Artist Interview: Cameron Patricia Downey

Written by Steven Scarpa

Sculptor Cameron Patricia Downey looks at objects in a complex way. Downey imagines where the thing has been, what it might have experienced, and who might have used – and loved – it.

Downey’s latest sculpture, The Rocks Cry Out, brings together rocks and found objects to trouble the line between the animate and inanimate. The work asks whether these materials’ rich histories, touched by the actions of people or the Earth, imbue them with a kind of life.

“Minerals and rocks keep and witness the earth itself and manifest its changes. They are not purported or understood as living, yet they boast a beautiful life,” said Downey, who is an MFA candidate at the Yale School of Art.

The new sculpture, inspired by the museum’s collections, was created as part of the Yale Peabody Museum’s Summer Art Fellowship. “The kind of art that inspires me questions what the nature of this world is and how it works,” they said.

She has created a work that melds the craft displayed in the construction of old chairs with the ancient gravitas of Stony Creek granite and kaolin clay found both in South Carolina and the coast of West Africa. By symbolizing the worker’s efforts through the chairs and the deep time of geologic forces through the minerals, Downey asks us to think about the world in a different way.

“I consider discarded materials as witnesses. I hope their juxtaposition alongside the Horse Island rock offers a poetic consideration of these materials,” they said.

Downey’s project is informed by the Peabody’s mineralogy collections, and research into Black craft traditions in the United States dating from the end of the Civil War. “I’ve learned about the grounded importance of joinery, the point at which things connect to one another. Formerly enslaved folks and their descendants have managed to make both sturdy and deeply intimate things,” Downey said.

There is a cultural significance to these rocks, specifically their sediments, Downey explained. Kaolin clay is found both in West Africa in Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana, and South Carolina low country, an area notorious for being an epicenter of enslaved skilled labor in the United States. The clay was used in religious and cultural practices, like the creation of Edgefield face jugs, some aspects of which were likely carried over from West Africa, she said. Skilled African American tradespeople made items, like pottery and chairs, that were valued for their craftsmanship, beauty, and utility.

“In 1865, there were 120,000 skilled artisans in the United States. According to research by James Newton, theoriginal director of the University of Delaware's Black Studies Program, 100,000 of those skilled artisans were Black folks building many of the places and the infrastructure that we know today. These were labors that have laid the interior and exterior infrastructures of the United States that we see today … all of this connects to this idea of a found object being haunted and a record of the past,” Downey said.

The Peabody chatted with Downey as they finished their sculpture, which would be installed in the case near the museum’s North entrance. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why do you think linking the disciplines of environmental science and art is important to your creative practice?

I've had the pleasure, and the punishment, of having to explain why I wanted to study both to anybody else who thinks that the two subjects don't belong together. I was really inspired to study environmental science after reading The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert, which addresses the Anthropocene era, in which humans have changed the world and how the environment works.

The thing that ties art and science together for me is this question of curiosity and seeking hypotheses. Both disciplines deal with the question of what the world is like.

There are very lofty and far-reaching questions about how we exist, both over the course of our lives and on a day-to-day basis. How we interact with each other is informed by what we know the world to be. Trying to answer these questions is a beautiful undertaking in both science and in art making.

Storytelling is an important part of this process. When dinosaur fossils were first discovered, the government and the science agencies at the time hired comedians, artists, and other public speakers to convince the masses that what we knew about the world is completely different than before. Both science and art can change your mind about how things are and how they work.

Why do you choose to create your sculptures with found objects?

I believe that found objects have past lives. There's something that's poetic and spectral about an object that has borne witness to events in different time periods, weather, and climates. They’ve already gone through something and have ended up at the junk shop or on the street when I find them.

I'm also interested in objects that reside in the natural environment, specifically rocks and minerals. They are meticulous record keepers and like witnesses to the earth itself. They tell us exactly what was happening millions of years ago. And in different states, they tell us what might happen in the future. Stefan (Nicolescu, collections manager in mineralogy) taught me that this Stony Creek granite, if exposed to warm, humid conditions for long enough, will eventually turn into clay.

The other piece of it is from an ecological consideration. We live in a world of so much stuff. There are constantly things being produced for no real reason, and then we just throw them away. I’m haunted by the images of where things go when we as a consumer class are done consuming them.

I’ve started by taking a few days to go through the museum and take notes on what I’ve seen. I’m trying to hone in on what it is that interests me and has these connections to my practice. I’ve had the chance to meet with people in different collections and spend a long time with the dioramas on the fourth floor – it's so meticulously put together and took so much craft to be made. They are so engulfing.

It took me back to being a kid and having those epiphanies in science museums in front of the same kind of installations.

How did you get your beginning as an artist?

My artistic impulse was always led by storytelling. I grew up in a family where telling stories was a way to exchange gratitude, connection, and entertainment. And, you know, growing up in a place where winter is six months out of the year, there’s only so much you can do besides sit around and eat and talk.

I remember being a little kid, about five years old, making books, making stories, and drawing pictures to match them. When I was about eight or nine my mom signed me up for Juxtaposition Arts, an after school program specifically for the kids in my neighborhood. They would teach us college level skills, like still life drawing and portraiture. My teachers were working artists at the time. They were the first to say to me you can do this. You can make a living off engaging in your creative passions. They were the ones that convinced me art is a viable and worthy undertaking.

Could you describe your creative process?

It can be a very mystical process sometimes. I will gather materials from Goodwill or the junkyard that speak to me or find their way to me. I’ll bring them to my studio and sometimes they’ll just sit for a month. I’ll just greet them every day when I come in and say goodbye when I leave.

Then I’ll start to have an idea of how to alter this thing, but I am always fighting the demon of being too precious with an object. I often don’t want to change it too much because I can’t just find the exact same thing once again. I’ve been picking up a lot of chairs recently because they are in abundance.

I don’t predetermine the outcome of my work. I have an idea first, or a moment or line of words will come to me. Then I will try to work iteratively. I’ll add something, stop, and look and think about what the piece might want or need next. Then I do that thing, re-gauge and keep going.

I have no idea what anybody will receive (from the sculpture). I think, however, the object is a testament to the questions that I've asked. I hope it's taken tenderly.

Why were you drawn to the Peabody Art Fellowship?

I am interested in the nexus of arts and sciences. Also in my practice, I love public art. I think all art should be accessible to the public. Art should be in the world with us in some way or another, at all times, and by any means. In my mind, art is a civic service and a duty in the same way that science is. They help us to think critically about the world. I think we need that.

The Peabody is free for people to go into, and I think that's an important thing for New Haven. It’s beautiful that people come to the museum expecting to be educated and changed. It’s a unique opportunity to have my art where one wouldn’t necessarily expect it.