Alicia Eggert's workspace looks more like a hardware store than an artist's studio. Tools hang from peg boards, totes and boxes are stacked neatly on metal shelves, small bins filled with drill bits, screws and nails sit alongside electronic components atop a large work table.
Yet for all the hardware on view, Eggert, an interdisciplinary artist and UNT professor, says language is her primary sculptural material. She’s also fascinated by time.
“I'm specifically interested in the way that time is defined by physics or psychology, and the way that they kind of define it [time], the language they use to explain it. Because ultimately, we all kind of understand that time is a construct. But I think in my practice, I'm trying to figure out how exactly it's constructed.”
Eggert reads widely for inspiration and, after extensive research and contemplation, she carefully selects a word or phrase for a project. After that point, the fun begins, coming up with a design and mastering the mechanical or engineering skills to bring the project to life.
Her work "Eternity" features 30 clocks and clock hands mounted to a whiteboard. Most of the time, the work looks like spinning sticks, but twice a day for about 5 minutes, the hands come together to spell out the word "eternity."
"That actually came from not necessarily playing with clocks, but thinking about the word eternity and just looking it up in the dictionary. . . I realized that it doesn't mean what I thought it meant. I thought it meant like a very long time, but actually it means a state to which time does not apply, like a place where time doesn't even exist. And so thinking through that, I tried to imagine, you know, taking the time-keeping element away from clocks so that clocks don't keep normal time anymore, but they keep this new sense of time," says Eggert.
Her favorite work was a piece called "Forever." Eggert spent a short time doing an artist's residency in a small city off the coast of Maine, where her studio faced the water. On a clear day, Eggert felt she could see forever, so she ended up making a sign that spelled out the word "forever" and putting it on a hill on an island. The sign ended up being 50ft wide and 15ft tall, and could be seen from Quebec.
"On some days, the fog would roll in and off the ocean and sort of envelop everything so that it felt like there was a white wall that was blocking my view. And I loved watching the landscape sort of appear and disappear in the fog. And I wanted to kind of bring that saying that we're all familiar with on a clear day, you can see forever, like into existence."
We don't know what Eggert's next project will be; we just know it will be something she has never done before. "With every project, I'm usually like learning a new skill and doing something I've never done before, like take apart alarm clocks, you know, so it's fun because I'm always essentially learning something new."
The KERA ArtsDoc series is a biweekly program featuring artists working in North Texas. Find us on YouTube.
