Linda's Big Crates

Tea Ceremony (left), Linda Carson, 1993

Mixed media including wood, rope and an old gilded teacup, approx. 2m tall, .4m wide, .4m deep

Collection of the artist

Stuff Shed (right), Linda Carson, 1993

Mixed media including wood and all the stuff I learned to let go of over six months, approx. 2m tall, .4m wide, .4m deep

Abandoned at the end of the exhibition

What you're looking at is an installation view of two crates, companion pieces at my graduating show for my M.F.A. at the University of Saskatchewan. Each of them was big enough for me to fit inside.

I started building the Stuff Shed in my studio as a personal test to see if I could learn to give things up (rather than hoard them like some over-educated magpie). I cobbled together a shed and started disposing of studio detritus by hiding it away inside. I figured if I didn't miss it after a few months, I really could part with it all. (It's a Zen thing.) It was very freeing. Eventually I gave permission to several other grad students (also working in mixed media in the shared studio) to drop by, visit the shed, and take anything they might find useful.

Soon it became obvious that the most interesting thing in my whole studio was the shed, and how I squirreled all this stuff away. The packing and compacting of the "stuff" was the most fundamentally Linda-like process in the studio, the most revealing and expressive. So I built another shed, better suited to travel, and relived the process to create Stuff Shed.

And when it was all over, I was ready to build Tea Ceremony as the antithesis, or perhaps the natural progression from Stuff Shed. Tea Ceremony has an old gold lustreware teacup suspended in a knotted framework of white ropes. Is it contained? Trapped? Or secure? (Mechanically, I can assure you it's very secure. I shipped this 2000 miles just by wrapping it with cardboard and writing "do not puncture" on the sides. No harm done at all.)

At the end of the exhibition, I invited the other students to scavenge through the Stuff Shed one last time. Then I closed the drawbridge/door, locked it and took the whole thing to the landfill. Tea Ceremony still sits in my studio today. I find it very comforting.