Everything Special

“Art does not imitate nature, it imitates a creation, sometimes to propose an alternative world, sometimes simply to amplify, to confirm, to make social the brief hope offered by nature. Art is an organized response to what nature allows us to glimpse occasionally. Art sets out to transform the potential recognition into an unceasing one. It proclaims man in the hope of receiving a surer reply . . . the transcendental face of art is always a form of prayer.”

John Berger, The White Bird

For a generation defined by loss, a common antidote might be an orientation towards preparedness. Preppers are perhaps the most hyperbolic example of the impulse to try to avoid or mitigate loss. A prepper is defined as a person who gathers materials and makes plans in preparation for surviving a major disaster or cataclysm.

In Hannah Sage Murphy’s Everything Special, everything means everything. Everything is information and feelings and memories as well as materials and forms. A quilt made of shiny silver Faraday Fabric, the same material used by military and forensics investigators as well as preppers to block wireless signals, is slung humbly over a wooden quilt rack. Why do we organize, document, collect, archive? Are we praying?

Humans are a spiritually oriented species, though we find creative ways to detract from this all the time. We turn to science when we are ashamed of being fallible, because we want to survive, and this impulse turns us each into an artist in our own right. An artist crafts a science of the spirit. In Revelations of Divine Love, medieval anchoress Julian of Norwich writes:

"...He shewed me a little thing, the quantity of an hazel-nut…and it was as round as a ball. I looked thereupon…and thought: What may this be? And it was answered generally thus: It is all that is made. I marvelled how it might last, for methought it might suddenly have fallen to naught for little[ness]. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasteth, and ever shall [last] for that God loveth it. And so All-thing hath the Being by the love of God."

You can pick up a hazelnut, or almost anything, and be absolutely clobbered over the head with the impressiveness of gods creation. It’s no wonder we don’t fall down to the floor each day. As it happens, we don’t fall down – instead we look up at the night sky and think I have to know this too.

Last October, the European Space Agency’s CHaracterizing ExOPlanet Satellites (CHEOPS) Mission discovered the shiniest exoplanet in our solar system, Planet LTT9779 b, making it the largest “mirror” in the universe. Planet LTT9779 b is encased in metallic clouds – protected by the chaos of it’s own atmosphere, a chaos that takes the form of an extremely reflective planet. It contains so much everything that the planet isn’t blown away by the power of its host star, it gets to stay. It’s so reflective of its truth that it protects itself, and it uses all the information and material available to preserve itself for the future.

Hannah’s Symphony LTT9779 b, composed of ten feet of Shaker-style peg rails foiled in segments with silver paint, reflects the Planet LTT9779 b’s own simple yet ingenious way of organizing itself. On one peg, a vertical trail of keyrings, chains and clips collected over years. On another, a clear vinyl purse contains a painting with the word lessons. The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, commonly known as the Shakers, also believed that the end was near. In their attempt to create a communal heaven on earth, they developed a unique style of furniture and crafts based around the values of  honesty, utility, and simplicity. Shaker homes routinely feature peg rails wrapped around the perimeter of a room, with modular furniture built to be hung. Shaker pegs demonstrate the aspiration for order and harmony, even in the midst of world-shaking chaos. Everything will find its place.

As Hannah arranges these forms, tending to the land of her consciousness, her unique craft and utilitarian oriented expressions come together like an archive of affects, akin to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, in which copies of over 1,214,827 seed samples from almost every country in the world are safeguarded as a protective measure against extinction. If affect is a metric of connection between the physical and imagined world – then the affected body prepares to respond. The wooden boxes used to store glass tubes of seeds wrapped in aluminum bear a striking resemblance to Hannah’s sculptures. If silver is the color of the future, and wood the material of the past, these forms hint that the beginning and the end might be collapsing.

“Imagine a burning world, close to its star, with heavy clouds of metals floating aloft, raining down titanium droplets,” says a CHEOPS astronomer. Just imagine. I cannot. But I can imagine holding a hazelnut in my hands, its roundness, it’s incomprehensibility, my amazement. The hazelnut and the spaceship find restitution here. I can hang my keys on a hook each day, and remember where to find them when I wake up.