One of the first things that struck me, listening to Layla Khoo’s Creative Lives talk is that she describes herself as an artist/designer/maker – the three terms describing my own degree in glass and ceramics. I’ve often wondered where the boundaries of those three roles lie and whether you can genuinely consider yourself to be an artist if you don’t do your own making (it seems you can).
Layla does indeed seem to have the necessary skills in all three areas and in each of her installations (or indeed her gallery pieces) she brings out the different elements. So in her ‘Change in Attitudes’ installation we can see the designer/maker side come to the fore with her casting and displaying thousands of black rhino horns in an interactive, circular ‘room’ where her audience can choose to take a horn with them, or to leave it behind for others to enjoy. The metaphor works well in relation to endangered species and I imagine it would have been well received by the National Trust who were struggling with poor feedback in relation to their taxidermy displays.
Layla was generous in her talk in sharing the things that can go wrong. Rhino horns falling too easily from the wall, or large slip-cast porcelain urns blowing out in the kiln. For a student, these tales of woe are a blessing (I lost four porcelain pieces this week, with careless handling or over-zealous use of a carving tool). One question from the audience concerned an installation for the Bronte Parsonage, where Layla had created 12 large vessels that worked like piggy banks, holding diary notes for four years, in place of money. At the end of the four year period, the vessels were to be broken open with a special tool (see below) to reveal the sketched and scribbled memories of those earlier visitors to the parsonage. The student (my friend Lynn as it turned out) asked: ‘Are you not sad to see your pieces broken?’.
This question got me thinking. Layla was happy enough that the destruction took place, not only because it was part of the art itself, but also because she wouldn’t have had room for these large works – even though beautifully constructed. Yet I have quite a number of poorly made pieces sitting on shelves in the bedroom next door. They’re not good enough to be sold, nor given away. They’re simply steps on my learning journey – so why don’t I get rid of them? Most makers quite sensibly scrap ‘seconds’ rather than sell them in order to preserve their reputation – and why would you want to keep second rate pieces in your portfolio? I guess I’m just a hoarder at heart – each piece with a small memory attached – but memories don’t always need to be anchored in glass or clay, so I’ll start working on letting go…