I'm adding a bunch of images from recent masonry projects that I want to think about vis-a-vie my current dillema- "is my job art?" I like putting it that way, because I think it shows the naked vanity of the question, but I seriously am troubled by it, and I think some form of the question about, or rather tension between, work and(/verse) art probably occupies all of us



The order is kind of screwy, but I wanted to show a bunch of job site photos, and then two brick pieces I've done recently to see if the overlap is positive or interesting. The brick pieces employ masonry materials and principles and are a lot of fun to build, but of course the point of them is the interaction between the text and the physical construction, which in and of itself isn't that interesting. With the text, its very easy for me to claim that the piece has "meaning", or is at least in the ballpark of meaning and thus its easier to claim that it's art (not that I'm racing to make "meaningfulness" a criterion of art, except maybe a sufficiency condition).

With the other photos, I wanted to show a few different examples of the kind of thing I build in stone all day. Without a doubt, aesthetic concerns are prevalent, if ot dominant in masonry. The fct is, you could skip the stone entirely and do all the structural work in concrete (though in some cases stone weathers better, and even lasts longer, because it weeps water instead of only absorbing it). The aesthetic, however, is decided in a kind of committee process, involving the architect, the client the master mason and the journeyman (that's me). Take the little section of wall pictured (I think twice) above, it's actually a mock-up sitting in our shop in Richmond waiting for approval. My task was to create tight joints which carried up the face and the top of the curb wall, and which didn't turn out square. I had to pick, or chizel into shape, square-face stones with complimentary triangular backs and join them together to get the joint pattern you see along the top. It takes forever (the five stones pictures took a combined 5-6 hours of work) and is kind of fun, but ultimately I'm only doing it that way to make an architect and a client who are looking for something vaguely "japanate", happy. Can you imagine how unsatisfactory your poem, or your playscript or your character portrayal would turn out if you were shooting for something "japanate" (that's actually a real term in architecture, used a lot in California)?

But the rub is, I actually like the way that mock-up turned out. I also like the things we've installed at that property, with a few exceptions of things I didn't picture. I like looking at the work at the end of the day, when the stone dust is hosed off and the joints are all tucked and hidden. On these residential jobs, the moment of the end of the very last day, when all the tools are packed on to the truck and all the construction debris (which is a giant, ungodly environmental catastrophe I participate in constantly and am more and more sickened by- concrete manufacture and curing alone accounts for something like a quarter of global warming), at that moment, the work ceases to be mine and I never get to see it again. That's a very strange experience, different from the one where you bind a book and put it on your shelf or hand it to people and then you come back to the text a month or a year later and say "did I write this?". The interesting exception is the public works I've been a part of, which include the Aids Memorial Grove (SF), The Lower Falls Entrance (Yosemite), Stern Grove (SF) and a few others around the Bay Area. With those projects, I can come back and visit and recount the whole process and all the labour and then look at how they are used and its a little like listening to an album you've finished with a friend- you get to experience their version of it along with your memory of its creation. That's kind of cool, and I'm tempted to say that if I only ever had to work on public jobs, I'd give myself over entirely to masonry.

But my constant excuse for not doing that yet is that masonry destroys your hands. Even as i type this, several of my fingertips send little shocks of pain back to my brain reminding me of cracked cuticles and bruised tips from working in the rain around sand and mortar all week. But I could still work with them- I could still pick up a trowel and sling mortar, as I've done with a broken finger and a missing nail and many other injuries. I could still do it until the day my body gives out entirely, just like every other mason out there. But I couldn't come home and play mixed sixteenth note triplets and seven stoke rolls, couldn't type for more than a half-hour before my back tells me to go lie down. Which I think also means that none of us can reply to administrative e-mail, write cost reports, produce ad copy, edit bad (or even good) manuscripts, or any of the other various and sundry economic activities which impugn upon us and then also get very much of the work we are inclined to call our creative work done. It is only in the caesuras from those other works that we get "our work" done, and it is this relationship that I am constantly butting up against lately- for the simple reason that there doesn't seem to be any caesura at all anymore.