ELLIE RICHARDS •   Bakersville, NC

"Chores, playtime, boredom, busyness, work; I use the cultural phenomena behind these topics to provide a familiar way to subvert expectation and establish new ways of perceiving the known, the repetitive, the banal. The specificity of these behaviors and their associative material language carries a layered narrative in it’s historic and sociographic origin, this encyclopedic source serves as a foundation for interpretation. I invest time studying tools and toys from eras present and past; I look closely at domestic spaces, abandoned buildings, construction sites, and the merging grounds where indoor becomes outdoor. I notice cycles of maintenance, the recourse from chaos to order, and the intricacies of the mundane. These observations and experiences serve as an initial prompt in how I communicate new messages through furniture, assemblage, installation, and sculpture, this time, encoded with the psychological intersections of seriousness and spontaneity.

The Latin phrase Ludere est contemplari as discussed in James Schall's On the Seriousness of Human Behavior creates an effective framework for my creative practice. It was the Greek philosophers who initiated the dialogue in search of a deeper understanding of how work (serious matters) and play (activities of leisure) fit into life. Ludere est contemplari translates 'to play is to contemplate'. For Aristotle, the interesting thing about play was that it was unnecessary, this freedom, from always performing for a particular result, is what made acts of play noble and what he considered one of the highest activities a person could engage in.

How work and play are understood is dependent upon an individual’s experience. I have come to define work and play as a specific mental state that is heightened in my studio practice as I produce functional objects and sculpture in wood. I'm looking for ways to interweave these disparate attitudes: work often associated with a seriousness and play with freedom and frivolity, and to flesh out the idea of “to play is to contemplate”. I continually pair structure, stability, and systems with intuition, improvisation, and spontaneity. The effort to meld play with its counterpart while making physical objects is a touchstone in my process and continues to provide new and fruitful spaces for contemplation and meditation.

My approach takes the basic opposing forces of seriousness and spontaneity to examine the relationships between found materials intermingles, fabricated forms, and painterly surfaces. Using this malleable cast of characters to magnify the relationship humans have to their personal spaces and surrounding built environments, my own sense of play comes to light. Raw construction sites not yet inhabited by interior decor or defined by function serve as a backdrop to look more closely at the psychology of place making and however thoughtfully or thoughtlessly our environments shift around us. A child uses block play to simulate an innate need to build and understand form, while at the same time their caregivers may tend to the environment around them by cleaning, creating order, and making new and more efficient spatial arrangements. It is my observation that both young and mature minds seem to take pleasure in the fluidity of a changing space and by engaging with the simple objects they are surrounded by. The nuances of this cycle between chaos and order are at the core of my awareness and relationship to making.

James Schall asks, "What do you 'do' when all else is “done”?”. When you are free from tasks of work, what acts of play do you engage in? Studying and collecting found materials, making and arranging new forms (functional or not), and using color for expression are my forms of play, it is what I do even when all else is not done. As an artist, I recognize freedom of expression as both a privilege and a responsibility, it is my belief that intentional acts of play, improvisation, and risk taking are necessary for contemplation which leads to constructive growth and new levels of discovery."