The deconstruction of beauty

By Karyn Spory, Mt. Pleasant News

Silence had washed over the room as Ted Lyddon Hatten removed his shoes and walked past the roped off barrier, carefully avoiding the roots he had created just over a month ago.

He took one last look at his art instillation, ?Will beauty save the world this time?? before he bent down and began to deconstruct the exhibit, wiping the three materials ? coffee grounds, myrrh and liquefaction ? into little piles. It was the final act of his work, which had been on display in the Memorial P.E.O. Art Gallery on the Iowa Wesleyan University campus since Jan. 20.

Just 20 minutes before, Hatten had been speaking to the crowd in the university?s chapel. Hatten, an artist, theologian and professor at Drake University was this year?s Manning Lecture in Religion speaker.

Instead of a traditional lecture in religion, Hatten spoke more about the beauty within the world and how art ? beauty ? can extend beyond words.

?Think about a time when beauty has left you without words,? he said, asking the audience to conjure up this image. ?Hold on to that memory in time when beauty held you still.?

For Hatten, it was on a recent trip to New Zealand. He told a brief story of how he was on the beach and was so in awe of the sunset he had to take a picture. But it was once he snapped the photo that the true beauty of the moment left him beyond words. He saw the dozens of other people on the beach, all taking photos of the same sunset.

?Every day, all around the planet, people are doing this. You have an experience like this? where you will be in a place with incredible beauty and everyone stops and everyone notices,? he said.

The audience would soon have their own similar experience as they viewed Hatten?s work through its final stages.

?You know at the very beginning, when you create an instillation, that it is going to go away. In fact, you are going to take it away,? said David File during a brief discussion following the lecture. ?How do you justify, interpret or internalize that knowledge??

In his response, Hatten said, for him, the instillation is unfinished until the community sees it, but even before the public sees his work, he knows it will not last forever, ?the end is in the beginning.?

?When I make a piece, I know its deconstruction is going to take place,? he said. ?The fact that it came to an end didn?t make me sad any more than a musician when the last note disappears in a concert hall. They?re not necessarily sad that the note came to an end. The music had a beginning and an ending buried in it.?

For Jan Garza, of Ft. Madison, the entire experience has been moving. Garza said she never really understood art. It was always a foreign concept to her. That was until her daughter introduced her to Hatten and his work.

?I read once where art explains its own self, but sometimes I don?t see it,? she said.

Garza said Hatten has a way of speaking about his art that allows her to actually see it.

?I?m a word person, my beauty is through words, and because you share your art through your words, then I can see it. I can enjoy it,? she said.