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(Sound of Welding)

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JUDY PFAFF: I got my first welder in Maine,

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and I made some structures [br]and stuff and I thought oh,

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I have to learn how to weld now.

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I never wanted to be a sculptor.

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My background is painting.

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I was a painter.

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All my friends are painters.

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Elizabeth Murray, you know great, great painters.

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And I always thought that welders [br]were not only guys that drank beer,

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and clanked around with rusty stuff,

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I am now clanking around with [br]rusty stuff, drinking beer.

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But this first welder I got was actually for [br]thin sheet metal and it was for auto body guys.

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It was like a sweet welder, not [br]stick welding, which is pretty rough.

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This would be the equivalent [br]of hot glue gun or sewing.

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MAN: That’s Mel

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PFAFF: I have to talk about Mel.

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He moves earth around. I didn’t realize it.

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I only deal with little things.

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He deals with like big things, you know?

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And he sees these roots, [br]and he says you want roots?

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I got roots.

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PFAFF: So Mel and I go down [br]to the river and we find,

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I don’t know if you’ve looked at these things,

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they’re the best roots I ever saw.

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Can you see how rough these things were?

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They’re like...these are huge.

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Look at the size of that. Look.

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These stumps were broken into four parts [br]because we’ve got to get them into the gallery

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and up elevators so we’re cutting them [br]apart, putting them back together.

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PFAFF: You ready?

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PFAFF: You should-[br]MAN: But you can’t really do it when…

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PFAFF: Right...we draw this pattern [br]out and we’re going to take it apart...

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PFAFF: I was born in London. That was 1946.

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And came to America when I was [br](SIGH) about twelve and uh,

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did not fit and was quite unruly.

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I wasn’t raised by my mother.

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I met her when I came to America.

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I never have met my father.

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I was a terrible student.

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I don’t like to read.

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I don’t like to do homework.

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I could care less. I’m ornery.

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I don’t like authority.

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I mean there’s a lot of things that [br]would...made me a lousy student.

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The art part...and that was [br]actually where Al came in.

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Al Held was my teacher at Yale.

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He thought I was visually [br]intelligent, a disaster in other ways.

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But he thought there was something in [br]the way I sort of get it with materials

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that would hook me into another kind of education.

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Painters I think are made differently.

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They can concentrate in different ways.

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I found when I was a painter [br]I couldn’t stop and until it

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was finished another thought didn’t enter.

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With the sculpture, they go on for months.

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It tells different kinds of stories.

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They’re sort of sequence of moments.

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It worked better for the way I [br]am put together and I love stuff

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and as you know I love tools.

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Last year, everyone I knew died.

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My mother, Al, good friends, and uh,

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and I just thought, this show [br]I just want it to be emotional.

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So I was basing this sort of on images of…

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I don’t think hell, but darkness and kind of a…

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a wilder characteristic than the other stuff.

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The show is going to have a lot of light,

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and there’s going to be one [br]room all light, all white.

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And another one all black.

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Or I think, and these big [br]roots are going to come in,

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and so it’s going to be a stack of things that go [br]from light to dark or heavy to light or however.

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(TORCH FLARES)

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I have uh, a way of never sort [br]of touching things directly.

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It’s sort of funny because I’m very [br]hands-on but in a way that’s not…

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not true.

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There’s usually a tool.

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And finding these burning kits was like…

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this is for guys who make duck decoys,

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so you get these blades for putting [br]feathers on or doing details.

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It’s all solid burning and [br]dying and going through layers,

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so it’s a nice physical way [br]of getting into something.

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I think I have so much control over things.

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I get so involved that having an [br]instrument between it blunts that a bit.

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I think the show is going to look like these…

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these drawings and it’s…

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and you know and that’s sort [br]of ends up actually to be true.

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But I think if you see that and see the work [br]you can see that there’s just a lot of uh,

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imagery that sort of similar in a way.

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There’s a lot of flaming going…

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there’s a lot of like soot, fire, [br]burning, and a lot of water too.

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So the...I think it will be an [br]interesting set of dynamics.

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I think some of these drawings [br]actually look quite nice.

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Even tame.

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Their way of being made is very rough.

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What I don’t understand was all this roughness,

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that it actually kind of ends up calming down.

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We’ve been doing these forms for a while.

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They’re based on what’s called a sweep mold.

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Sweep...s-w-e-e-p mold.

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And I saw a pattern for it on a WPA [br]manual for people learning plaster work.

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They use what’s called live plaster,

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so the plaster is mixed with [br]stuff and then you have a form

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and at a certain moment you drag the [br]form over and it takes that perfectly.

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For big shapes, you have a circular [br]track and you’re walking it,

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so it’s just this gigantic sort [br]of performance of walking this…

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this plastic blade…

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This will be filled with Styrofoam and [br]then the last part of it is this plaster

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that makes it like this [br]most beautiful turned form.

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So what this is going to look like, there are two.

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There’s one that goes up this way,

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and there’s another one that goes to the top,

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so it’ll look like the [br]negative space of two spheres.

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And that’s where that kind [br]of two worlds thing coming,

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the white and the black, so...I think.

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I don’t know.

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I’m saying this thinking that [br]that’s exactly what I’m going to do

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but I always change my mind, so...

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ELEVATOR: Second(?) Floor.

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BOB: So if you want to be safe, [br]you turn the lights off first.

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ASSISTANT: (INAUD)

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PFAFF: Is that going to work, Bob?

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BOB: Yeah.

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PFAFF: Do you know what [br]happened? Was it the wiring or...

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BOB: Oh this? I don’t know. I think, I suspect...

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PFAFF: The ballast?[br]BOB: The faulty ballast, yeah.

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PFAFF: That’s the...is that the brand new one?

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BOB: No.

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MAN: Look at that. That’s like [br]a drain in my bathtub. Sweet.

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MAN: More, more, more, more, more[br](TALK)

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ELEVATOR: Second Floor

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PFAFF: You come off the elevators, and [br]there’s a pretty big obstacle in front of you,

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this kind of double cone.

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I assumed one would go to the right.

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There’s a kind of natural route.

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I always thought that it would [br]be walked counter-clockwise.

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Just because the layout of the gallery.

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I received two emails.

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They’d just seen the show and both of [br]them talked about sadness and loss.

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And I thought wow, I’m glad [br]that they saw that in that.

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Because that’s what I thought,

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that’s what drove it, that’s what I anticipated.

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When we were finishing up the show,

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once we stopped making a lot of mess

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and there was a straight view past [br]the drawing room into a far back room,

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and I remembered that they [br]had an Al Held painting,

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a black and white, that if it was [br]put up it would just fill that…

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that slot through the gallery.

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I think I’m very romantic.

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That’s where these scrims and these structures,

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why they’re around.

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I think there are these levels,

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like the thing that I was [br]given was way too much romance,

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way too much emotion,

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and not enough of these other things [br]which are hard for me to get to.

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So the work is to get to the other levels.

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To the silence, to the…

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the breath, to a sweeter sense of things.