“Earth” Series (work in progress)

A few years ago, I received a nearly complete set of the LIFE World Library books from a close friend. She, being a teacher, had used them as supplementary material in her cultural lessons, and I know and love many of the students who had previously flipped through the yellowed pages. I have a deep emotional connection to these well-loved but outdated books, and this project is attempting to express and respond to those emotions.

The World Library series was published in the 1960s and was composed of about thirty hardcover books, each painting a picture of a specific country, focusing on many angles of its culture. All volumes have solid color backs in a variety of jewel tones, but especially deep greens and blues, and rich red tones. A small simple line graphic of our globe, usually in white but sometimes in black, is printed in the center of the back of each book.

Using these hardcover backs, I have been creating a series of works focusing on different aspects of how we view our planet, feel about it, and treat it. The series has 24 pieces, one for each hour of the day. The day begins with an end, and ends with a beginning. There really is no particular order to the pieces; each work begins and ends in itself.

To create these pieces, I have worked with collage techniques, mainly using paper elements from various sources. My goal was to keep the images simple and the original surfaces as visible as possible.

Sometimes I add sewing thread, inherited from my grandmother, who had sewn and mended my dresses when I was a child. I like to incorporate sewing thread in my work for the nostalgia it evokes in me, but also because of its purpose and the theme it conveys: to create and to hold together.

Just recently I have completed my last image of the series. I’m currently working on getting all pieces ready for hanging.

“Earth” (2020-2022) will be on view at Shreveport Regional Arts Council/Central Artstation in Shreveport, LA in Spring 2023. Additional shows are planned.

"All Counts”

I started a project by the name of “All Counts” recently. It’s nothing spectacular or particularly remarkable, just a project that I’ll be doing on the side. It’s about the concept of everything and everyone being measured, numbered, counted, and organized in some manner. Everything and everyone has a place in a gigantic grid with long rows and steep columns, defined and constructed by social rules, actions, and expectations. This is not an eye-opening, bewildering realization, just something I want to comment on. I take pictures of numbers with my phone and post them in ascending order on my Instagram page(@christianedrieling). I don’t post these numbers daily, and on some days I will post multiple. It depends on the numbers I come across. I view my photos as the subtitles for a pointlessly long movie with an open ending. I chose a social media site as my canvas because of its whateverness.

“How We Connect” (interactive 3-D object)

I started working on this project in Summer 2020 when I was part of a virtual residency hosted by the North Central Louisiana Arts Council and the Ross Lynn Charitable Foundation. 19 artists from several US states and working in different genres of art came together to converse about the current social climate and social movements in this country, and to respond to the challenges that the global pandemic posed, in particular how it affected people's relationships with one another, and the ties that bind us together, or often not.

My residency project, titled “How We Connect” was spurred on by these conversations. However, the idea was born several years ago when I picked up a large handmade wooden salad bowl in a thrift store. This bowl was characterized by lots of imperfections, including a large crack on the side. Evidently, an attempt had been made to repair this crack with glue, but that attempt was in vain. Other flaws included an uneven bottom, and many tiny cracks, chips, scratches, and stains at the rim and on the inside. To me, this bowl was an excellent representation of the framework of a society created by laws, rules, morals, habits, common sense and other expressions of power that define social stratification. I wanted to fill this bowl with groups of people to conjure up the possibilities and limitations of social and systemic movements within this framework.
This interactive 3D object is about the way people connect. It’s about the social groups they form, how these groups interact with and depend on each other, and about the dynamics of these groups within a changing society. It’s an interactive sculpture about how we function (or not) as a society.

The social groups – families, circles of friends, clubs, companies, schools, organizations – are represented by 353 wooden spheres with different diameters from ¼“ to 5.” I have found that the maximum number of spheres that the bowl can contain is about 350 but they will only fit when placed with care and balance. Then I added three tiny spheres to get to the next prime number, 353, because I wanted to incorporate the wholesome thought that a population should not be divided.

To represent individuals, I covered the spheres with first names clipped from an enormous multitude of old and new paper sources. Names from different pasts, different backgrounds and different cultures, names that point to a certain origin and social status, forgotten and reintroduced names, names of unknown ancestors, of legends, fictional characters, and historic figures. Doubles and multiples of names can mean that a person is part of several groups. Sizes, typefaces, fonts, and colors of the names as well as the quality of paper and ink vary to suggest a certain position of an individual within a certain group.

In the bowl, the differently sized spheres exist alongside each other, making contact with each other without making permanent connections. The smaller spheres are in contact with only a few other spheres, while the larger spheres are in contact with a larger number of spheres. Some spheres are on top, some in the middle, some at the bottom. Some are at the margin, some are nestled in niches, some are hidden, some are exposed. Some are so small that they fell through the gaps to the bottom right away and became invisible. Some spheres seem to be immobilized, surrounded by a number of other spheres, others sit on top supported by the spheres underneath.

The bowl is very full so that it is difficult to stir in it. Some balls will fall out when you do it anyway and then need to be returned to a new spot. When a sphere is taken out, the ones left in the bowl will move closer to each other; the effect is more significant the larger the sphere is. When a small one is removed, the impact on the whole is practically insignificant.

In all cases, the connections between the spheres are unstable, temporary. In addition, the wobbly bottom of the bowl challenges the balance of the whole system. It is a very fragile construction.

Studio Visit 2020

Follow me into my studio to see where I teach and work! The main part of this video is about the concept and process of my 24-piece “Earth” series as I am showing the creative process of #14.