"Brand New Geography for Old-Timers"

Susan Little's sculpture in the Great Hall Gallery, under the hole in
the ceiling, compellingly allies with the title of the exhibition,
"Historical Geology for Beginners." This interesting turn of phrase
offers an opportunity for lots of play, and lightly touches hard
questions; for example, there is a pun between the words "geology" and
"geography." It is an understatement to say that geological time
exceeds historical time. To think in geological time is to recognize
the incredible brevity of the human span, a thought that renders
"geography" and its political maps ironic, if not silly (while, at the
same time, we have lately noticed that we are not as harmless as
flies). The word "beginners" is also absurd. It seems like a great
deal to teach a beginner the history of Earth. An understatement
again. It's impossible. Earth can't write, yet this title and this
work lend it a memory of a record and a history.

The piece is notoriously missing parts, which renders it still more
site-specific: the below-ground exhibition space, currently territory
of the Sciame company not the Cooper Union, infamously clashes with
the work of students to whom the space is promised, with about the
carefulness of icebergs. There are intended to be 50 ceramic
plate-sized pieces, in the shapes of all of the United States.
Leaning on handmade steel display stands, like new books, they all
face front. They are distributed on a large, about 8-inch high and
solid square base, which is unpainted and looks like the splintery
scrap wood used in construction work. It is utilitarian and doesn't
elevate the work like a pedestal. I am not sure what it means for the
piece to be so close to the floor rather than at eye level, where the
viewer could take in the subtle variations of the clay. There is,
though, a certain sense of grounded-ness when confronted with an
object that sits by your feet on the same horizontal plane.

The ceramic states are all glazed imperfectly, the same white. I
interpret this choice in part as an elimination of the color
differences between states, while still referencing the way a map
usually differentiates them. The edges, the state lines drawn by
rivers and human minds, are articulated in detail. But edge is no
longer a line; it's a thickness of clay, making the transition through
objecthood from "geography" to geology. Walking behind them, which
Susan has allowed room to do, their naked red backs are exposed, which
are grooved as a part of the process of making them. We can look from
below the surface (the back), and see the map backwards, which is a
bit like seeing a flag upside down. Since only one side is glazed,
they are more tiles than plates. The clay can remind you of the dirt
below the surface of everything. This is further emphasized where
gashes like wounds interrupt the glazed surfaces. Here again, it is
impossible to name these states without also thinking of their history
of breaking and floating apart, all made of the same matter and now
outlined and alone. They become icebergs or tectonic plates, so the
space between them would be the ocean, but they remain upright on
display and dispersed not only on a sphere but both in the foreground
and the background. Again working against the conventions of maps,
they are not flat. Not only is the earth not flat, the country is not
flat. They warp convex and concave, a reminder of their softness and
the baking process.

So, it is like the earth, like a kitchen or a bathroom, was tiled, and
surface layer has been lifted off. The unanswered question of where
the earth is now fills the space around the sculpture. It is gone, in
a way, it is absent, while the sense of the human hand and the
earth-likeness of the clay doesn't leave you alone. It is good as a
viewer, not to see colors, lines, or flatness, and see so much
instead, to be a beginner and look.