Lately I am always in a conversation about time. about getting older. about aging parents. about having enough of it. to make art. to live.
“life is long if you’re lucky” Paul and I keep repeating to each other in person, in passing.
Rust is time made tangible. The underbelly of my 1999 Camry tells the time.
Rust is always creeping, ready to tarnish industry’s darlings. The world’s largest container ships will not be spared. The seamen will still need to paint.
“And when nothing else can be done on deck, the hands paint. Always there is something to be painted. From morning to night.”1
I recently found out that you can dye fabric with rust.2
Working with rust feels like a natural progression, a belonging to place.
I foraged my first pieces from an old steel pipe. found it in a spot I’ve frequented countless times, just feet from the Chicago river.
Here she is, pretending to be a tree.
The pipe is nearing disintegration yet still heavy and teeming with life. I keep forgetting to bring gloves or tools so each time I just sit there creaking the metal back and forth until it snaps.
I also re-upped my tetanus shot.
I’ve been experimenting with tea and vinegar. I prep the fabric at night, soaking it and then wrapping it around the rust. Any heavy weight I can find is added on top - cast iron pots, old dumbbells. Contact creates darker grooves.
After each test, more pieces break free.
Here every variable matters. Time, pressure, heat.
The next day, I unfold the fabric & hang it to dry.
The truth is, I’ve been having a hard time with time lately. I am time I try to remember and yet I am chasing her too. It is almost always Monday again.
But these experiments are a strange lifeblood. Unwrapping them feels like an act of resistance, of remembering. that most things are unknowable; that magic exists. Everything that had been gnawing at me dissolves in the delight of discovery. I catch myself grinning.
Wonder is my favorite state of being.
I guess I’m somewhere in this process too. wrapping and unwrapping. I add and subtract and wait. Imperceptible variables are at play.
I wonder what all of this looks like from a bird’s eye view. You probably can’t make out the minutiae. There are beautiful patterns created only by pressure. Right or wrong do not exist.
Everything is an experiment.
excerpt from “The Death Ship” by B. Traven.
Iron tears on a silent stage. Such quiet drama in those earthy hues. It's almost like listening to the earth whisper stories no one else can hear.