{"id":1898,"date":"2010-09-10T10:40:17","date_gmt":"2010-09-10T17:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp\/2010\/09\/ben_waterman_feet_in_mud_head\/"},"modified":"2010-09-10T10:40:17","modified_gmt":"2010-09-10T17:40:17","slug":"ben_waterman_feet_in_mud_head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/2010\/09\/ben_waterman_feet_in_mud_head.html","title":{"rendered":"Ben Waterman: feet in mud, head in stars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>No matter how grounded any particular piece of art may be in the authenticating experience of any one viewer, art is, in the end, a leap of faith. While I was not willing to take it for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.benwaterman.com\/\">Ben Waterman<\/a> when he graduated in 2009 from the University of Washington with an MFA in clay (Elizabeth Bryant <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artdish.com\/post\/2009\/07\/Notes-on-the-Flight-of-the-MFAs.aspx\">called his work<\/a> at the time, sympathetically, half-baked), a year later, it looms large, and the leap is effortless.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"benwatermanlightgraph.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/benwatermanlightgraph.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"text-align: center; display: block; margin: 0pt auto 20px;\" width=\"501\" height=\"378\" \/>He makes mud shine. Despite the title of his installation at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.4culture.org\/publicart\/gallery\/\">4Culture Gallery<\/a>,<i> The Grand Rooms<\/i>, those looking for finish won&#8217;t find it. If he&#8217;d called it, <i>Laboratory in a Corridor<\/i>, we&#8217;d have truth in advertising, but he isn&#8217;t interested in advertising, truthful or otherwise. 4Culture Gallery is a long corridor that hooks left and continues. And Waterman&#8217;s material experiments contain in their shoddy manifestations a suggestion of grandeur around the corner of his next effort. (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikiquote.org\/wiki\/Samuel_Beckett\">We can&#8217;t go on. We&#8217;ll go on<\/a>.) <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"benwatermangldblck.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/benwatermangldblck.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"text-align: center; display: block; margin: 0pt auto 20px;\" width=\"500\" height=\"726\" \/>He fails. Attempts to graph the vigor of wild plum with the sweetness of the domesticated do not hold. His thumbprints on bits of unfired clay do not add up to a bloom. The joints of his efforts swell and leak. His plans collapse under the weight of their execution. <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"benwatermangraph.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/benwatermangraph.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"text-align: center; display: block; margin: 0pt auto 20px;\" width=\"498\" height=\"297\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"benwatermangold.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/benwatermangold.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"text-align: center; display: block; margin: 0pt auto 20px;\" width=\"496\" height=\"309\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"benwatermanthumbs.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/benwatermanthumbs.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"text-align: center; display: block; margin: 0pt auto 20px;\" width=\"462\" height=\"662\" \/>Nevertheless, he sets the table&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"benwatermanmeal.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/benwatermanmeal.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"text-align: center; display: block; margin: 0pt auto 20px;\" width=\"501\" height=\"280\" \/>&#8230;and sets the floor on fire with his desire.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"benwatermanthumbred.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/benwatermanthumbred.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"text-align: center; display: block; margin: 0pt auto 20px;\" width=\"501\" height=\"334\" \/>The Northwest has a robust tradition of handyman poetics, from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bustersimpson.net\/\">Buster Simpson<\/a> to <a href=\"http:\/\/eliashansen.com\/\">Elias Hansen<\/a>. Waterman stakes his handyman poetics after the fall, with no possibly of making it work. And yet he goes on, shouldering the weight of never-say-die America. While in search of a true thing within the bare, ruined choirs of bombastical idealism, he leaves behind him a rare and vulnerable beauty.<\/p>\n<p>Through Sept. 30.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No matter how grounded any particular piece of art may be in the authenticating experience of any one viewer, art is, in the end, a leap of faith. While I was not willing to take it for Ben Waterman when he graduated in 2009 from the University of Washington with an MFA in clay (Elizabeth [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1898","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}