ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS
AUSTIN-BERGSTROM INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
NOVEMBER 2023 - MARCH 2024
ON VIEW NEAR GATE 7
Who among us has never aspired to play an instrument, join a band or be a rock star? All of those music dreams share a common beginning…lessons.
Whether they occur in a classroom or a bedroom, those initial musical experiments are…well…clunky at best. With repetition, those early tunes may turn to platinum hits, or, more often, be reduced to discarded ditties, outgrown like the faded jeans we wore while strumming, humming or drumming.
Essential Elements features artwork made from the pages of elementary string, percussion and wind instrument lesson books, highlighting the “words” we use to mimic the sounds those instruments make. Each piece includes fragments of those stilted lesson instructions held together with remnants of well-worn jeans, reflecting the things we outgrow or leave behind.
Inquire about one of the works in this exhibit
I am an abstract painter, designer, and music lover albeit not a music-maker. My stint as an aspiring pianist lasted only a few years, long enough to develop enduring appreciation if not skill. My daughter Bryn, on the other hand, had a gift for music, writing and performing evident from her first days in the “Old Twos” preschool class. Bryn, now working and performing in Minneapolis, agreed to collaborate with me on the Essential Elements exhibit to give me a musician’s perspective. Learn more about Bryn and her music
Pick It Up, Any Way
by Bryn Battani
Introduction: you hear a song on the radio. You go to church or a stadium where you feel something move in your stomach. There’s someone you want to impress. A piano is sitting in your house. You go to the store where a sales associate opens a fresh case and tells you cork grease isn’t chapstick. You face an intimidating display of metal, take a really big breath and open your mouth. Your mom comes down from the attic holding something musty. You meet a teacher who fills you with incredible terror, boredom, or desperation to become the kind of person you imagine them to be. You open the trunk of your dad’s car and realize he bought you a saxophone rather than a xylophone. You pick it up anyway.
Exposition: ouch your fingers ouch ouch ouch. Indents on blue tape. This was built for some other creature, not human hands. The smell of the hall and the rented violin. Suzuki and dripping spit. Books like Essential Standards and Measures of Traditions of Excellence and Success. Supposedly, you hold an orange or feel the ghost lift the top of your hand. Something about certain keys. You think of them as different colors, the moods of a king, kids on a playground. Internally, you are guided through the cosmos by a sonic god. Externally, you plunk out “Hot Cross Buns.” You squawk through scales and the person in the next room can definitely hear. You retreat, watching your parents’ shadows as they leave for a dinner party. Out of earshot, you comb through language and shapes until certain words hurt, like a towel, tight and twisted in your chest.
Development: repetition and blisters. Wearing out exercises like fourth-grade pants, you move over and over and move on to something bigger, zipping through a piece until that one section that gets you stuck every time. Calluses, licks and tricks. You play harmonics and hope you look cool. Thinking—I love this part. Still, you can barely rush through a Bach minuet ten minutes before a lesson. You beat yourself up, reach for high notes and gold stars. A prodigy hurtles through a sonata on the Steinway in the store where you work. Endless renditions of “Smoke on the Water” and “Carry on Wayward Son” make you wonder how long you can last. You think about catty girls in the dressing room. Contests, competitions, crying in the car.
Recapitulation: you quit. After a few days, your mom takes the case back to the store, where it sits in the back for a while, no longer full price. After a few years, you break. You burn out before learning about jazz. You go to camp where your friends make you laugh until you lose your voice. You sing with a group of people who make you care. Slowly, strengths emerge. You book a gig. When you get back from the store, you dig through the sheets you shoved in the bench. You move to a new city where you take lessons and meet bandmates at the bar. You write something that makes sense in your head, ask someone to listen, take a really big breath and open your mouth.