1
Maxwell Schwan
English Composition
Descriptive and reflective essay
Never Mind
One gleaming coarse silver eye peers out from a cave life hollow of its face and
thus begins this creature’s process of captivating you. The overlapping of dark oily tires
gives the face a withdrawn and reclusive expression surrounding the glistening eye. All
around the creature’s watermelon size head lay a sharp mane of thistles, this mane was
made from stripes exhaustingly cut from many tires to look much like and ink covered
point of a fountain pen. This once reclusive creature now has eminent danger and pain
about it. Its body surrounding the head and mane is made up of slimy folds and twisting
tendrils to made the shape of a gnarled and ghastly crumped robe. Just like ribbon candy
dipped in tar, the folds of the tire wrap its way around the creature’s body. Out of the
body two arms protrude, one is stunted and wilted the other is a long grotesquery, a long
root sickened with rot. These appendages though the way that the tires are intertwined
and tangling into two unified but gruesome arms much resembles two twisted limbs of
tentacles reaching out to ensnare its prey. The stunted arm is held close to the chest of the
beast while the longer on reaches out hungrily. While the creature as a whole no more
larger than a office desk, it commands a presence in your mind with a gripping fervor.
Being a completely black piece the absence of color stands out against the white
background, but as onyx of a chunk of volcanic glass reflects lights, the nature of the tires
has a slight shimmer of light reflecting of it catching the eye even more. This creature is
filled with scars and open cracks over all its body from previous engagements where it
was beaten back and defeated. This creature is called Temptation.
2
Chakai Booker handcrafted the art piece “Never Mind”. She designed this piece
to embody the imamate substance called temptation. In believe that she did this extremely
effectively. You can see Booker’s artistic process in the creation of “Never Mind”
through the folds and the cuts of the tires. Tires being an extremely durable and resistant
medium leads to the struggle of overcoming and conquering them are symbolic to the
struggle of temptation. The brittle cracks and long gashed in the tires show the pain and
the anger put into this work. This sticky monster once attached will not be easy to dispose
off and destroyed. I believe that the silver eye is like the light on an anglerfish, represent
the appealing factor that draws us into temptation. The wait of temptation is defiantly
apparent in this work, it hangs around the whole piece like a storm cloud. I believe that as
a whole that the “Never Mind” is a longing and eager complaint. With the strong class
and contradiction between nature and human consumption of it represented by tires. I
believe that Booker used the tires to make a piece that shows the horridness nature of the
temptation to exploit environment. This sticky and contagious monster is not something
out of our darkest nightmares rather it is something made out of our sole pursuit of
advancement of ourselves and the exploitation of others.