the objects but are not necessarily about the reality of them.
In the studio I have chosen to work with objects that have specific meaning to me. The connection to the object may be from the early history of my life such as a childhood memory or a recent experience. Or, the object may have no direct literal significance but rather acts as a trigger for a memory. The objects are orchestrated or composed in groups and staged on other components. By placing objects in relation to one another it is not my intention to create a narrative that will have a linear read to it. I am interested in the more liminal qualities of the objects, their surface, color and physical relationship to one another. These less-overt qualities hold the possibility for meaning. My interest lies in the meaning of things, the imbedded information. There is a difference between what the concept of an object is and what the object’s meaning is. The concept of an object is a broad understanding of the thing as it exists in the world. Meaning is something personal and is the effect related to an experience.
Eric Mirabito is an East Chicago sculptor who works in metal, wood and ceramics. His day job is running the metals workshop for Theaster Gates. Eric Mirabito (1979, Norwich NY, United States) attended the Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York before transferring to the School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 2001. Just after graduating from SAIC, Eric began working alongside ceramic artist Ruth Duckworth. He received his MFA from Alfred University, Alfred NY.
Above image: Work by Eric Mirabito in painted wood, clay and glaze, 2014, 12″ H x 24″ W x 7″ D.
I was five years old and the street in front of my house was being torn up to be repaved. School was out for the summer so I had all the time in the world to watch the bulldozers and dump trucks thundering through the work day. When the workers were all gone at the end of the day I would jump down into freshly-excavated earth, I was on an archeological dig. Rocks, bits of twisted metal and some roots were the standard relics. One day I found an old rusty pistol, the perfect cowboy six-shooter. The gun looked as if it had been buried there forever, the wood in the handle had rotted away to leave a grip shaped loop of iron. The rust was so thick that the revolver no longer revolved, but the barrel was still intact. It was a gun nonetheless. I was absolutely thrilled.
History is a fascination. Not history that you find in an encyclopedia necessarily but, history that is a hybrid of imagination and facts; history that ties me to an experience. Whose gun was this? What was it involved in? How long has it been here? As a child, I was interested in the idea of the pistol, not just the physical object. The pistol was a signifier. I began to create story after story of gunslingers in my neighborhood weaving their way in and out between the single family homes on my block. The pistol as an object was a catalyst. It stirred my imagination; I found myself enthralled.
As an object is encountered, my mind automatically searches the Rolodex of my memory. I search through this data to find an experience in my life that somehow relates to the “object” occupying my attention. This searching filters the experience of the object on my own terms. I come to view this “object” through the lens of my personal history.
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Work by Eric Mirabito in painted wood, clay and glaze, 2014, 12″ H x 24″ W x 7″ D.
When I am on my way to the studio and pass by a house my imagination goes to the structure and construction of that building. I think about the decisions that were made and the techniques employed in the creation of the house. I look at the pitch of the roof and think about the spaces created by those angles. I imagine a floor plan and think about why such decisions may have been made. I see a level of craftsmanship in the construction and have an immense appreciation for the skill involved and the time and labor it took to learn those skills. Furthermore, the lives of the laborers are imbedded in the story of the house. This information is available in the house not as a reality, however I experience it is an artifact of its structure.
I grew up watching laborers walking to work. They bring their own baggage to the construction site, they need the job, and they probably have families, homes, and worries of their own. With their collection of tool boxes and the implements of their livelihood it was easy for me to imagine their stories. Looking back on those experiences I realized that the toolboxes were the real symbols of what the workers stood for to me. I revered those boxes and thought about the collections within them. The boxes were so important to the experience, they were the signifier.
Work by Eric Mirabito in wood, clay and glaze, 2014, 12″ H x 24″ W x 7″ D.
“We gain emotional experience with different objects and situations in the environment and thus have an opportunity to associate many objects and situations which would have been emotionally neutral with the objects and situations that are naturally prescribed to cause emotions.” — Antonio Damasio.
I am using forms of tool boxes in my work as a way for me to reconnect with memories and the information attached to them. The tool box shape is mutable and can also be read as a house shape. I have been conditioned to have an emotional response to these box forms based on my memories. Damasio discussed this phenomenon in his book The Feeling of What Happens, where he describes that, “A new house of a shape similar to the house in which you lived a blissful childhood may make you feel well even if nothing especially good has yet happened to you in it.”
Work by Eric Mirabito in clay and glaze, 2013, 10″ H x 20″ W x 5″ D.
The image of the box can be entered from several other directions; I have chosen a form that will for some indicate tool box or something related to that. But the shape is very close to that of a jewelry box or some type of precious container. As soon as I stage another object near the box form there is a relationship. The relationship could be scale and the object may look like it fits inside the box-shaped item. This of course cannot happen because I am not making a real box but just referencing one. It is not what it is. This relationship of the object brings up a question in my work and it is a question of proximity and preconceptions. I aim for the viewer to address those preconceptions about what the objects are and what they might do and interpret the meaning through their own memories and experiences.
Visit Eric Mirabito at ArtAxis
Read Part Two of Eric Mirabito’s Essay on CFile
Touching a major nerve. I call this ‘ resonance,’ and so much of what Eric has said here burns bright for me and is at the root of my making. Beautiful.