Neil Tetkowski and the Common Ground World Project

Published in German in Neue Keramik Magazine, January/February 2003

Article by Linda Kuehne

Ceramic sculptor Neil Tetkowski’s Installation 188, a conceptual sculpture that is part of his United Nations Common Ground World Project, was recently exhibited at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York. Five years ago Tetkowski submitted a quixotic proposal to the United Nations called the Common Ground World Project. Developed as a response to the crisis of a worsening environment worldwide and the loss of our sense of community, his idea was to use the power of art to promote a sense of shared responsibility for the environment and respect for the global ecosystem. A "world clay body" from all nations was used to create a large plate-like disk titled World Mandala. Tetkowski felt the mandala, a universal symbol employed by many cultures to represent regeneration, healing and reconciliation, was aptly suited to clay with its many references to the earth, the circle, the wheel. To accompany the mandala, Tetkowski created Installation 188. In Installation 188, figure-like bottles with corked tops containing the actual clay collected from the individual countries for the project, sandblasted with a number corresponding to the appropriate country, are lined up regiment-style, on a long, narrow aluminum table designed by the artist. When one walks into the rectangular room where Installation 188 is the only work in the gallery, the mood created by the piece is one of quiet contemplation. The world in a bottle—we’re all the same and yet there is a broad variety of color to the clay of individual countries. We are all in our separate worlds but we can cooperate when we need to, want to, to become one world. The parts that manifest the whole, the world has come to us in Tetkowski’s sculpture to become a better, more hopeful place.

Tetkowski consciously planned every aspect of the project, turning the Common Ground World Project into a conceptual artwork by emphasizing the process of the creation as well as the sculpture. It was a seemingly simple idea that was, in fact, very complicated to realize. First, the proposal had to be accepted by the United Nations, no small feat, when one is dealing with such a complex organization. Then funding had to be obtained to support the effort to collect, test and mix the clay from 188 countries into a workable clay body—a monumental task in itself involving thousands of people from many socio-economic strata—private, corporate and government. In April of 2000, with Phase I completed, the clay part of the sculpture was made over a three-week period in the main lobby at the United Nations in New York. While visitors and tourists watched, representatives from each country placed a fired sample of their country’s clay into the soft world clay of the mandala. Phase II: the artist continued the work of fundraising to complete the fabrication of the aluminum base on which to place the clay mandala. In April 2002 the project was finally completed with an exhibition of the World Mandala at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

Unlike some contemporary art today, this project speaks immediately and directly to the heart and mind of the viewer/participant, without having to be interpreted by others as to its meaning. When one looks at the mandala made of clay from every country in the world, one thinks of the people who contributed to the project, the enormous effort it took as well as the aesthetic beauty of the piece. Two and one half meters in diameter, referencing the functional, the plate is transmogrified into sculpture by virtue of its size; transformed into conceptual art by virtue of its ideas. Not only does Common Ground World Project represent the confluence of aesthetic, socio-political and technological concerns of the artist but also of the contributors worldwide who enthusiastically participated. Developed on the premise that art may have social significance as well as a social function, the project connects us to a genuine truth that proves that art serves as one of the best connections between the mind, the spirit and the physical world.

The uniqueness of Common Ground World Project, then, is that both the mandala and collaboration between artist and participants serve as metaphor for Tetkowski’s idea of interconnectedness. All aspects of this project were formal strategies designed by the artist to serve the philosophical aim of the work. It is about the relation between the artist, his work, the spectator and the process of the transformation of art from object to symbol. It includes the skill of the individual artist, the participation of people, as well as Tetkowski’s ideas about life, the world and society to become a larger-than-life symbol of world unity.

The history of Tetkowski’s life as an artist has had an interesting progression. As one who reveled in practicing the craft of clay as a potter early in his career, he found himself increasingly drawn to sculpture and performance art as a way to better to express his ideas about our society, its relation to the world and nature. In the early 1980’s he began giving workshops where he not only demonstrated various techniques but also began collaborating with the audience and others to make his art. With the audience not only observing but also participating in the process, he felt there was an increased awareness of concepts and issues he was trying to communicate. Accordingly, Tetkowski’s work in recent years has been more process and idea-driven than object oriented. It has taken place in public arenas along with the more traditional art-world venues like galleries and museums. As his work has evolved, it has often combined performance-based activities with the making of a sculpture, media events, exhibitions and installations--using multiple means of expression to reach his audience and convey his ideas. Tetkowski feels that when a work of art engages a broad variety of people, it broadens the base of support for the idea and empowers the people involved in its creation.

For the first time ever, all nations of the world have participated on a completely equal basis to create a work of art. A seemingly impossible goal was achieved not by a governmental body or corporation or wealthy individual, but by a clay artist whose desire to create a powerful symbol of global unity included inspiring thousands of people around the world to join him in the process of making the sculpture. Common Ground World Project personifies the idea that art reflects not only the ideas of an individual artist, but of the society in which it appears. With the performative aspect of this work and the conceptual ideas behind it, it successfully bridges the divide between the artist and the world to explore and challenge the boundaries between art and culture; artist and non-artist. Through collaborative art, the personal can become political, and change through community involvement, is possible. Tetkowski’s is an art of engagement.

Contact Linda Kuehne:  e-mail

Linda Kuehne is a ceramic artist and writer who lives and works in Pound Ridge, New York. She can be reached at lindakuehne@optonline.net
Neil Tetkowski has an undergraduate degree from Alfred University and MFA from Illinois State. He taught ceramics at Denison University until 1983. During the following four years he was an assistant professor of art at the State University College at Buffalo, New York, his hometown. He teaches at Kean University in Union, New Jersey and lives in New York City.

   © Linda Kuehne 2003

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