The Nonumental Seating sculpts community.  They are iterations on the 6,000 year old building technique “wattle and daub”. “Wattle” is a woven wood lattice that is smeared with “daub” (also referred to as cob) which is a mixture of clay, sand, straw and water.  For this piece, the material was mixed at a public event called The Mud Dance.  During the dance the authorship disseminated into a collective voice as each participant performed their own dance moves to interact with the daub and each other.  This communal aspect of the work is inscribed into the daub. The event investigated how work can be about democracy, community, fun and celebration, rather than simply efficiency and commerce.

The resulting shapes of the benches are adaptations of skate parks and playgrounds, both abstractions of the architectural environment.  In both of these spaces forms are created to be interpreted/used in as many ways as possible.  The seats are in compliance to ADA guidelines in order to meet the expectations of a public seat, but they are not limited to that function.  People began to identify them as peanuts, a sombrero, cantaloupes, potatoes and what ever else they resembled. Children play on the seats while the elderly use them as a resting place on their trek across the park.  The benches are multidimensional objects that evoke numerous visual associations and plenty of functions dependent on the user.

The making of these objects was about talking and working with residents, so a narrative could accompany the resulting social space.  These pieces were the medium for interacting with the southwest D.C. community.  They shared their stories, thoughts and opinions as I shared my work.  The objects are “nonumental” because their inseparability from everyone’s participation, making them symbols of people’s commonality rather than monuments that stand for a momentous few.