Broom School
04/19/20
by Korey Martin
When sweeping a room you’ll notice many things finding their way into a pile. The broom makes no differentiation between the things it guides to the dustpan—natural, unnatural, synthetic, organic, edible grape or plastic grape. These distinctions have no relevance there. In the dustpan, you can find an assortment of things with any number of reasons for being there. The sweep can be quite telling and the broom is a wonderful mediator. It can show all the ways things have made sense of a place and the things they have used to do so—the way things have belonged. Funnily, flower arrangements and brooms alike are concerned with putting things in a place, moving many things from many places to one. For that reason, what is a flower arrangement if not a mess with a place to be?
As a flower arrangement practice, Broom School arranges in very much the same manner as the broom. Commonly used contrasts such as natural-unnatural are not made when selecting material. Instead, the Broom School focuses on the characteristics of a material, its behavior, the sense it makes in the company of another and a specificity it imparts. This inevitably subjective approach is also partly an attempt to emphasize things as they are. A Broom School arrangement is not only made without the use of contrasts such as “synthetic” or “organic” but also tries to present materials in such a way that a viewer notices the material, not synthetic or organic things. A Broom Schooler tries to make an arrangement in which we see balloon-string and weeds, not natural and unnatural things, nor litter and nature. An arrangement attempts to emphasize things as they are or could be, what they are doing or might.
The Broom School arrangement does not attempt to make the familiar strange, but instead tries to emphasize the familiar. To do so, when seeking harmony in an arrangement, a Broom Schooler will arrange without primary or subordinate parts by using materials in such a way that allows them to be clearly themselves (obvious) all at once. Broom School understands this simultaneous presence of obvious things as dissonance (no “key” to get in, but rather many distinct notes and rhythms). For things to feel obvious, they must be recognizable. As such, the arrangement relies upon the clarity of its materials. Alterations of any sort should avoid detracting from a material’s clarity. How could you come to be surprised by a tree branch and tin can if you couldn’t say for sure you’re seeing either?
The Broom School arrangement is an image, which can be further intensified through dimensional rearrangement. By using technique, such as drawing or print, as material in addition to things like plants, rocks, and rubber bands, the image becomes more obvious. As a medium placed over another, these are considered “dubbed” rearrangements.
Broom School considers flower arranging as the process of rearranging what is already in the midst of being arranged. A Broom School arrangement is meant to emphasize what already exists and the things that are already happening. Ultimately rearranging is not about revealing the objective reality of things, nor is it about learning taxonomical or common names. The Broom School arrangement is a form of image-making--it references life that it exists because of. It is about coming to know the meaning that is already there and what that may mean to a Broom Schooler. It is about sharing specificity—a specificity that will always continue to be much more expansive than we may have had the good sense to notice before. An arrangement should be made only as an example of being and doing, that of the rearranger and the rearranged alike. A Broom School arrangement does not make sense. It recognizes the way things already do. It’s about learning to acknowledge the way things come to be in a place and what they do there, including the Broom Schooler. As made up of many places, the Broom School arrangement tries to indicate belonging as a mutual, omnipresent place that is noticed, not possessed.
Rearranging, just as sweeping, can only gesture towards life, and Broom School is only that—a gesture.
As someone who puts things in places, Korey Martin is a drawer and Broom School flower arranger interested in the sense that things are already making in the places that they are making it.
Alex Chitty
Chicago based Artist
Born = Miami, Fl
Teaches = SAIC
Shows with = PATRON Gallery
Does = so many things
Korey Martin worked on this piece with Quarantine Times’ Sunday editor Stella Brown. Each week, Stella selects a Chicagoan to share a commissioned creative response to the pandemic.
