Tender:
an installation by Sean Merchant
by Nick Gardner
Pearl Conard Art Gallery
August 27 - September 20, 2018
Response > Mansfield, Ohio
Standing in the doorway of the Pearl Conard Art Gallery at The Ohio State University, Mansfield, I am not sure whether I am in a barn or a church. An old growth oak beam is canted from floor to ceiling, seemingly supporting the cupola front and center. To the left is a structure reminiscent of a picket fence, then a series of 2 x 4s on shelves built into the walls. At first, it is a barn, rural and crafted out of wood. But as I walk deeper inside, my feet echoing off of the hard floor, the high ceiling, the dim lighting, I find myself sitting on one of two wooden benches staring at the “stained glass” windows that look out over the backwoods of the campus.
Installation view of "two seats, single use" by Sean Merchant.
In this way, Sean Merchant has turned the keyhole-shaped gallery from a room housing art into its own three-dimensional work that we can walk through, inspect from many angles. A closer look at the “stained glass” windows reveals that they are constructed out of single-use plastic bags. Merchant describes the windows as a “period at the end of the show.”
But like with a powerful sentence, the period is not an end but a point to stop and consider the previous words. The benches are also part of this piece, a place to sit, contemplate, meditate. We are invited to think more deeply about the bags, to dig into the religious implications of stained glass windows in churches. They catch the light, embody the light, tell the story of eternity beyond the corporeal. Merchant’s windows ask us to question a “single use” way of thinking about things, whether it brings us into resonance with what is sacred and divine.
In this frame of mind, I reconsider the old growth beam, the piece titled, “day by day.” I see a plank of old wood like many other planks I have seen before being stripped from ramshackle barns in my rural Midwest hometown. But now I am encouraged to recall a story that begins with the building of a barn, a home, a family, a career. It is a story that many of us share or will share. The wood is repurposed in this installation, extended with a 2x4 to reach the ceiling, supported by a scrap of pine board and a color photograph and along the edge are the repeating words “daybydaybydaybyday…” The words are those of a hard worker, someone who tends to the piece of wood day by day. The phrase “day by day” is not like the successive dates or Roman Numerals scrawled on a prison wall, but, rather a continuance. It doesn’t mark the past alone, but also insists on its own future.
Installation view of "day by day" by Sean Merchant.
With the photographic image, Merchant asks the viewer to recall the times when they have seen similar images before, similar structures. He also asks whether a barn, his subject, is being built or torn down. Drawn on an unravelling scroll of tracing paper next to the photos is what looks to be a blueprint of this barn’s frame, but the joists and struts are formed by the words “daybydaybyday…” The work of one day after another, but the result is either missing or is slowly depositing itself back into the earth. There is work that goes into the barn, Merchant says, from the building of it, to the upkeep, to the tearing down.
Of course, it is impossible to encounter this “daybyday “work without considering compensation, and in our world, compensation is the dollar bill. On the opposing wall, in the eponymous piece called “tender” three sections of a 2x4 are cut, separated from each other. There are photos of the same barn skeleton on the ends of the 2x4 sections, and on the final piece, a one dollar bill nailed into the wood by enough nails that one must inspect it closely to see what has been secured so tightly. We see the dollar embedded in work, a part of it, but also obscured by the creation, the meaning we imbue in it.
Installation views from exhibtion "Tender" by Sean Merchant.
And this meaning is filled with tenderness. From Merchant’s small town, rural roots, and his vision he has brought a piece of shared experience into the gallery. Tender is at once the hard work of a farmer, a glassworker, a builder, an artist, putting long and careful hours into a product, caring for it, seeing it through to completion. But it is also the contemplation of completion. Sitting on the bench, meditating on the barn, now only a frame; the single-use bags now floating in rivers or patched together like a stained glass window; and finally, of that dollar bill, I feel tender (as in fragile), reflective, open as this space.
About Pearl Conard Art Gallery
Funded in the mid-1980s by a gift from the John and Pearl Conard Foundation, the Pearl Conard Art Gallery at The Ohio State University at Mansfield hosts an exciting series of exhibitions each year. The gallery is located in Mansfield, Ohio, approximately 80 miles southwest of Cleveland and 65 miles northeast of Columbus.
1760 University Drive
Room 145 Ovalwood Hall
Mansfield, OH 44906
u.osu.edu/pcagallery
About the Artist
Sean Merchant was raised in Lanark, Illinois and currently works and resides in Brunswick, Ohio. He received his Master of Fine Arts from Ohio State University in 2017. Merchant graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Illinois State University in 2005. In 2007, Sean became art director at the architectural art glass firm Jacksonville Art Glass, in Jacksonville, IL. Sean has been featured in Sculpture Magazine (OCt'17). His sculpture Salt Box House, has been shown at Belger Crane Yard in Kansas City, MO, as part of the International Sculpture Center's annual Outstanding Achievement in Student Sculpture awardee exhibition. Sean has recently shown work in Rochester, NY and Washington, D.C. where he participated in the American Glass Guild’s “American Glass Now: 2017” exhibition and subsequent publication. Sean’s work was also featured in the Bullseye Glass biennial exhibition and catalog Emerge/Evolve 2016.
"I am continually returning to symbols of rural mid-western vernacular architecture, work habit, and methods of building restoration. This is a means of reconciling waning memories of my upbringing and concerns that my childhood environment may be, like those memories, fading. These symbols manifest through illustrative acts in dialogue with qualities inherent in a material. It's really about care-about how I want to save the things I love from changing and finding love in how things change." - Sean R Merchant
About the Writer
Nick Gardner is a writer based in Mansfield, Ohio. He has his bachelors degree in English Literature from Ohio State University and is active in the Ohio poetry scene from Columbus to Cleveland. Previously, his writing has appeared in small presses (under 50 copies) by Cabin Floor Esoterica and is forthcoming in Asterism Literary Magazine. He also writes for Voices From the Borderland chronicling arts and culture in the Rust Belt.
nickgardnerpoetry.wordpress.com
RESPONSE
A feature of project reviews experienced in person. Response will provide artists with much needed critical response to their work. Response is opinion-based but is not an op-ed.