RICHARD FISHMAN: It all began with that tree.
I get phone calls from the arborist here, Richard,
we have another tree coming down, unfortunately.
Are you interested?
And I find it hard to say no.
I got a second tree, and had that cut up.
Working with material is a very important part of my process.
The third tree that I wanted to make
a piece, a large, massive piece, but I
was concerned that I would never be able to move it around.
Slicing the tree into 50 pieces would
allow me to move this piece, one slab at a time, and reassemble
it.
What has my process of discovering
through making yielded?
So one of the things I've been trying to do
is give them a three dimensional context, more large plaster
impressions of the wood pieces.
It gives me the opportunity of failing, in a way
that it's not going to use one of the precious slabs,
and that's the thing.
When things become too precious, like these slabs did,
you are resistant--
or I was resistant to trying something
that didn't look like it had any potential, that's
a bad mistake.
Accident contributes to evolution
of an idea, what's an accident is often
a great, wonderful discovery.
Make use of the accident, taking advantage of the accident,
and form other possibilities, developing
an idea, which ultimately becomes part of the content,
of pieces.
It's a material and a process, or it's a relationship,
but accidents happen.
And you can learn from that, either not
to make the accident in the future,
or the accident becomes the thing that is of interest.
There's a group of students in engineering
that have a car lab.
So with the carbon fiber, cutting off what
is wet fiber, from the mold.
Tossing the wet pieces on top of each other,
they started making a pile.
Somebody in that shop put it on one of my shelves.
I have been living with that accidental piece
of waste accumulation for like seven years.
A month ago, I was looking at it differently one day,
because of dealing with this carbon fiber myself,
picked it up, and brought it closer to me.
I looked at it, and said you know
what, there's something here.
OK, I'm going to play around with that.
That's when I said, this is just what I'm looking for
to move out of the slab pieces.
And I started building something,
and I haven't stopped since.
The residue of the carbon fiber strands
that stays on the table, they look like drawings to me.
So instead of throwing them out, I just put them on the floor,
let them dry.
And this one has then gone to the next step of reinforcing
that with fiberglass.
Here's the big piece that I worked on for 11 months.
This monster piece comes out of the series
that we call the witch series, and it went from nine feet
to 10 to 11, almost 4 and 1/2 feet in diameter.
It wasn't working, it was only big.
Time is running out, and I had to do something radical.
And I was ready to say, I'm not showing it.
I think maybe we'll start in here.
And I'm gonna toss it.
Come around a little.
And I thought about what I'd tell people
that are working with me--
I think this is the prime view-- with students.
The edge is amazingly strong.
When you reach a point like that,
and you don't know what the answer is--
we're rebuilding the spirit--
you can put it aside and come back to it a month later--
we can go even deeper--
a year later--
I like this on the wire.
Or you could do something, taking a great risk--
I want to get a bigger section--
that would destroy it.
So I chose the latter, and I thought,
what can I do that could end the entire thing,
and the conception, and make a breakthrough?
So I thought of getting an industrial sandblasting
person to come in, sand blast the hell out of the piece,
blasting away, not just the surface, but the form itself.
We spent six, seven hours one day, three weeks ago--
I like the shaft of light, I'd like a little more light.
By God, it worked.
But you could go for days, weeks, or months
before something fresh comes.
So the lesson that, for me, that I've observed in my classes,
and that I've employed in my work,
is that you must be constantly open to seeing, feeling,
looking, eventually something appears.
There are times when you're going to reach a dead end,
and how do you unstick yourself?
How do you deal with failure?
I learned from that myself, and passing that on to others
has reinforced it.
SPEAKER 1: The exhibition is called "What Remains."