Ain’t Doin ..it (2019-2021)
Blown glass
12 x 12 x 15 inches

When Objects Reject Intent

At first glance this work appears to be a deceptively common utilitarian item—anything but a sculptural object. A closer inspection reveals luminescent clear glass gathered over an orange-and-white stuff cup blown into a soft marshmallow-like form. The graphics were produced using a technique known as Graal, and the colored, frosting-like bits were added afterwards in the hot shop.

The work was originally intended as an interpretation of the all-too-familiar homer bucket, to be used in my collaborative project studioHydrostatic. The bucket would serve with comic relief as a bio-filter in these anthropocentric installations, in which wetland-like ecosystems are biologically sustained by human urine.

However, during the cold working process a small crack was discovered in the bottom of the bucket. The only way to stabilize the form was to remove the crack by cutting a safe margin around it and allow the now bottomless bucket to take on a new identity. The sandblasted words “LET’S DO SHIT” (a play on the Home Depot bucket’s “Let’s Do This” slogan), now modified by the dysfunctional form, echo the ecological concerns I embrace in my other works as well as studioHydrostatic’s mission to address how an artistic practice can be ecologically beneficial.

Fundamentally, the title, “Ain’t Doin ..it”, reflects the challenges of working with materials like glass. On a more metaphorical level, it comments on the seemingly insurmountable task of changing damaging human interactions with the biome into more positive exchanges in which humans see the Earth, not as a bottomless bucket of resources, but rather as a symbiotic host.

“Ain’t Doin ..it” was produced in the studios of UrbanGlass and Brooklyn Glass respectively by Robert C Beck, with Josh Raiffe, Jason Bauer, and Sarah Max Beck.