Carly Slade

and a couple Trash can-dles

So you made it… you survived the toilet paper apocalypse, your hands are cracked from constantly using hand sani, your mental health is hanging by a shred after the election that is somehow still “in question”, the Supreme Court it taking our rights everyday, oh, and that little global pandemic situation. (2020) (2021) (2022) 2023 really was a dumpster fire. Might as well laugh through those tears with a commemorative candle.

Each candle contains within its wax some itty bitty ceramics trash items from our world. The potential items are listed on the back of the box but to name a few: 22K white gold clothes hangers, discarded microscopes and megaphones. The candles are made with water soluble soy wax so that you can clean the trash and receptacle off gently with warm soapy water when it’s all over (wish I could do the same with my soul…). They are faintly scented (nicely), similar to your hope for things every being normal again.

* Just FYI, the Dumpster Fires have 22K white gold luster painted wheels so do not put them in the microwave.

City Wide (installation view). 2020, Ceramic, quilts, found objects, LEDs, mixed media. 10’x30’x10’

*This show was installed at Greenwich House Pottery’s Jane Hartsook Gallery Jan 10- Feb 7 2020 in NYC

Images: © Alan Wiener, courtesy Greenwich House Pottery 2020

I have observed that there is impermanence in our lives spent in the buildings we inhabit and work in, and I am frightened by the precarious nature of the working class. I think a lot about people, and a lot about the spaces they inhabit. People in each other’s space, spaces after people have left, about who makes the space, people who lost their space; about what they left behind there, or maybe took with them. I am interested in space as both an archive and a façade.

Buildings and the spaces they occupy are vessels, they hold within them residue of the lives that have passed through them, while their outsides are reflections of their time and place. Each brick was placed by someone’s hands, the foundation poured by a crew, porch lights glow from the effort of an electrician. Once a structure is built it becomes like a book with blank pages, ready to be marked and altered to hold its history. The front banister was bent when the second owner backed his car into it. The ornate moulding around the front door is original to the home, covered with eight layers of paints and now out of place now in its rundown neighbourhood. But it hints back to a time when the houses were new, the jobs were union, the hope was palpable.

I understand the buildings in the city I grew up in, and I could probably interpret the ones in my province. But when I left Canada, I became an observer. The USA has a history that I know the basics of, but there is so much more regional history I am missing. As I move across the States, I use the buildings like markers which I try to interpret. I’m always an outsider looking in, trying to understand the social and economic constructs that I have landed in. Yellow lawns in California signalled drought, seemingly countless Mexican restaurants spoke of colonization and immigration, and astronomical rent spoke of the tech boom whose fingers of gentrification had begun to spread cubist concrete boxes. Montana was all sky, dotted with the occasional wood panelled corner bar. Kansas was divided down political lines, Dems in the city, Republicans in the country. Philadelphia was covered in garbage, and the roads muddled with potholes. Signs of a large city in poverty with failing public service. A choice made by a few to focus on the wants of small faction over the greater good. It is visually the most aggressive city I have lived in. But if you look up the cornices crowning the rowhouses you will see that the city was once booming. It was once a manufacturing hub. As you walk past marble stoops you can imagine what life was like before the corner store was shuttered, back when there wasn’t boarded up homes and empty lots. In Philly’s architecture I can also read hope and resilience. In its people I felt pride, kinship and an attitude of DIY urbanism. From where I sat each night on my old worn marble stoop I saw the signs of change. Those empty lots are beginning to fill with new homes for new families to make their own impression, but at what cost?

2046 W Diamond Street (detail from City Wide). 4’x4’x’3’

2038 W Clearfield St. (detail from City Wide). 4’x4’x’3’ (Triplex)

1700 N 24th St. (detail from City Wide). 4’x4’x’3’

Images: © Alan Wiener, courtesy Greenwich House Pottery 2020

330 11 St. NW, 4216 37 St. NW

Ceramic, embroidery, LED porch lights, Astro turf, lumber, petroleum products, borrowed old chairs, lumber, mixed media

One of the first things I do when I move is to update the address for the contact “home” in my phone. I didn’t choose to label it that, but it’s how the software was designed, to be “intuitive” I guess. I however, find it bit presumptuous and kind of pushy.

To call someplace home is a complex decision, one that takes time, it’s a relationship that can’t be rushed. I’ve moved three times in the last twelve months, four times if you include only moving out of a house. The place I comfortably called home, a place I thought I would settle down into, decorate with him, bring kids home to, grow old in.

“Ok Google, take me home.” I say to my phone that I had tossed lazily onto my empty passenger seat. “Ok, home, here we go.” Google would reply in her steady robotic voice. And off I would go, through the dark streets of a new town, on my way to ‘home’, past building that were alien to me, passing people I had never met.

Home is a place everyone searches for, it can be a house, or a bar, a restaurant, a community centre; it’s more of a feeling than brick and mortar. It can be stuff, or people, or a feeling. It is in flux, ever effected by the politics, economy, and relationships that helped to create them. Buildings are just shells, but ones that holds so much of our lives and stories. A happy home can be broken when love it lost, a “for rent” sign can signify the downturn in the global oil markets, a quick pen stroke in Washington could send me back to a country where they no longer have a home. Alternatively, home is where we open Christmas presents surrounded by the smiling faces of family, it can be the start of a new life, our own little corner of the world kept just how we want it. The impermanence of our tenures in these seemingly permanent structures is both terrifying and exciting.

Ceramic, embroidery, beads, found chair, mixed media

14" x 14" x 32"

I don’t often make functional work, but when I do they barely function but are always full of fun 😊

9106 88 Ave., 88 Keyes St., 203 Holmes St.

Ceramic, embroider, astro turf, pallets, cement, found material, mixed media. 2016

I grinned eagerly as the heavy weight of change slid out of my small hand and onto his counter. Pat reached under his shop register, retrieving a calculator just in time for my coins to quiet down their spinning staccato symphony. He quickly divided my allowance (and couch findings) into one dollar piles, tapping into the calculator as he added the stacks and divided by five cents. He smiled as he turned the calculator face towards me, seventy-eight. Greedily I took the small plastic bag from his hand and spun around to kneel on the floor and collect my treasures, seventy-eight five cent candies. Seventy-eight delicious Sour Soothers that were sure to ruin my diner this night, as well as a few times a week, every week, from the time I was old enough to cross the road alone until I moved away from home. As the years passed and I went home to see my parents I would often cross the road to visit Pat at the corner store for more of those candies. Pat was there every day, no questions asked, no holidays taken. I think he had kids, two sons? I don’t know his last name.

The years wore on his face and on his store, the shelves became sparse, and the interior dingy. But thinking back now, maybe it always was that way. The naivety of childhood often glosses over the reality. The store has changed now, a fresh coat of paint, new renters, and fancy yuppie bistro tables outside. I called my brother who lives across the street to ask if he knows what Pat is doing now, but he doesn’t know.

Ceramic, embroidery, found wood and foam, rubber, mixed media. 2015

I used the “Street View” tool on Google Maps to travel back to this spot from the safety of my studio in San Jose, California. I say safety because in truth, I have never been to this gas station. I have often been stopped at the light beside it, or craned my neck to admire it when driving by, but never have I stepped foot onto the property. This is partly because it’s located in the sketchy side of a downtown major city, and partly because I didn’t want it to lose its magic. I only wanted to admire it from afar. This particular station services mainly the working class. Big trucks and trailers would often be hooked up to its pumps, the driver would most certainly be a man, and on his way to do “man’s” work. Upon seeing this magical hub stories would begin to take shape in my mind about these people, who they are, and what they do. It always intrigued me that the station was seemingly untouched by time, and unaffected by what must be astronomical rent, the building and pumps look like they haven’t been changed since the eighties. The gas station building appears to be weathered but resolute, a lionized version of its real self. It’s muddy orange trim speaking of a time when carpets were shagged, and vans were in.

The “I Do’s”

Now I must ask of each party if they come of their own free will and accord:

Carly, do you come to this union of your free will, and with the intention of being a crusader for Ceramics as long as you shall live?

Carly- I do

Ceramics, do you come to this union of your free will, and with the intention of being the spark which will fuel Carly’s soul as long as you shall exist?

Clay- I do

Repeat After me:

I, Carly, take you Ceramics, to be my lawfully wedded husband,

to shape and to mould from this day forward,

for better or for worse,

for complete, for cracked,

in shattered and in flawless,

to love and to cherish; from this day forward until erosion do us part.

I give you my hand, my heart, my patience.

I will moisten you when you need moisture, and wedge you when you

have air pockets.

I take you to be my ally, loving what I have learnt of you,

and trusting what I do not understand yet.

I eagerly anticipate the chance to grow together,

getting to know the vessel you will become,

and falling in love a little more every day I go to the studio.

I promise to respect you in your successes, and in your department closures,

to care for you after gallery rejection, and in admittance,

to nurture you, and to grow with you throughout the stages of drying.

Repeat After me:

I Ceramics take you Carly to be my lawfully wedded wife.

Before these witnesses I vow to love you, and bisque for you as long as we both shall exist.

I take you, with all your inexperience and skills, as I offer myself to you

with all my glaze flaws and perfect rims.

I promise to take forms for you, to support your pieces,

to contain your sustenance, or cup your bottom in the loo,

to laugh with you and cry with you.

I promise to keep you always in a thin layer of mud,

to harden for you, to intrigue and mystify you, and stay apart of your soul

for all eternity.

These wedding rings seal the vows of marriage just as glaze seals the surface of a pot

Carly please repeat after me:

With this ring, I thee wed,

and with it, I bestow upon thee all the treasures of my creativity, heart, and hands.

In the name of the kiln, the wheel, and the Holy sponge, I ask you to take and wear this

 ring as a sign of my love and commitment.

Ceramics please repeat after me:

With this ring, I thee wed,

and with it, I bestow upon thee all the treasures of my chemical compounds, malleability, and infinite possibilities.

In the name of earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain, I ask you to take and wear this ring as a sign of my love and solidarity.

Friends, we have come together in this gallery tonight and have heard the willingness of Carly and Ceramics to be joined in marriage. They have come of their own free will and in our hearing have made a covenant of faithfulness. They have given and received a soda ring as the seal of their promises.  From here they embark upon a journey to return clay to its rightful place in the world.  Together they will strive for recognition and sustainability, while fighting against institutional budget cuts.  It will not be an easy task, there will be obstacles along the way, but as a wise teacher once told Carly "There's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in".

Therefore, by the power vested in me by the concept behind this wedding, I now pronounce you husband and wife.  You may kiss!