North Carolina Miscellany
N C L R ONLINE
COURTESY OF DAUM MUSEUM OF ART
Release (solid-cast porcelain) by Thomas Schmidt
I attacked my writing, hundreds of poems and stories, a trunk of pieces from graduate school and college – all pressed into a blizzard of white confetti, old trappings before I came to believe what I had become, back when I carried the burden of a vision I wanted to be. I turned to my suits, dress pants and starched shirts, jeans, old tees and shorts, running gear, underwear and socks, all of it slowly sucked into the machine, turning it all back into what it was, wasted spools of dyed thread. The mirror was hard, but it went through, so did our bed. I inserted everything I had to say and thought too. The sights I saw and heard in a life I no longer lived. My shredder was amazing; I highly recommend it. A finger, a fist, a foot, a penis, a nose, a lip, it wasn’t long before I was only bits of bits.
THOMAS SCHMIDT attended Loyola University in Chicago, then trained at Alfred University in New York State. He is an Assistant Professor at UNC Charlotte. His work is in collections including the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art in Sedalia, MO; the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza, Italy; the Schein-Joseph International Museum of Ceramic Art in Alfred, NY; and a forthcoming acquisition by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Learn more about Thomas Schmidt’s work on his website.
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