In praise of grids
The first in a monthly series of artist’s essays, these words from Maureen Nollette chart her life in Michigan and the ways grids remind us of the connectedness of our lives—and our affect on the earth.
Editor’s note: This article is the first in a series of personal essays from artists, giving you a window into their process of creating art, sharing their thoughts about their work—and that beautiful intersection between life and art.
Eleven years later, I clearly remember one of the first nights spent in our new house in Michigan after moving from New York. My then young sons were frightened by the noises they heard outside their window, having never heard sounds emanating from insects before. The reverberation was pulsating and LOUD: an audio grid.
This is the sound that I now fall asleep to. In winter I listen to the layered voices chirping through an app on my cellphone; in milder weather I link more directly by opening a window. This rhythmic pulsation evokes a sense of connectedness, calmness.
Ecologist and musician Bernie Krause (TED Talk: The voice of the natural world) has spent the majority of his life traveling the globe recording its soundscapes. Recently, he has noticed a change. 50% of the habitats in his archive have gone silent or have been altered. These natural symphonies are now only heard through his recordings. The cause for the change in our audible outdoors is us. Habitats have been altered or damaged as a result of human practices. When habitats are altered, inhabitants leave.
The Agricultural Revolution broke our symbiosis with nature, casting us down the path toward greed and alienation. We set up our societal structure to lead us to prosperity and progress, not necessarily to be good stewards to our environment.
“Unlike lying, an imagined reality is something that everyone believes in, and as long as this communal belief persists, the imagined reality exerts force in the world,” Yuval Noah Harari notes is his book “Sapiens.” We invented the framework with which we now all comply, and this construct may be our own demise.
“The fragile weave of natural sound is being torn apart by our seemingly boundless need to conquer the environment rather than to find a way to abide in consonance with it,” says Krause. Insects’ harmonizing sounds evoke a sense of connectedness because we are all, essentially, linked.
The grid (connectedness) has always been a central theme in my studio practice. I employ it to represent textiles, quilting, and modern art (a grid in a visual sense tends to flatten out space, providing an equal playing field). It also can be seen as framework on which to build: physically and mentally. Questioning established systems while pushing boundaries is the larger framework on which I create.
My usage of a grid in my work is metaphorical, among other things. Most recently I’ve found the gridded score lines located on deconstructed chipboard boxes to be of interest. Flattening and gilding these boxes, arranging them as puzzle pieces on a page, and laboriously hand stitching them into place–these simple, monotonous actions challenge conventional worth assigned to textiles, crafts, and art. My work honors the imperfections of my slow, deliberate process and deifies the implied perfection and logic of the underlying structure. Through this act I note society’s subjective devaluing of particular acts of labor, and more specifically its resemblance to belittling “woman’s work”, which provides an infrastructure (grid) to our culture that is overlooked and undervalued.
Just as I challenge societal constructs surrounding egalitarian gendered labor practices, I also question the lop-sided relationship between us, homo sapiens, and our host planet. Both are constructed realties. “Homo Sapiens has no natural rights, just as spider, hyenas and chimpanzees have no natural rights.” (Harari 111) Natural rights are a social construct, not biological. Pushing for equality between genders while fostering a productive society that honors and values the natural world, our grid on which to grow–we have the ability to do this, but do we have the will?
I urge you to unearth the grids embedded in our natural and constructed environments. Alter them, and then embolden them.
Originally published on the artist’s newsletter. Sign up here to receive further essays from Maureen Nollette.
See more of Nollette’s work on her website or in person at LaFontsee Galleries.
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