Here I am

Best Minds

A Day Without Sound , charcoal on paper

Last Sunday was BEST MINDS at Sara's apartment (you can read about it on her blog: here)

and I made this piece- a drawing?!

It felt really good and organic to draw again. I have been having so much difficulty communicating lately. All day at work I am counting seconds and making tally marks and prompting non-verbal children to form approximations of words. By the time I get home I am completely incapable of conversation. And it has been so difficult to even think about creating, let alone MAKING SOMETHING. Best Minds was the perfect push that I needed. I really love that Sara got so many good people together to talk and share and listen.

Video of performance

From March 2010. With Sara Santarsiero.

With the arrival of a new bed, a new idea has arrived as well.

Every day, I will open Webster's New World Dictionary For Young Readers and select word at random. Then Grant and I will separately record a response to this word. About once a month we will share these entries with each other and post the more wonderful ones to a blog dedicated to the project.

Keep your eyes peeled.

An update, what a concept.

So school ended and I started working. Progress has been gradual and snail-like in pace.

Here are some things that I am planning out for the near future:

-website; something other than blogspot. Something to encourage me to update it. Something.

-collaboration on sound and performance with Sean Foley. He is one of my best friends. He is in school currently for audio. We will be (hopefully) creating a separate website for things that are happening. These things may include, but are not limited to, recordings, documented performance, live performance, and hopefully the beginning of a collective of people for future projects.

... I thought there was more. I will update as needed, but mostly am enjoying working for the summer, spending much needed quality time with good people, and focusing on getting through my student teaching this upcoming fall.

If anyone is interested in collaborating or motivating each other, it is much needed. Please present yourself into my life and make things happen.

A few words on my painting hiatus...

Also, some words on my current work and where I am going with it.

My relationship with canvas and paper is a rocky one. I am touching the charcoal and crushing it into the fibers of the paper, and I can always feel it as though it has the same effect on me. I build up paint like skin, layer after layer, faulty coats that won't hide what is underneath. Yet I always step back and think "what a great study, what a wonderful search" and I drop everything to just let it breathe for a while. It takes too long, because it takes exactly as long as it needs to. Why am I not given more time?

I am not trying to be clever by building a body of work that is mostly invisible. Like a second self existing inside of myself and the only way you know it's really there is that I have shown you its fingerprints; I have shown you the instep of its right foot; I have shown you the way in which it isn't afraid to tell you how it is feeling. Its blood is my blood, its work is my priority.

If I took paint to canvas, you would see something else. You would see a self that is not sure of itself. I put this mark here because I know that it belongs here, but inside (deep inside) I know that it doesn't. And I know that years of moving it a quarter inch to the left will only give me mild satisfaction in finding its rightful place, but by then the entire scene will have changed. I would rather carry out this relationship while you are not looking, it is going to take me too long to explain to you what my mother's face looked like when she realized that she was going to have to go it alone. I would rather show you what her face looked like when she cut her hair in a crowded gallery and let go of her "baby", in her own handwriting, eyes tearing up because she is starting to understand.

Every time I put a mark on a piece of paper, I think about an experience. By the end, the paper is a mess, my right hand has a smear of shimmering graphite all down the length of it, but I can't see the experience anymore. The experience becomes about the violence of those marks and the dirtiness of my hand. Why can't I just show you the experience? I was here, I did this, I wanted to show you. I wanted you to experience it. You can't crawl into the paper and feel what I felt. You can look at it and pretend, but you can't feel it how I felt it. I was there, I wanted to build something for you that you could hide inside of forever. I wanted to make this work for you, whoever you are. Because sometimes I just feel so. alone. And I wanted to know if you felt that way too.

I can't paint you something beautiful, because things that are beautiful get overlooked. Things that are beautiful are just looked at because they don't need to go deeper. "I like to look at that, it is pleasing, it is pretty", but what if I want to give you something deeper than that? For you to have to get closer, to participate... to afterwards question yourself only to find yourself beautiful. To find yourself deeper. To find yourself.

I feel like I am getting there. I want to dissect my ego and find out why it wants to swell. I want to give everyone I know a chance to let me inside of their head and for me to fully appreciate them for it. I want everyone to be able to let go of what is hurting them, the way that I can't let go of what is hurting me. Show me that it is as beautiful as I promised myself that it would be, because with paint I falter. With ink and graphite, I make these messes that look like what is on the inside but I would still have to tell you. I don't want to tell you anymore. Tell me what you think it is about.

Take what you want from this, it is for you.

We did it!

Last night was the opening for THIS NEVER HAPPENED...

My set up. It was nice to have my own little corner where people could really spend some time with the work...

Especially because I was asking a lot of my viewer. Write what you're letting go of, cut a lock of hair and place it in a bottle.

And then there was Jordan. He contacted me just before the opening to ask if I would shave his head. I agreed, and asked him to keep writing what he was letting go of until all of his hair was gone.

This is the aftermath- the hair that isn't in the bottles belongs to him as well as the tags hanging off of the shelf.

I will update with more pictures later. I am so proud of my show group, everyone did an amazing job in making our show what it was!

Take what you will from this, it's for you.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT! 6-8 pm.

Oh, you know..

just setting up my senior show.

open your eyes

(open your heart)

Tattoo for "Give Me Your Heart".

All tattoos will be on display next week in "This Never Happened" (301 Gallery). Opening reception Wednesday, May 5th 6pm-8pm.

Floored.

Tattoo number three for "Give Me Your Heart". So amazing.

THERE WILL BE NO QUESTION

I AM MOST DEFINITELY UP TO SOMETHING.

THIS NEVER HAPPENED

Wednesday, May 5th in the 301 Gallery from 6-8pm.

A (cropped) sneak preview from the series Fake Performances; Things That Never Happened.

"Great Grandmother; In The Ground"

Letting go...

I am very excited by the participation in the "Lesson In Letting Go"* piece that is currently in my studio.

For anyone who has yet to participate, I encourage you to stop by at some point and partake, should you feel inclined.

Here is how it works:

Go to my studio, sit in the chair in front of the mirror, and think about the following question:

"WHAT ARE YOU LETTING GO OF?"

When you have found something appropriate to let go of, write it on one of the tags. Then, cut a lock of hair and place it in one of the bottles and tie the tag around the neck of the bottle.

Another thing that I would like to see happen would be for you to bring tiny relics of what you are letting go of and leave them behind.

For instance, it could be a letter to someone, a letter to yourself, a tiny object that symbolizes your act of letting go, something that reminds you of or is linked to what you are letting go of, etc.

(Let me know if that needs to be clarified.)

Thanks everyone, I love you all for sharing with me how beautiful you all are.

*"A Lesson In Letting Go" will be on display in the upcoming THIS NEVER HAPPENED show at the 301 Gallery on Cabot St. The opening is Wednesday, May 5th from 6-8 pm.

GIVE ME YOUR HEART

The second tattoo for Give Me Your Heart! Thank you to Lindsay, who put my words down her entire side!

"Give Me Your Heart"

I want to thank Betty, an absolutely lovely stranger, for getting my words permanently etched into her skin.

Original writing:

"There is something in me that is aching to be delicate,

it weeps while the rest of me cackles"

(This is for a project entitled "Give Me Your Heart" which is a part of my work for Seminar.)

Bravely (and cautiously) began to put "From The Hands of My Enemies" project into motion today. I have butterflies in a bad way.

Jenny, Chelsea, Shane, and I built this fort out of sticks in the woods at Magnolia.

Being alive is really really great.

Seminar reviews survived: 3 of 4.

The art of letting go...

Roughly six months ago, I stepped into the ocean to complete a fairly common action- cutting my hair. However, this time was different. This time had a purpose. I wasn't just letting go of my hair... I was letting go of something that had been haunting me. An experience that I wanted to separate myself from.

As a continuation of this piece, I am opening up to others and asking them a simple question:

"What would you like to let go of?"

I ask them to write the answer down on a tag, and to cut a lock of hair (as a symbol that this time, they will truly be letting go).

The hair goes into a bottle with the tag tied around the neck.

At the close of this piece, I will be putting all of the bottles into the ocean. The final action; the act of letting go.

Things that no longer exist...

I took down this entire collection of things while rearranging tonight. I like all of the white space in here. It reminds me that I definitely could/should be working harder to fill it.
and I didn't realize that I had documentation of this piece, but I ripped it up while inebriated. hhhhh

Macbook photos of studio? Why not.

these are new things... really high quality photographs of new things... really sarcastic remarks about new things.

A performance.

before:

and after:

Just a preview of a documented performance that took place on Tuesday, March 2nd at Montserrat.  

Take a look at Sara's blog as well, she makes many lovely things:

http://ssantarsiero.blogspot.com/ 

tiny, tiny collages (2.5" x 3.5") of cats n' owls with a bit of graphite.

the bottom one is my favorite. it speaks to my heart.

Experimenting with some a la poupee.

I told myself that I wouldn't leave my studio until I made something today...

I made something, what exactly that is I'm not sure. But I'm covered in brown paint and matte medium? Pictures soon.

proof of a print that I'm working on. I'm sleepy. Drypoint etchinggg. I should be in Thorpe's class right now but I am hiding in the printlab scannin' and bloggin'.

Another lesson in evaporation?