Spent 40 euros on a bag of rubble from a demolition on Olympou

They tore down an old warehouse near Olympou street last month and I went and asked the foreman if I could take some of the tile off the pile. He looked at me like I asked for his kidney, then said take whatever, it saves him the container. So I filled two bags. Red terracotta, mostly, some glazed bits, one piece with a thumbprint in it from whoever pressed it, probably 1920s. 40 euros in bus fare and coffee for the guy and my back for three days.

And now they sit in the studio in a bucket and I don't want to cut them. Every other material I have, I cut without thinking, it's just stock. These I keep turning over like they're going to tell me something. My friend says this is why the work goes slow. She's not wrong but she's also not entirely right, the slow is the point sometimes.

Anyway the bucket is still there. Some days I think the right move is to smash them and set them in a portrait of the man who built the wall. Other days I just like having them in the room.

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Giulia Bruno·2w

The thumbprint is the whole problem, no? You have a material that carries an index of a specific hand, and that is exactly what your other stock refuses to have. Cutting the glazed pieces is nothing, they are anonymous, they are already industrial. But the pressed one you would be destroying the only trace of a person who is otherwise completely gone. I work in etching and I think about this constantly, the plate is mine and reproducible, the print is a multiple, and yet the accident of one bitten line is what makes the edition worth anything.

Honestly I would not cut the thumbprint piece. Keep it as a found object and let the guilt be the work. Or cut everything except that one and see if the refusal itself becomes the piece. That is not a cop-out, it is a decision with content.

Tomáš Havel·2w

I would push back a little. The thumbprint is not the problem, it is the excuse. You are not protecting the dead man, you are protecting yourself from making a decision, and the object is very good at letting you do that because it is small and old and it looks at you.

I have a jar of things I never cut. Twelve years now. Some of them are beautiful. None of them are in a piece. The thumbprint piece will either go into the work whole, as itself, or it will sit in the bucket and become a story you tell about your studio, and there is nothing wrong with that either, but be honest which one it is. The etching comparison is good but it is the opposite situation. Your bitten line is the accident of the process, it happens while you work. This thumbprint happened before the brick was even fired. You did not make it. You just found it, which means you owe it nothing except a decision.

Cut it or don't. Both are defensible. Just don't let it live in the bucket out of respect. That is not respect, that is a postponement, and old material has no shortage of patience. It will wait there for you forever.

Dimitra VasilakisOP·2w

You are right and I don't like it. The jar of uncut things is the part that got me, twelve years is a long time to keep a decision in a jar.

So fine, which one is it. I think I already know: it's the story. The bucket is comfortable. But the honest answer is I don't want to set the thumbprint whole either, because a single tile on a board is not a mosaic, it's a relic in a frame, and I don't do relics.

Here is what I'll do. Not cutting it. Setting it. It goes in the work at full size, uncut, one small square among a few thousand cut ones, and let the whole thing lean on it. If the piece fails, it fails with the print in it, not sitting safe in the bucket.

Ask me in three weeks if it's in the mortar or still in the bucket. You'll get a straight answer either way.

Dimitra VasilakisOP·2w

The etching parallel is good, I'll keep it. But I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion. You say cutting the glazed ones is nothing because they're anonymous. True, and that's exactly why I don't care about them. It's the printed one that has to earn its place. A thumbprint in a bucket is a relic. A thumbprint set into something is a person still working.

You're right that it's the only trace of him. That's the argument for using it, not for wrapping it in cloth. If I leave it in the bucket it becomes an object in a museum of one, and museums are where things go to stop being alive. He pressed that tile to be a roof, or a floor, for somebody. He didn't press it to be admired.

Anyway. It stays whole until I know what it's for. That's the honest version. Not protecting him, waiting for the right wall.

Kasia Nowak·2w

The thumbprint piece I would leave whole, honestly. Not because it is sacred, just that it already is the finished thing, someone else did the work and it does not need you. The rest of the bucket though, terracotta you can cut in your sleep, that is just clay that got old. I think the one piece is holding the whole bag hostage. Take the thumbprint out, put it on a shelf where you can see it, then see if you still feel bad about the rest.

Mira Vey·2w

The shelf is the part I'd skip too. Putting it somewhere visible turns it into a monument and monuments don't get used, they get dusted. I've got a piece of my brother's jacket on a nail in the studio and I stopped seeing it within a month. That's not a failure, that's just what eyes do.

So keep it in the bucket. The bucket's honest. You'll know when you're ready because you'll stop walking past it.

Dimitra VasilakisOP·2w

The jacket on the nail, that's the detail that lands. Not because it's sad, because it's true, eyes just go blind to the same wall every day.

And you've caught me: I wrote that comment about the shelf knowing full well I'd already cleared the shelf. There is a shelf. I built it the same week. Then I put the bucket next to it on the floor, which is my compromise, which means I did nothing at all and feel slightly better about it.

Anyway. There's now a thumbprint-shaped hole in my afternoon, so thank you for that.

Dimitra VasilakisOP·2w

Ha, "holding the whole bag hostage." It's been two weeks and I still walk past the bucket like it owes me money, so yes, that's fair.

But I'll say one thing against your fix. If I put it on a shelf, it becomes a relic. Little shrine to a dead man's thumb. That's not what it is, it's a tile off a warehouse, and I don't want to start bowing to it. My better instinct is it goes into the work, one whole piece in among the cut ones, unrepeated. So the hand that made it is in the same wall as my hands. Then the bucket is just stock again.

You might be right anyway. I'll tell you which one I actually do, when I do it.