Documentary as Therapy: making a movie about creating touchable, interactive sculpture in a time of no touching

After the early closure of my InTouch exhibit due to campus-wide COVID-19 precautions and County Shelter in Place Orders I was at a loss. What was meant to be a six-month-long exhibition was closed after 8 weeks— after over two years of work, truly countless hours, and the help of community members. At first there was some hope that the Artist Talk would still happen in April, or that the show could reopen before its planned closure in June… but this pandemic and its effects continue. After feeling pretty down and stuck for a while, I started putting together some footage of the show… and that made a real difference.

I had been taking photos and recording video throughout the making process, and when I started reviewing, organizing, and editing together the footage it reminded me of how much good came of the process, not just the exhibition results. I love making. I love the problem-solving of using a new material, or using an old material in a new way. I love the hands-on labor of making something tangible. I learned through InTouch that I love having people help and collaborate. InTouch was a daunting and exciting challenge, and reviewing all that went into it made me proud.

I am very grateful that I was able to take photos and videos of the finished show while it was on view, and I’m also grateful to the many friends who generously shared their footage for my use. What started off as a small project grew into a 40-minute-long video documenting the whole project, from the idea through making to the finished work. I tried to make it as short as possible while still communicating what I considered essential. I also edited together virtual walk-throughs of the two galleries of work, with my son Alex as a helpful model.

I put a lot of hours into editing, had to learn (or in some cases re-learn) software, and upgrade my poor little computer’s memory— but the making of the documentary was therapeutic. It was so good to be reminded of all the positives that came of InTouch, and continue to come of it.

If you’d like to see the results, you can visit my YouTube channel (youtube.com/c/StephanieMetzSculpture) to see the Artist Talk (offered as one long video or in 3 parts) as well as the two video tours through the Hanging Pods and the Holdables to get a visual sense of the experience.

Enjoy, and share it if you like it!

Finally OUT of the Studio: InTouch fiber sculpture is being touched by museum visitors!

It’s real! It’s alive! InTouch is now open to visitors at the de Saisset Museum, and it’s a hit!

Last Thursday the opening reception was packed with friends, loved ones, and also total strangers who came out to see the debut of my human-scaled touchable sculpture. It didn’t take much convincing to get people to touch. It was just as I had hoped and pictured— the mysterious but approachable forms seemed to draw visitors in, and not just kids— although they were the first to dive in. And the photos are pretty great:

Installation... transporting, placing, and hanging touchable sculptures at the museum

I’ve been installing the work with the fantastic team at the de Saisset Museum. It’s hard to believe the show is nearly up and ready after all this time and work. I have been so pleased that the installation has gone really smoothly. Hanging, placing, and lighting over 70 pieces of art seems like a daunting task, but most of the preparation was done beforehand and not much was left to figure out onsite.

It all started with bagging up and labeling all the work that has been filling my studio and then Tetris-ing up a truck for the short drive to Santa Clara University, just down The Alameda/El Camino from my studio. Three of us were able to get it all packed in about forty minutes, then we had even more helpers at the museum to unload. The trickiest parts of the installation had to do with the ‘support’ items: the steel hanging structure in Gallery 2 for the Hanging Pods and the plexiglass mirrors mounted in Gallery 1 for the Holdables. Luckily that went well too: Chuck Splady and his team from Splady Studios in Oakland fabricated, delivered, and installed the steel structures without a hitch. Chris Sicat, the museum’s Exhibitions Coordinator, has the experience, specialized tools, patience, and cool head to handle just about anything, and he got the big plexiglass mirrors mounted on the wall with help from his team. We all got to unwrap the sculptures onsite, which felt a little like Christmas even though I happened to already know what was inside. It felt great to see them in the big, beautiful galleries. More photos of the finished installation next week, unless you’re able to come by and see/photograph it for yourself starting with this Thursday’s Opening Reception!

Photo time! Documenting artwork for marketing before the show is exhibited

I’d promised myself I’d write in this space more often… but since what I’ve been doing instead is MAKING THE WORK, I’m not going to be too hard on myself.

Here we are, 11 weeks away from starting to install the show. I have a few final details to finish on two of the white felted Hanging Pods, and then I can dedicate more studio time to stitching up some more industrial felt Holdables. In the meantime I needed to take some photos for postcard announcements. In case you missed it, that means I needed photos of the exhibition before the exhibition was actually in place in the museum. What to do, you ask? Cropping and Photoshop and the hallway outside my studio provided the answers.

I spent several very long evenings suspending Hanging Pods from the rafters to mimic their spacing and lighting as it will be in the museum; I had to take the photos at night to have darkness in order to control the light. Happily I am quite comfortable scrambling up and down ladders, as that was a necessary part of adjusting art and light. And again I’m glad my sculpture isn’t terribly heavy. Once I had the pieces configured so that they’d work well in the viewfinder of the camera with good lighting it was time for my models. Since this artwork is all about visitors interacting I had to recruit my usual laborers: my husband, kids, and myself. Note: ice cream can be a good form of payment. I took a ton of photos so I’d have a few to ultimately choose from. A week later I did the same with the stitched industrial felt Holdables. For some of the finished photos I layered multiple images of myself with the sculpture to give a sense of how audiences may interact, since I’m clearly a chicken about asking other (non-related) humans to help me at weird hours. Those Photoshop skills really helped.

Below I present a comparison to show how my original concept drawings have finally come to life!

Explaining Myself... how I create patterns for 3D shapes using felt and styrofoam

As an artist I've always been intrigued to learn HOW other people make and do things, so of course I assume there are others like me out there. As I create this new body of work for my InTouch project I'm trying a lot of new processes (or at least scaling up and increasing quantities of known processes) and I want to share some behind-the-scenes parts of that so people can better understand what I'm doing, and perhaps why. To that end I decided to film some short bits here and there to explain what I'm doing, and this marks the first installment. This first video shows a little about the way I am figuring out patterns: starting with a model so I can determine the flat shapes that go together to cover that model in a 'skin'. If you want to see past videos and sign up to get notifications about new ones as I create them, go to my YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/c/StephanieMetzSculpture 

The felt pattern I created over an enlarged foam model; the small clay form on the right was a guide for carving the foam. Note the marks across the pieces so I can realign them later. 

The felt pattern I created over an enlarged foam model; the small clay form on the right was a guide for carving the foam. Note the marks across the pieces so I can realign them later. 

The flattened-out pattern pieces once they have been removed from the foam model.

The flattened-out pattern pieces once they have been removed from the foam model.

What and Why... creating hands-on touchable fiber artwork for the public

Welcome! I decided to start a blog to track the progress of and thinking behind my big new project-- and to provide updates and behind-the-scenes views for my community of friends, family, fellow makers, fans of my work, and other subcategories that also begin with the letter ‘f’. I figure it will be a more casual forum which will also mean you’ll get a window into my sometimes lame humor as well. Consider yourself warned.

I’ve done a LOT of writing about my ‘InTouch’ project so far, much of it in the service of applying for grants to fund it or seeking a venue. I’ve been chewing on ideas and planning for over a year by now, and have to remind myself that although I’ve been living and breathing this thing for a long time, it’s still totally new to most of my network. It seems that my explanation and understanding of what I’m doing keep sharpening as I proceed, so if you stick with me you may note its evolution. But here’s a description of what I’m doing:

'My project is the creation and presentation of hands-on sculptural objects that invite the viewer to touch the art--and to share social experiences with other viewers in real time. My interactive sculptures will be made of highly tactile materials that can stand up to wear and tear, particularly the wool and felt for which I have become known. Audiences for my work tell me about the strong urge to touch and stroke its seductive surface and to confirm with their hands what their eyes tell them about the texture and solidity of the object in front of them. Typically art gallery visitors are forbidden from giving in to the urge to touch. In contrast, my alluring objects are meant to be handled, manipulated, and rearranged by the public. My new body of work is slated for a solo exhibition at the de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University in 2020.

I’m calling this project InTouch, to communicate not only the invitation to physically interact but to focus also on the idea of art as a way to connect people. At exhibition receptions I often invite the viewers hovering near my work to try touching it under my supervision. The ensuing reaction is most often an exclamation of delight and automatic turning to their neighbor to share the experience-- whether that neighbor is a friend or a total stranger. Creating that kind of connection is the reason I make art. Causing people to stop a moment to be present and engaged with the world around them is the gift I can contribute through the work of my hands. Through this interactive, tactile sculpture I aim to provoke curiosity, play, engagement, and connection-- things I find particularly important in our divisive, disconnected, and overly digitized times.

InTouch will include three groupings of multi-component sculptures, each offering levels of physical participation at the viewer’s discretion, from simply viewing the works to moving among them, feeling the sculptures, creatively rearranging the pieces, and inserting themselves in the narrative. Stay tuned for posts about each of the sculptural groupings.

Through the creation and presentation of these sculptures I hope to provide audiences with experiences that fully immerse them in the present moment, cause them to notice and consider the nature of the materials they encounter, take the time to engage as playfully or seriously as they desire, and ultimately connect with their fellow participants.  My intended audience demographics cross ages, genders, physical abilities, cultures, and economic levels; in particular I want to welcome those who wouldn’t typically consider themselves museum-goers. The InTouch project represents a significant scaling up of my professional practice in terms of size, production output, audience reach, project management, utilizing assistants, and, most importantly, cultural engagement.'       

- Stephanie Metz, 9/25/2017