- Artist or Maker
- David Ireland
United States, active California, 1930-2009 - Title
- Mixed-Media Piece with Photograph, Dumbball, and Tether on Green Shelf
- Date Made
- 1983–1989
- Medium
- Concrete, framed photograph, wire, screw, enamel, wood, and wax
- Dimensions
- 41 × 16 × 15 1/2 in. (104.14 × 40.64 × 39.37 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2018.302.1-.2
- Collecting Area
- Modern Art
- Curatorial Notes
Mixed Media Piece with Photograph, Dumbball, and Tether on Green Shelf incorporates one of what David Ireland called Dumbballs, hand-sized spheres of concrete that the artist began making around 1983. Seemingly elementary and mindless, made by tossing a lump of wet concrete back and forth between hands for some fifteen hours—at which point it set and dried into a natural rounded form—these balls nonetheless reflect issues central to Ireland’s philosophy about art making. They embody his desire to deintellectualize the art object as well as his interest in process and the phenomenon of making. Only carefully repeated gestures and a determination not to rush the process would result in a perfectly-formed Dumbball. Mixed Media Piece also incorporates an architectural/design element (the shelf, painted a pale decorator green) along with a framed photograph. The shelf’s wall mount and the "tether" on the photograph literally connect the sculpture to its architectural surroundings and by extension to Ireland’s most famous work, his home at 500 Capp Street in San Francisco, which he turned into a conceptual/architectural environment beginning in the 1970s.