Imadate Art Field 2026

When I first climbed the ladder into the second floor of the Nishino Family Storehouse, I noticed a large wooden box with a lid. Without looking inside, I sensed it was full. Standing next to it, images of the box’s lifetime rushed into my mind. I pictured the hands that filled it, that placed it on the shelf, that inscribed a note on its face in chalk. The imaginary past flooded into the present.

In Iowa last spring, I bent and welded two small steel shapes that Nicholas and I carried in our suitcase to Echizen in August. As I’ve spent time with them in the last two weeks for Imadate Art Field, the shapes have grown and changed in response to the phenomena of the second floor of the storehouse. In their current form, I think of one shape as a wing (picture the brevity of a moment with a butterfly) and the other, a tangle (like the slow combining of parts to make a new whole). Now placed across from one another at each window, I imagine these two gestures in conversation as the room is enlivened with air, people and light over the course of this fall’s Imadate Art Field exhibition.

Before beginning the installation process, two visiting artists, Skye and Charlie, and myself were invited by Nicholas to visit with his friend and mentor, Naho-san, at her mill, Tesuki Washi Naho. With decades of intensive experience demonstrating, teaching and making hand-made paper, Naho-san has newly opened her mill in Echizen. Upon entering her workspace that day, I felt focused and energized. We made our introductions, talked and settled in, standing back for a moment to witness Naho-san’s work at the vat as she pulled four sheets. Afterward, we were invited to ask questions, which brought us to the process of preparing the fiber… Naho-san explained that, for this batch, the fiber was cooked, cleaned and beaten over the course of about three weeks before reaching the sheet forming stage we saw that day. Witnessing just the pulling of these four sheets felt impossibly brief in comparison to the steps that both preceded and would follow their journey to becoming paper.

During our visit with Naho-san, Nicholas made it possible for each of us to converse by way of translation. Despite my own daily practice learning to read and speak Japanese, I lean on Nicholas to communicate more deeply in Echizen. Further, the notions above about the duration, time-intensive process and labor of papermaking are not strictly my own - these routinely surface in our conversations about Nicholas’ own studio journey and years of research and teaching. Nicholas’s translation and the sharing of his research are offerings that I profoundly respect and have become a natural part of my own framework for understanding here.

Returning to Nishino Family House, I think about how these storehouses were once used for safekeeping of goods (namely miso, woven mosquito netting, and hosho paper) manufactured by Echizen craftspeople from the 1890’s onwards. As I continue to write, the paths of my thoughts cross. The word safekeeping leads my reflection back to the closed wooden box inside the storehouse. I think of the box’s relationship to the daily work we are all doing in tandem now. In every process of making and living our lives, some elements of the work (planning, maintaining, cleaning, sorting…) are so intimate they may be invisible to all but ourselves. Looking again at the box, if it remains unopened, only the people who filled it can really know what is inside – and in the work of our lives, to choose if/when to open and share what is inside is a sacred and sovereign right.

The box, the mill, our cross-language conversations, the storehouse and the sculptures… whether our labor is directly witnessed or sensed, small steps we each take in the process amount to much more than can be seen or counted. Still and ultimately, I’ll continue to explore this curiosity about how it is we become familiar with materials, spaces, and their storied connection to our lives – as a practice of my own kind of unboxing.

…

To share the impressions of the Nishino storehouse and the objects that I created in response, I made a two-part video document using my old DXG-581V camcorder. Part one captures some of the sights and details that I came across within the first hours of my time in Nishino storehouse, including a visual of the box I refer to above. Part two captures views of the responsive sculptures as they are currently installed in the space.

Materials:
a wing
paper by Naho-san made with 100% Japanese Kozo at Tesuki Washi Naho, steel, enamel

a tangle
sculpted Thai Kozo paper made by the artist at Tewaza, steel, enamel, linen thread, paper thread with Tesuki Washi Naho sheet, small rocks from the yard of the Nishino Family Storehouse.

I offer this writing and these videos as a part of the piece and invite you to view them online for the duration of the exhibition:

Part 1: https://vimeo.com/1232548982?fl=ip&fe=ec

Part 2: https://vimeo.com/1232548985?fl=ip&fe=ec

Fabrication flotsam studies

I continue to be fascinated by the way remnants and materials from a past project call me back. The ways that I currently work to make a living include freelance fabrication, building/renovation projects for Public Space One, and making objects in my studio shop in Iowa City. The routines around each of these roles are interconnected. I am often pulling scrap from my shop to repair something at PS1 and vice versa, gathering discarded materials from fabrication or repairs back into my shop...

I think because there is not much division between the ways I work, I feel a kind of relationship to the materials and can live with them in a long-term way. I get curious about them and move them around sometimes for years until I can situate them in a way that draws out the qualities that attracted me to them in the first place. (borrowed from a conversation with Katherine Harvath for the Billboard Creative)

materials like a piece of maple ply that came from a well loved pedestal at Public Space One. The insulated staples were found years ago in Chicago, the paracord and laundry line were remnants from summer 2022 projects in the artists courtyards at Public Space One.

industrial felt and reverb tests

detailed image of industrial needle felt underlayment, with view of maroon coating and matted, recycled, synthetic fibers

The felt is made with recycled synthetic fiber. It is a little under a 1/2” thick, coated/crisp on one side and looser, more apparently tangled on the other. Small flecks of color show up throughout, but mostly it is gray. I’ve been referring to it as industrial felt carpet underlayment, or needle felt underlayment. This material came to me by way of Simparch, who had used it in past projects (see piece with Steve Rowell, http://www.simparch.org/tx-aux-in/, for the TX AUX IN) and was also familiar to me as a sound baffle working on their team in warehouse shop spaces.

I wanted to learn more about the interaction of sound with this material, and so installed it three ways in a reverberant space in Iowa City. I ran a series of tests: clapping, yelling, playing rhythmic spoken-word tracks by Moondog at it, to see what impact the friction-full material was having on the travel of sound waves. The difference was felt : )

6x40 foot, gray, needle felt underlayment wrapping around the corner and onto the floor of a white-walled gallery space.

After all of this, it made sense to try to use this felt as a sound baffle material in the Weinberg/Newton Installation. I thought of it as an experiment and offering for the talks and events that would be programmed by curator Kasia Houlihan and the ACLU in a show about democracy, (see All That Glows In the Dark of Democracy). On the most elemental and personal level, the acts of listening, speaking and being heard, struck me as crucial for a functional democracy. I thought of the canopy of baffles as an intimate space within the gallery, to engage a listener’s nuanced perception of the spoken word.

Special thanks to friends who were instrumental in learning about and sourcing this material: Simparch, Paul Somers, and Heather Parrish
And to Shannon Stratton for a persisting question, “WHY use industrially manufactured felt?” from a grad school critique in 2010.

the teaching shed in progress at Public Space One in Iowa City

The teaching shed has been developed in response to a series of conversations with Public Space One organizers, Kymbyrly Koester, John Engelbrecht and Kalmia Strong.

In May 2021, the conversation began with the prompt to develop a sculpture that would facilitate workshops and other time-based, process-driven work in the Art Gardens at PS1. Site visits, drawing, model making and planning ensued.

Early stages of research for the Teaching Shed led me to the vernacular form of the A-Frame, often a small cabin structure perhaps familiar to folks in the US as a marker of visitor centers in the national parks, as well as a DIY kit house distributed after WW2. The durable, triangular geometry, and DIY and leisure associations of this historic form made the A-frame appealing to re-visit in a public site, and as an inclusive learning space in Iowa City. As building commenced, the sculpture continued to adapt in reaction to the upcycled materials found and offered along the way including salvaged metal roofing, and pine from a downed derecho tree.

The foundation and framing stages of the project hosted two volunteer build events and a drill workshop for folks who were interested in being a part of raising the structure. Many thanks to participants who helped in these build events, including:

Sayuri Sasaki Hemann
Bea Drysdale
Nicholas Cladis
John Engelbrecht
Kalmia Strong
Rae Noble
Adam Bryant
Kymbyrly Koester

Thanks also to the following folks for donating, and helping to process upcycled materials: Kelly Moore, PS1 Board Member and Director of Exhibits at the Children’s Museum for the 1/2 plexi cladding
Andy Dahl, UIowa Arborist, and Dave Brown, UI Landscaping Manager, for sourcing and transporting the downed campus austrian pine
Tim Krauss and Sabrina Keiper at Amana Forestry for milling and kiln drying the austrian pine
John Proeller and Elizabeth Erickson at Tri-Coastal Salvage for the steel paneling on the roof

This project is ongoing and due to finish this fall in Iowa City. If you’re in the area, come and visit, take a workshop inside, or feel free to reach out for a conversation and get nerdy about vernacular building, hgivler@gmail.com.

Support provided by the Iowa Arts Council, a division of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

surface

I finished cutting the masonite word and glued it in between teaching classes. The streaks made from spreading and skimming the glue caught my attention.

on TBIGTBIG (the bigger it gets the bigger it gets)

process image of various “formed” objects in the series I’m calling the bigger it gets the bigger it gets. On the table are cast bronze, copper plated brass, sheet copper, river stones and found hammered metal.

Excerpt from Metal Techniques for Craftsman by Oppi Untracht

on daphne

I press a wooden tool into the clay to make a laurel relief. I pour plaster into this one-off clay mold and it cures into a very thin disc. Every Daphne comes out whole, small accidents around the studio cause the discs to break into fragments- I’ve been into letting that happen and then mending the pieces in a way that is plain and unsystematic.

on portraits

Wooden objects with a river stone make portrait number 9. This is one of many objects in a series I’ve been referring to as portraits. I started this work in 2011.

above a more recent portrait in process. I’m making a wall mounted shelf to hold the box and am thinking about it being possible to open and handle the object.

one more portrait below on a sculpture of a chair.