something strange starting

photo series coming soon?

Residency

a long overdue post about NC.

 here I am in the lovely brown waters of the swimmin' hole, soaking up all that earthy inspiration.

 and here I am spraying some drawings outside of the house. What a beautiful building.

                                               some of the things I was working on.

from the top of a small mountain near where I was staying. the top is just covered in these long grasses with no trees around, so you can see the surrounding mountains from 360 degrees.

 

                    my work space and some of the photo transfers I started.

It is strange that while I was staying there I felt like I wasn't doing nearly enough. I spent the week enjoying the scenery and lovely things that only an area like that has to offer, making work, and beating myself up about not making more work. But it was only a week. So I am overall satisfied with my first residency experience.

swimmin' hole

I am in North Carolina.

Today is the 4th of July. I went to the swimmin' hole (a 5 foot area that is deep enough to jump off some rocks into, in a river) with the locals. I am making work and enjoying all of the little things around me, like the lunch Camille brought me in the middle of the day for no reason, or the sound of cars driving down dirt roads. I will miss being able to swim in the river after working, or to sit on the rocks with homemade wine in a mason jar. simple things.
I will do a big work post at the end of my time here, but I really want to focus for a moment on how inspiring just being here is.
I finished reading no one belongs here more than you. It was perfect, I recommend that you read it. And if you don't like it, please tell someone else "I really hated this book that Amy recommended" and then maybe they will ask you about it, and then they will think "I will just have to read it for myself to have any real opinion about it" and then they will read it and so on... that way at least we are all reading.
Halfway point. Pushing myself to write more, to try new things. While Felicia is in Asheville today, I told her to pick me up some supplies. That has been the most difficult thing, the nearest supplies are an hour away. I'm making the best of it though. This feels like a letter home from camp.

I am having such a great time, I hope all of my friends apply for residencies. You're going to love it.

keeping my hand in it

Most nights these past weeks have been spent in the gallery filming with Ethan. Quick 5 minute drawing that is a result of down time and the time it takes for him to change the film in the camera. It feels good to be making things. Also came up with some ideas for next week while I am at Azule. I will try to post often as I always enjoyed using this as a project and "in progress" blog as opposed to finalized ideas and works. HAVING A GOOD TIME, HAVING A GOOD TIME.

Time lost.

So much time passes between updates. Sometimes I wonder what I am doing at all. All of the things that I have to do everyday feel so unimportant sometimes compared to what I need to do to be okay. My job, my apartment, my entire life full of appointments and bill payments... I thought I was working toward getting more time to create. Instead I find myself stretched too thin, any creative energy I have is sucked out of me on problem solving at work. I come home uninspired and mad at myself. Lately I have been taking pictures. I am constantly doing this. It has been almost a year now where I document my life almost obsessively. And it isn't anything important, it just is. When I feel like I'm losing time and I can't slow down and take in my environment, I find myself documenting it. You are here. You moved this over here. Now you are doing this. It is something to be doing. Expect real updates in the future. I am trying, really I am.

After an intermission...

A Portrait of Who I think I am Based on Who I Know I'm Not

2011, gesso, graphite & pastel on paper

This has been my week off from work. While I am quickly adjusting to full time work life, it has been difficult to actually make anything. Any time I work on something I end up scrapping it, that is if I end up working on anything at all. And then today I actually had time to pick up paper and some drawing materials. This is just a detail (the full drawing is 30 x 44) and it is off to an okay start. Cruisin' for a bruisin' I'd say.

That is all for now.

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"