[Music]
[Applause]
I'm the day before my son was born I
treated myself to a pedicure I was
almost a week overdue so I was extremely
uncomfortable in my body and anxious
about giving birth so I needed the
pedicure to distract me from those
feelings and I tried my hardest to enjoy
the hot foot bath and the massage chair
and I painted my toenails a bright ruby
red and then I ended up going into labor
the very next day and as those first few
months of motherhood passed by I let
that red toenail polish slowly grow out
even though I could have easily taken it
off with nail polish remover I didn't I
saw it as a reminder that I once lived a
very different life and every time I
trimmed my nails I would notice how much
farther that red color was from my
cuticles
I know in those days when I felt totally
exhausted from taking care of a colicky
newborn a glimpse at my ugly half grown
out red toenails would make me feel
really nostalgic for that previous life
when I had time to go get pedicures but
on most days I would look at my toes and
wonder because I could no longer even
remember what that life was like I don't
know exactly how long it took three
months Mamie but eventually there was
barely a sliver of red on the tip of
each toe and I realized that when I
clipped my nails this time I would clip
that color off forever it felt like I
was shedding my skin like a snake so for
reasons I couldn't quite explain at the
time I saved those toenail clippings
and then I stood on a piece of paper and
I traced my feet and I taped the toenail
clippings to that drawing this piece of
paper with toenails on it has become a
strangely meaningful object to me I
think it's because it's time made
tangible it's a reminder that I will
live many lives in my one lifetime I
sometimes wonder if snakes ever look
back longingly at the skin they've just
shed and if they wish they could carry
it around with them for the rest of
their lives because that's essentially
what I'm doing I've moved this piece of
paper with toenails on it across the
country with me twice weird right but I
have to admit it's not the first time
that I've ever saved something a little
strange one of my more serious long-term
boyfriends after college had a
bellybutton that would somehow create
the most enormous ball of lint over the
course of a single day and every night
as we were getting ready for bed I would
pick it out of his bellybutton and stare
at it in amazement because I don't know
about yours but my bellybutton does not
make huge balls of lint on a daily basis
and I would tease him for this and he
was always really embarrassed because it
was admittedly a little gross but I
started saving those balls of lint in a
jar and then eventually I drew a
calendar on the wall
and I started pinning them to it I was
always amazed by how each ball of lint
was unique it was a product and symbol
of that single day but seriously it was
made of the clothes he was wearing that
day and the way he moved his body
through the world that day each ball of
lint was like a little belly button size
time capsule
and in the end it was it was to me proof
that that day existed that we were here
and that we were alive and around that
time that I was collecting my lovers
once I went to graduate school for
sculpture and ever since then I've
realized that all the work I do as an
artist is an attempt to understand the
linear and finite nature of my own life
within the context of a seemingly
infinite universe I read a lot about
time as its defined by physics and
philosophy but those theories and
concepts always feel just beyond my
intellectual grasp so I focus my
attention on those little things that
accumulate over time like those balls of
lint and also on the words we use to
define and refer to time in our daily
lives simple words like now and then are
my points of entry into otherwise
complex ideas I've always loved the word
now for how it can have very many
different meanings depending on the
context in which you use it now can
refer to right this second which is
already gone or the time it will take me
to give this talk which is half way over
or on a much larger scale now can refer
to this century and in a similar way the
word then has two different definitions
it can refer to the past or the future
this inflatable sculpture connects the
words now and then to the same air
source so they can't physically exist at
the same time one word has to literally
suck the air out of the other in order
to bring itself into existence I love to
give words and ideas physical tangible
forms because I think we might be able
to understand an idea more fully if we
can experience it physically if now was
a rock how much do you think it would
weigh would its weight be equal to all
the VINs that came before it and all the
VINs that will come after I read a lot
about time I read a lot of theories
about time
say it's not actually linear but that's
just how we experience it but there's a
theory called eternalism that says
there's a version of reality
I can't perceive where the past present
and future all exists simultaneously and
I can't really fathom that so I make
sculptures like this as a way of
wrapping my head around that idea and
understanding what it would look like I
went to a store and I bought a clock and
then I altered it so that it has 12
functioning our hands and those hands
rotate slowly around the face of the
clock like the spokes on a bicycle wheel
so that it's always all the time I like
to think about how everything in the
universe is in motion some things are
moving so slowly that their motion is
imperceptible and they appear static
while other things are moving so quickly
they become a blur which is hard to
perceive for a different reason nothing
exists separate from time but sometimes
that gap that gap between what I can
experience in my physical reality and
what I know from science to be true
feels like a gigantic divide so I've
always loved the song lyrics by the band
The Flaming Lips that say the Sun
doesn't go down it's just an illusion
caused by the world spinning round I
love them so much in fact that I made
them into a spinning neon sign I think
it's such a good example of that gap
between what we can perceive and what we
know to be true aside from people who
still somehow believe the earth is flat
the rest of us all know and agree it's
round and it spins on its axis once a
day and it revolves around the Sun every
365 days but that's not actually what we
physically experience every day I see
the Sun rise above the horizon in the
morning and set below it again in the
evening and there are so many other
things that I know from science to be
true but that I can't physically
perceive or fathom like the fact that
the earth is 4.5 billion years old 4.5
billion years
there's no way my brain can fathom that
amount of time and I know that the earth
is spinning and that there are tectonic
plates that are shifting but the ground
doesn't feel like it's moving Neath my
feet and I can't see the sea levels
rising or so many other effects of
climate change but I know that they're
happening most of the time change is
slow and imperceptible but measurable
but fearing to fearing change or
pretending that it isn't happening just
because we can't perceive it is
dangerous a few years before I went to
graduate school for sculpture I lived
and worked in New York and every morning
on my way to work I would buy a cup of
coffee from the bodega on the ground
floor of my office building and then I
would take the elevator up to the 12th
floor where I would sit in a cubicle and
stare at a computer all day and as you
can probably tell I kind of hated my job
at the time so my days started to feel a
lot like those disposable cups of coffee
I was buying and throwing away every
morning so a few years later I made this
sculpture I called coffee cup conveyor
belt calendar because it marks that
passage of time with that daily ritual
my morning cup of coffee I made molds of
disposable coffee cups and I cast them
in porcelain to give them a sense of
value and I stacked them all up on one
side of the conveyor belts and every day
a new cup was added to the conveyor
belts which was driven by a wind-up
clock so that it's ticking was audible
but its motion was actually
imperceptible because it only moved
about 6 inches per day but as the clock
ticked and the days passed by the cup
would smell slowly move along the belt
past post-it notes that said today
tomorrow the day after that the day
after that the day after that and by the
time it reached the other end of the
belt it would fall off the end and smash
on the floor where there was a post-it
note on the wall that said yesterday but
I'm an optimist by Nature so I couldn't
let that
where the story ended I never actually
fired those disposable coffee cups in a
kiln so the idea was that once all of
them were broken I could gather up all
of those broken pieces and put them into
a bucket of water and reconstitute them
into porcelain slip and then cast a new
batch of cups so that the whole process
could begin again the world we live in
is always somewhere between being and
becoming new stars just like the one our
planet is revolving around our being
born every day and at the same time
other stars are dying sudden violent
deaths in the form of supernovas the
same laws that have always applied to
everything in the universe living and
nonliving are still in effect right now
and they apply to us as well how many
years does it take for a person to like
shed all their skin cells and then grow
new skin cells and become essentially a
different person is it 7 years how many
years does it take for a mountain to
grow and then how many years does it
take for that same mountain to erode and
fall into the sea I don't really feel
like a mountain but maybe I'm more like
a mountain that I can perceive now is
like a liquid it's impossible to hold
and the past is like a solid like the
rocks beneath our feet that have been
formed over time by so many now and the
future is like a gas it's like the
clouds in the sky that are always
shape-shifting and forcing us to use our
imaginations nothing lasts forever but
at the same time every moment every life
every breath is embedded quite literally
in the ground that we stand upon and our
fate is encoded in it so in a way
everything lasts forever
everything time is tangible it's in the
light that takes 8 minutes to travel
across space from the Sun to warm our
skin and it's in the ground beneath our
feet in the rocks some of which in Texas
formed over 1,000
million years ago but it's also in the
lint in our belly buttons and in the
cups of coffee we drink on our way to
work every morning in our daily lives
it's so easy to think in short terms and
to care and believe in only what we can
perceive right now but I think now more
than ever we need to think in longer
terms much longer terms and to see our
own short lives in the context of the
vastness of the universe so let's study
and learn from the deep time of the past
which will always be present in the
ground beneath our feet and let's
imagine and plan for a future that will
elapse long after you and I are gone my
son Zephir is about to turn 6 next month
his name means a warm west wind that
brings the spring and my hope is that he
will be able to live many lives in his
one lifetime
thank you
[Applause]