It seems natural to begin this dialog by discussing the title of this project and how it fits in with its overall objective.

The simple/literal story is as follows: Over a period of 12 years I had amassed a catalog of 10 journals that I had religiously kept since the age of 13. At the age of 25 I threw them all away.

The metaphorical implications of this act: When I was maintaining these pages, I was convinced that I would benefit somehow by every once in a while returning to them. As my future self I would have the ability to see where things went wrong or how I would have done things differently. This tangible change of mind meant something to me, it felt like progress.

While in the midst of a rut, it occurred to me that I had nothing to gain from reliving the past in this manner. Memories are one thing, but conjuring up lurid details of mostly drama and meandering thoughts, while wallowing in the satisfaction that I am not my previous self, is entirely another. In an effort to find something new, it made sense to no longer give myself the temptation of reliving the past through these hand written pages. I haven’t been able to keep a journal since.

How it all comes together: I am a painter by profession. My work focuses largely on memory - specifically conjuring up a sense of place and the act of archiving. Since graduating my from my terminal degree I have found myself hungry for dialog, and more importantly needing to articulate my thoughts and artistic motivations in a setting where there is some accountability. What I have come to understand since purging my journals from my life is that the act of writing - collecting, sorting, thinking, and drawing - is far more beneficial to my growth as an artist and as an individual than maintaining a daily catalog.

I would like to think of this space as a beginning. Since all beginnings come from some form of destruction, my former journals have come to symbolize the antithesis of the thought process I hope to accomplish here. I envision this as place where the interior becomes extroverted, a place where personal becomes community, a place where we can reap the benefits of archiving our thoughts, but not cling to them. I wish this to be place where thoughts exist and become useful.

I have many ideas of what to do with this collective and I have aspirations of what it will eventually provide for me and others. But unlike my diaries, which were returned to in order to see if things turned out as predicted/wished, I long for this project to take on a life of its own and become valuable in ways that, at this early stage, I cannot anticipate.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 4:25 am and is filed under ideas, process. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.