Week 201. Value.

Katja Stuke. No title.

Diary drawing_ No.8924_ February 7th, 2024

Whilst making this piece I thought about the values of materials and the perceived values, about fragility, permanence and impermanence, warmth and cold, use and non-use, the real monetary cost, the perceived liveliness and deadness of different materials. Others thought of making sweets as a child, pouring hot sugar into boxes and of frosted mornings— a sort of memory trigger.

Inside this worn, much handled and shipped box there is crystal, optical crystal, I think I remember the code LF5 from Schott, not the glass everywhere, like windows or screens. When I began working with glass, and historically, crystal had to have 24% lead in order to call it that, it was softer to cut— now lead is banned.

To get it lying there like a glove matching the textures and layers, involved making a mould, from cardboard to dental alginate, then an investment mould made from ground quartz, gypsum, china clay, water, and then the glass is slowly melted inside the mould. Value or cost in labour, time, technical knowledge, manual skill, electricity, materials, studio rent, memories and finally a value in the gallery. The box and crystal now have the same status.

Photography, 9/2024, parc IOR, Bucarest.

One should be able to photograph the smell of this place. A park that has become a crime
scene, the scene of multiple murders. When will the trial take place? Who will represent the
victims? Poisoned trees, burnt greenery, animal habitats reduced to ashes… Speculation,
concreting, making a profit, in one of Europe’s least breathable cities.
I met there Andreea. She told me how she fights, with dance, with words, with others.
May clovers soon grow on this soil, may bare feet caress them… Parc IOR»»

I took this photo in Asheville, North Carolina 10 months ago. 2 days ago, Hurricane Helene covered the River Arts District in rain and loss as flood waters swept through low-lying areas of the mountain town. I don’t know if the sign (or the bridge) is still standing.

The sculpture, ‘Wings’, commemorates those who died in the anti-Communist resistance in Romania and Bessarabia between 1945 and 1989. It replaces a statue of Lenin. The ‘House of the Free Press’ was the former headquarters of ‘The Spark’ newspaper. This ideological soup of rehashed symbols and random vehicles, cosmic idols and exhaust fumes clogs the senses.

Tallin, Estonie 2024
What was left behind and what lies ahead, Tallin, Estonia 2024

On Both Sides of the Horizon, 42cm x 60cm, ink and watercolour on paper, 2024