What Once was Lost

Works by Rainy Lehrman

What Once was Lost, refers to the Garden of Eden allegory through installation, sculpture and decorative arts. The work comments on the threat of false nostalgia, or a time in American crafts that never was. A convergence of cultural heritage, material innovation and technology advance has always been the driving force behind an American Vernacular and now more than ever, the intersection of craft traditions, material augmentation and a global craft network are transforming the possibilities of form and function. The reality that the hand could be replaced by AI, seven-axis CNC machines, and 3-D printers has become relevant as generational learning has been replaced by institutions of higher learning, historically inaccessible and unaffordable to most. It is why we must continue to both preserve and promote the hand as the tool that makes us human and shapes our collective culture and at the same time, re-examine old traditions with new eyes and embrace new ways of making.

In this exhibit I use both air dried and compressed domestic lumber while scaling down material thickness. I carefully select and resaw the blanks into quarter-sawn “choice cuts” perfect for steaming and pre-shape and sand prior to steaming. This has all but eliminated radial restraints as I’ve moved away from an xy axis and have learned to follow rather than force material outcomes. The Weeping Tree of Life, and The Weeping Tree of Knowledge, are steam bent through several non-traditional methods. I have eliminated both the steam box and the jig and am “free-form” bending. Coopered, tapered cones are bound and then steam is directly pumped into them, in effect turning them into their own steam boxes. The wood responds to the heat, arching and curving. As tension is released and lignins plasticise, I manipulate the wood in the direction it has already taken, pushing it until it wants to give, using my own body to hold it in tension while it cools and sets, all prior to glueing up.

Outside of the gallery, The Anthropocene, is composed of individual layers of sawdust, much like the way it naturally accumulates in the woodshop, collected from the shops of artists and makers I admire, both in New York and along my way to Arrowmont. The sawdust from each woodworker represented their own physical labor during a set period of time. I then gathered evidence of this creative process and reassembled it where it serves as tangible evidence of human craftsmanship. The result is a wall that mimics geological strata, reflecting the accumulation of material over a period of time, appearing to have been artificially extruded from the ground, like a book pulled from a shelf. One distinctive layer, composed of iron dust and wheat grain, symbolizes the foundational layer in this new epoch of human occupation—reflecting humanity’s dual conquest of the land through both force (iron) and cultivation (wheat). This layer is designed to sprout and grow, emphasizing the living, evolving nature of this new geological era. As the piece is exposed to the natural elements it quickly oxidizes, spaults and erodes, itself mimicking a geological time lapse for its duration.

Rainy Lehrman (b.1976) is an American designer and artist. Her work draws inspiration from traditional crafts techniques to inform the relationship between the human-made and the natural world. Often blurring the boundaries between functional objects, sculpture and time-based installations, she frequently explores themes of time, labor, human consumption and its environmental impact. Lehrman’s sculptural work reimagines woodworking techniques to create objects embedded with cautionary foreshadowing and dual meaning through a deep understanding of materiality. A lifelong steam bender, micro-bending, free-form bending and coopered-tapered-steam-bent laminations are where her current technical interests lie. Lehrman is also the founder of the nonprofit, NY Lumber Library, whose mission is to repurpose NYC lumber as a material for hands-on, wood-based education in environmental justice, neighborhood equitability and vibrant community and species led curriculum. Lehrman received her MFA in Sculpture from Pratt Institute in 2008 and her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2002 where she studied Furniture Design. Lehrman is currently living and working as an artist, educator, fabricator, facilitator and mother to Maple and Alder in Brooklyn NY.