I’ve been reading this book club blog called “The Next Chapter” since the beginning of June.  They have been reading “Wreck This journal” by Keri Smith.  In this book, people are given instructions on each page on different ways to Wreck the Journal.  I’ve been enjoying looking at the progress of peoples journals.  Some at this stage in the game (they are on week 7) have a really glorious patina and in their destruction have become works of art on their own.  Since, I have a thing for journals, I purchased this book with the intention of playing along.

My work/career path right now is SO SERIOUS.  It takes a lot to give myself permission to just screw around in the studio.  So not only does it feel strange to be so awful to this book (some of the things they suggest you do is smear pages with dirt, chew on the pages, etc.), but it also feels strange to share things that I’ve done to this book, because my efforts aren’t… serious.

I’ve moved into my new studio this past week.  This is my first day off from work, teaching, or moving since the beginning of June.  I’ve been keeping a mental sketchbook of what I want to work on this past month and a half.  After a month an a half of not physically working on my art, I have a huge list.

When I walked into my studio this morning, ready to get to work, I of course, felt totally overwhelmed.  I noticed this book on my desk and decided to crack this book open today and started dabbling through the pages.

I worked on the book for about an hour.  I found myself feeling limited, which surprised me.  This book tells you what to do on each page, and I kept finding myself thinking, “But I want to do this instead” or “I’ll start with this ‘instruction’ but then I’ll embellish it”.

While working I was reminded of a practice that I used to do in my studio:  The first thing I would do after walking into my studio, would be to pull out a piece of paper and just mindlessly watercolor for a half hour.  By the time I felt done with it, I would have a new idea, or a struggle with a current project would seem more clear.  Sometime this process would help me remember what I was working on the day before, or would help me make a decision to get some new work started.  The act of getting my hand moving made the transition from home to work easier.

The thing I like about what is happening with this book is I’m not creating art pieces.  When I’m working on watercolors, I still have a dialog in my head about whether or not what I’m working on will be any good.  I’m still judging.  With this book I found myself trying to solve problems with the tasks presented to me, and looking for new avenues, with but had no intention of making an “art piece”.

Here is some of the pages I wanted to share today:

I started with this page, where it asks you to drip something on the page and then fold the book in half and make a print.  I poured coffee, india ink and speed ball ink on the page and got this:

Since this book is not designed to hold that much ink, it bled through about 4-5 pages.  Actually the pattern on the back looks pretty cool:

I then decided to cut through multiple pages:

And then I took all the scraps and scotch taped them to the front page of the book, which actually gave me an idea for a book project I’ve been wanting to work on:

I’ll keep working on this throughout the week/weekend.  Maybe I’ll be able to take some of the explorations in this book an apply it to my regular studio practice.

“Sometimes the reflection is far more impressive than the thing being reflected.” -from Limits of Control by Jim Jarmusch

There is a common device I use in my installations: I place a found object (beat-up furniture, scrap wood, old typewriter) in a space and draw attention to its shadow or reflection. I usually make the shadow out of something that looks like it could just be a product of light, having no substance, but upon further inspection it is made from solid material. This is often thick black house paint, collaged materials painted black, or my favorite, black pleather contact paper. The contact paper is especially meaningful to me because it is not only representing a representation of an object (the shadow cast by a chair for example), but being pleather, it is also by nature a representation of leather. How meta! (I joke, but really.)

I don’t know if my obsession with shadows comes out my art school training, which for the past 20 years has placed great emphasis on the importance of negative space, or if it comes from my obsession with film noir, German expressionism, and live theater? Probably a little of both. Negative space is a formal issue that makes the artist consider the space around a subject as equally important as the subject itself. To me the negative space or cast shadow often becomes the subject. Dramatic film and theater are stylistic choices that bring an element of danger, despair, humor, and self-consciousness to its viewers. Perhaps daily goings on are just less interesting to me than what is reflected when I shine a light on them.

Everyday I walk down Pine Street past the bars, past the dog park. I cross over the roaring highway and the first thing I see is a beacon of this very topic: It is the side of the historic Paramount Theatre looking like it was suddenly separated from it’s family, a strange gray cement wall with fire escape and evenly placed windows from top to bottom. Below each window is a perfectly made organic soot mark which I assume is caused by the rain, but looks like it was theatrically and intentionally placed there. It looks like a model for a building rather than a building itself. There’s something artificial about it and now that I’ve had this thought I can’t look at it without thinking it’s part of a very elaborate Seattle stage set, welcoming me into work each morning. Though the architecture is lovely and old, I’m more interested in what it has become for me in my imagination. The building will never just be itself; it will always resemble itself and serve as a symbol for my daily morning walks.

I always search for the seams and the dark underbelly of people and things. I’m moved by contrast and conflict. In spite of the fact that I will never be able to get away from formal issues like negative space, I can emphasize cast shadows and their distorted abstract qualities. This way I will be able to satisfy my obsession with drawing and painting issues that have been so rigorously drilled into me while communicating something emotional, psychological, and humorous.

I can recite almost all the poetry that I wrote when I was a teenager. Those poems became my mantras and those mantras made life bearable. Since then I have written almost no poetry, or none that was as memorable as those verses. When I missed my sister I recited: We waded in crying, my sister holding my hand, Mother we hate the water, But she didn’t understand, when I was insecure about becoming a woman: See the pretty lady with the pretty lady pout, walking to the door, through the door, shaking in her doubt. I remember little else from those years but my collection of words.

The other day, a friend asked me how I dealt with sadness and my answers were: walk up a big hill, watch television, exercise. Surprisingly, my answer did not involve any practice that fueled that sadness into creation. As an adult I rarely rely on creative coping techniques and instead rely on practices that remove myself mentally from the situation. I didn’t realize this about myself until just now, typing out those words. I’m reminded of what Alison wrote in her previous post about quitting, “Won’t you miss out on discovering what it is you will say? (Writers often don’t know, until it’s on the page)”. When I don’t write I do miss what I have to say. How did I forget this and also, how was I so wise eleven years ago? My initial title for this post was “teenagers that don’t scare the shit out of me,” where I would list all of the blogs I read that are written by teenagers and how they make me more optimistic for the future. As much as I hated my teenage years, I’m realizing its redeeming qualities by reading what teenagers now have to say. It seems I have a lot to re-learn from myself of eleven ago.

A few:

http://childhoodflames.blogspot.com/

http://www.lauramarling.com/

http://www.lookbook.nu (many of these kids have blogs)

My easel and palette are in the “laundry room” of my new house. I’ve been working on a painting of the long hallway that leads to the front door of our shot gun Victorian.

My partner shares my “studio” space, which would have been the parlor, or dining room, before our home was divided into a duplex. I have a desk on one side of the room, facing the window. His easel and palette are on the opposite wall of the room, the wall that shares the door to the hallway. We have a pocket door that separates the “studio” from the “living room”. It is open most of the time, allowing us to converse while we work on our computers.

For some reason I am unable to think of any element of our new house without putting quotation marks around it. In fact, I kind of think of it as our new “house”. Our actual home feels like it exists elsewhere. As such, my studio doesn’t really exist here either. I’ve been thinking about the pluses and minuses of this.

In graduate school I had a studio. It had tall ceilings, ventilation, peers to interact with. It was place I could go to, close the door, and artistically brood. It was also a place I could leave, work and all.

After grad school, I rented a garage space, which had a handful of issues, but I liked it anyway. I could go there make work and go home. Again, leaving the work behind. For some reason I put this feature in the category of “plus”.

None of the spaces I work in right now are dedicated. Right now all rooms that I occupy in my life, bedroom, laundry room, studio, coffee shop, and classroom, have become my studio. When you think of it, this is kind of ideal. Sure, I don’t have the ability to close the door and artistically brood in the same way, but I now am on the path to integrating my work with my life.

Since my work is no longer isolated, it’s become more active and has steered towards being about my observations, as opposed to about a concept. I know this a direct result of me trying to understand a new city, but I know this new working environment is a contributing factor.

It’s unrealistic to think I can sustain this eagerness to understand my new home/city after it becomes old hat. My wish is to remember what it feels like to have this primal need to understand where I am, at the forefront of my mind. If I can engage and apply this feeling to my work in the future, it will help me remember why making things is instrumental to my experience.

Over pints, a writer friend of mine confessed his plans to apply to law schools. He said, “I’ve realized writing is the least important thing I do” and went on to remind me that everyone is reading blogs (ahem) instead of books anyway. I wanted to scream “You traitor!” but instead I sank back in the booth, sipped my beer, and muttered “Really?”

And there are more things I wanted to say but didn’t:

Won’t you miss out on discovering what it is you will say? (Writers often don’t know, until it’s on the page.)

Won’t the rest of us miss out on discovering what you will say?

Certainly you weren’t in it for the money, right?

Don’t you feel a part of you withers with each month you don’t make time to jot down a few lines?

Aren’t you afraid this is soul suicide?

I didn’t ask because these are the questions I was busily asking myself. In this precarious position of trying to make a life of art, it is easy to adopt others’ cynicism as our own, and it can be tempting to give up. We wonder, is this all just self-serving? Would I be better off with a desk job and a therapist? Wouldn’t I eliminate a whole file in my cabinet of things to worry about if I were no longer fretting over Time to Create? How dare I be so selfish as to spend time “creating”! People are starving. People are killing each other.

If I dwell on the starving and killing long enough, I’m liable to end it all here and now. So what can I do? How can I help? How can I write and help? I won’t admit any great wisdom on the subject. What I do know is that art has and does change perspectives, inform policy, expose the underexposed, and help people to feel less alone. These are not nothing. Also, art keeps those of us with the compulsion to make it from withering. Surely we are better citizens when all our synapses are firing with vibrant energy and when our bodies feel nurtured and intact.

Another reason I didn’t bombard my friend with the list of questions about quitting is because, in the moment, I was ashamed to think of myself as actively pursuing a writing career. He had unintentionally shot me down. It was a reminder to me that whenever we express thoughts of trying something else, it’s important to have a little sensitivity to those still trying to make a go of art.

And what of my friend? Should I have tried to convince him to “stay”? It’s a little silly, these lines we draw. One doesn’t stick with or leave the art world like a club. The idea of a departure has much more to do with identity than with the reality (which is that, for a lot of us, sometimes we spend lots of time making art and sometimes we do other things—make money, be with family, whatever). We come and we go; there are no official dues. In hindsight, I think I should have reminded my friend that his fiction has made me cry. I should have told him to do what makes sense now. I should have said that the departure need not be forever.