Existence as art
Opalka’s ‘Object Permanence’ looks at simultaneous absence, presence
The title of an art exhibition is usually the least important thing about it. But when Terry James Conrad, whose show “Object Permanence” is on view at the Opalka Gallery through March 13, begins reflecting on those two words, he uncovers layers of meaning that offer clues to his inspiration and his process.
Closest to Conrad’s heart is the association with his baby daughter, who provides him with the opportunity to observe object permanence — a fundamental concept of developmental psychology — in real time. She is just beginning to understand that things still exist even when you can’t see them, and in her world, objects have no assigned value or definition.
“A Lincoln log or a block can be imagined as something else — it could become a bird or a boat in play,” Conrad mused in a recent interview. “We’re assigning another image to it, but it’s still that object. I love the idea that things can be reimagined, and that the reason we make or research is to find new things.”
But the title also obliquely references less happy moments in the artist’s recent
life, and our collective experience. As in, do our friends and extended family exist even when they can’t be right in front of us? Or, how do we heal systemic racism — a condition that sometimes feels frighteningly permanent— now that it is directly in our line of sight, no longer invisible to even the most privileged?
“There are injustices happening in the world that we’re waking to, that maybe we weren’t paying attention to,”
Conrad said. “Just because it’s not in front of you doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
To address this simultaneous absence and presence, Conrad is inviting a virtual community to join him in the gallery. He has transformed a vintage voting booth made of wood and canvas, which he found when he and his wife, Rachel Ziegler-sheridan, purchased an old firehouse in Round Lake, into a broadcast booth of sorts. From here, he is conducting a series of Zoom conversations with scientists and artists, many from the University of Iowa, where he is an assistant professor, program head of printmaking and an
Iowa Print Media Faculty Fellow. Upcoming guests on “Dispatches from the Iowa Booth” include musician Tommy Santee Klaws, artist Donté Hayes and
I’ve grown to really love that aesthetic — well crafted with the wrong materials. You’re retrofitting something to do another thing, but it’s still identifiable as what it was.”
— Terry James Conrad
interdisciplinary artist/musician Brian Dewan.
Yet another layer illuminated by the show’s title is the sense of permanence that Conrad’s objects evoke in their materials and function — for example, the nearly indestructible tin can. Conrad discovered the potential of this humble object when he was doing a work trade in the kitchen of the Vermont Studio Center.
“I could just pull them out of the recycling bin, these beautiful, ubiquitous objects, and cut them up and use the edges to make a print,” he said. “I first started making prints with ink I made with walnuts, and then I noticed the cans themselves were breaking down and leaving marks, and I found I could oxidize objects to make something like ink.”
He remembers, too, watching his father fix the catalytic convertor in his car using tin cans. “I’ve grown to really love that aesthetic—well crafted with the wrong materials,” Conrad said. “You’re retrofitting something to do another thing, but it’s still identifiable as what it was.”
At the Opalka, unfolded cans in silver and gold, freed from their former, more mundane lives, form small sculptures and gleaming origami-like wall hangings. In the sound installation “Cans with Interstitial Planes,” motors activate the cans in various ways to create a melodic composition. This and Conrad’s boxy found-object guitars hark back to his early days as a musician, the entry point for his visual art, he says. His stint as a costume and prop technician on Broadway also
informs his practice of making “objects that perform”—functional pieces that can be activated to create another object, such as his massive printing presses, made of cans, scrap wood and discarded plastic and metal. They take four days to make a print.
“It’s a time-based scenario with a scientific feel, involving
geology and chemistry — the same way a rock might be formed, with pressure, fluid and time,” Conrad said. “It comes from a personal need to slow things down and take a look at the details, and maybe also create an experience for the viewer that might do that. Art asks people to slow down and spend time with it.”
Babies do that too, as Conrad knows firsthand now that he’s the parent of a one-year-old. “We’re teaching her a few signs, and at first it was loose and slow and uncoordinated,” he said. “Daily, you can see her hands get a little better at it, and there’s a moment of heartbreak, where you just want to say, slow down.”