In FOYER-LA’s current project, the beginning of something smaller, Jon Seaton and Courtney Duncan mine the depths of humility with their tactile forms made of steel, cinder cones, sand, scoria, acid, iron oxide grounded in an earthy physicality. Seaton and Duncan share a keen sense and respect for materiality. Space itself is utilized as a material; in Seaton’s monoprint drawings and fabricated steel sculptures, it is often hidden, inaccessible, implied and in Duncan’s sculptures space becomes porous and loosely contained as she deconstructs the implied functionality of the vessel. Both avid outdoors people on a quest for more space, they respond to and collect from the natural world while contemplating their fragile place in it. Seaton speaks of his process as, “The structure of fragility is more dependent on the ability of balancing multiple elements than on forming something concretely simplified.”
Borrowed from Duncan’s writing, the beginning of something smaller initiates the idea of movement as an elemental force where the reshaped state is possibly more simple or intimate- returning to something essential. This project has a quiet and meditative intrinsic nature with a certain frequency- a visual vibration or patterning- gleaned from interventions. Seaton explores a possible equilibrium between the components of chance and desired control in his fetishized modulated surfaces. Duncan works from a place of intuition, inserting the collected scoria and stones that puncture her vessel walls during firing. Chance, as well as the inherent properties of the material, play a role in the success of the fusion. Both Duncan and Seaton speak of their work as artifacts. Duncan describes her sculptures: “The forms reference artifacts of human creation/function and simultaneously geological processes.” She sees her materials as collaborators rather than simply as inert objects. Seaton feels, “A focus on the physical manipulation of materials lends to the creation of objects that are often remnants or artifacts of their own evolutionary processes.”
In the presence of the work, time seems to hold still for a moment. Maybe this potential pause is an exchange of a fully present moment. Duncan speaks of an interest in “the subtle and spiritual forces that alter things we think of as permanent, temporal.” The work in the beginning of something smaller contains a continuum of change- of surface, of light, of time, of us- in a larger natural system. This continuum has an evolutionary aspect with the possibility of being cyclical and yet the beginning is never the same. T.S. Eliot’s conclusion to Four Quartets (1935-42): “We shall not cease from exploration/And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time.”
Artists: Jon Seaton, Courtney Duncan
