Pencils

Maker unknown, ca. 2012

Graphite, clay, wood

Dimensions variable

Purchased from Staples

Personal collection 

These are the pencils I use to complete school assignments, to make notes as well as for drawing and sketching. When thinking of pencils, it is easy to immediately go back to the days of grade school where everyone used pencils and borrowed pencils from one another. Reflecting on this, I have always wondered what happens to peoples’ pencils when they become smaller than the optimal length. I never see people using short pencils such as the ones here. People also lose pencils very easily, especially when borrowing a pencil from someone else. This beg the question, where do all of our pencils go?

The pencils pictured are a tool that I use every day to accomplish tasks. They represent the crossover of an artist’s practice with common daily tasks. Everyone uses pencils, whether it be for jotting down a grocery list, making a to-do list, journaling, or mindless doodling. This crossover between the every day and the artistic is inherent in the nature of human beings as we require art practices to survive. Creating something, whether it be a list, a doodle, or a letter to someone are all methods of self-expression. All represent moments in which something that had not yet existed is materialized and this is the essence of the present moment. We are compelled to create something new and bring ideas from the realm of thought into the physical world.

These pencils are intended to spark thought about the immediacy and possibility inherent in the present moment. They reflect the idea that we s humans are in control of what it is that we choose to put out into the world.

Alexa Collette