THAT'S NOT THE ME VERSION OF ME

The last time I remember throwing pottery on a wheel, I was a child. Maybe a pre-teen. My mom had signed me up for some classes over the summer. I think it might have been a camp. I can still feel the pedal under my foot, the hum of the motor, the skin on the edge of my hand raw against the rotating metal surface. The memories, though distant, are happy ones, and I'm occasionally reminded of them when I see the little glazed pieces from that summer on the counter at my parents' house. Even now, in my own place, I use one of the small bowls I made to hold the scrubber at my sink. 

So, though it's true that I've made a few objects out of clay, I would by no stretch call myself a ceramic artist. Hence my confusion when I began to receive messages like this one from my friend Zêdan earlier this year:

Zêdan was the first, but certainly not the last, to reach out about some ceramic piece or another made by a Ryan Greene in local art shows. I've had friends, colleagues, former bosses, etc. all ask me a version of the question, "Is this you? When did you start doing ceramics??" My ex recently texted me, "I met Ryan Greene today." The night before, I'd come across one of Ryan Greene's pieces while walking into a gallery up the street from my home. Recently, I learned he shares a studio with an artist I know. The connections keep piling up, and it's begun to feel inevitable that our paths will continue to intertangle until we meet face to face. While I'm looking forward to that moment, I don't quite feel ready. 

As a writer, the existence of an unknown namelgänger or doppelnamer or tocayo or alter ego has been a bit of thrill. I've felt certain that sooner or later his existence would give rise to a writing project. And sure enough, a few weeks ago I received an email from a librarian friend of mine at Phoenix College congratulating me on my new exhibit. She attached the following flyer and apologized for not having been able to make it to the opening. 

This was how I learned about Ryan Greene's new show Edible. After explaining to my friend that I was not, in fact, the artist, I decided that I would visit the show and write a piece about the experience. And so here we are, already a few paragraphs deep into it!

Before moving forward, there are two quick things to note. First, while this piece takes the shape of a review, it is not, strictly speaking, interested in critique. The TL;DR is that I don't know much about ceramics, but I find it fun to share a name with someone I don't know, and spending time with their art feels like a way to extend the contours of that fun. Second, while I deeply admire the interspecies ecological work by Daniella Napolitano, I'm not going to write about her incredible prints in Synurbanization. Below, I've included a few photos of her show, but to get a deeper glimpse into her practice, I encourage you to check out her website, her Instagram, or any of her work in shows around the valley and beyond!

When I arrive at the Eric Fischl Gallery at Phoenix College to see Ryan Greene's show Edible, it's actually my second attempt. The first time I came, the gallery was closed and I only got a preview by cupping my hands against the glass to peek through the window at the strange plant-like (or maybe microbial?) forms arranged in the space. On my second try, though, the gallery is open and I'm able to enter, escaping the late September heat. 

As I write my email on a clipboard to be added to the gallery's mailing list, I strike up a conversation with a staff member, Julie, sitting at the welcome desk. I mention that I took a printmaking class in a classroom downstairs seven years ago. Then, after a bit of chatting, I let slip that I share a name with the artist whose show is on view. She laughs, asking me if I'm actually the Ryan Greene with a piece in the campus magazine, RISE. I confirm that yes, that particular Ryan Greene is me, and we share another laugh, delighting in the ridiculousness of it all. It's a big-city-small-world moment that makes me even more excited to spend time with this other Ryan Greene's art.

Turning away from the desk, I'm met with a large white wall proclaiming a single word, the title of the show, Edible. Below the vinyl letters there's a shelf holding a small trifold pamphlet with a gentle green text printed on cream paper. Looking closer, I see that there are bits of plant fibers visible in the paper, though it's completely smooth to the touch. The front of the pamphlet reads:

From the very start, I'm greeted with trust. Implied in the last two words of this message, with care, is the fact that this art is breakable, fired clay being rigid, and the ground (concrete) hard and unforgiving. And yet, I'm offered an invitation to "harvest," which I assume involves touching. 

Opening to the first spread in the pamphlet, Greene includes instructive line drawings showing the particular forms of touch that "harvesting" entails. I learn that there are two types of harvestable "plants" in the show: "Cup Bushes" and "Fruiting Flowers." Cup Bushes, whose plump shape and matte green tones remind me of barrel cacti, have orange-ish "fruit" cups protruding from all sides. Fruiting Flowers, with purple or yellow tops, look a bit like gourds to me. In their squatness, they also bring to mind the peyote cactus. I have a feeling, though, that their real-world vegetal analog is some type of bud or flower that I can't quite place.

In the case of the Cup Bushes, Greene invites me to twist one of the orange fruits until I reach a small notch, at which point I can tilt the fruit back and lift it out. Beautifully, there is evidence that others have taken this invitation before me, because there are many vacant "slots" for fruits and then a cheerful cluster of cups arranged on a small, bean-shaped surface called (according to the "Garden Map" on the innermost spread of the pamphlet) the "Harvest Washing Table." 

What I like most about looking at the harvested fruit cups is that no two are the same. They are all clearly of the same "species", and yet there's the slight variation that life relies on: some shorter, some wider, some glossier, all earthy, somewhere between pink, orange, and coral. Seeing them laid out together, I wonder if one broke, would the shards serve as seeds?

In the case of the "Fruiting Flower" bowls, again there's the sense of simultaneous uniformity and difference. There are six purple "flowers" and two larger yellow ones. It's extremely satisfying to open them because it's nearly impossible to be quiet. There's of course the sort of "clang" you'd expect as the lid hits the pot, even slightly. And then underneath that heavier "sound shape," there's a sort of subtle grinding, a textural artifact of the clay's inherent grit. 

A similar sonic signature accompanies the longer, rattling "sound shape" of harvesting the cup from the bushes. Here, as I rotate the fruit until finding the notch, there's a gritty sheen to the clanking. In the context of an otherwise soundless gallery, there's no way to harvest discreetly. The clay-against-clay jangling rebounds around the room. I love it!

An additional element of the show that I haven't yet mentioned is Greene's attention to cyclical relationships. For instance, in addition to the Cup Bushes with fruit cups, there are slightly smaller, fruitless Cup Bushes, and then even smaller Young Cup Bushes. Plus, there's a Punch Bowl, the only item in the cluster arranged with its interior facing upward, striking a traditional "vessel" pose. Together, these imply both a biological life cycle (young bushes maturing into full-grown bushes that eventually flower and produce fruit), and a cycle of interspecies and interpersonal interaction (fruits that are harvested by humans to produce a punch that is eventually served from a bowl [maybe an inverted bush] using a wooden ladel into extra fruits that double as cups). Flipping to the back of the pamphlet, I see that Greene offers a brief statement about this cyclicality. Instead of paraphrasing, I'll let him speak for himself:

Seeing Ryan Greene's ceramics through my lens as a writer, I'm interested in thinking about his pottery as a form of poetry. This near anagram feels useful since both forms attend to space, material, arrangement, relationship, and texture. They also each force us to question ingrained understandings of meaning and utility.

So if I'm to approach Ryan Greene's Edible as a poem, I would say I'm nourished most deeply by the ways "reading" it makes me think about touch, trust, and reciprocity. The "text" consists of "words" made from clay and gathered into "stanzas" that together form a garden where we can practice embodied modes of relation that feel critically important in our ongoing moment of ecological collapse and societal rupture. From the very beginning, we're invited to apply intentional touch to objects that themselves emerged from intentional touch. And we're encouraged not only to witness, but to participate in a cycle of harvest, reminded by an accretion of fruits on the Washing Table that others, too, have been here, and that others, too, will come. This, I think as I leave the gallery, stepping back into the heat, is a poem I can believe in.