This class was such a culmination of beginnings for me. So many things coalesced, things I had been thinking about for a long time or that I had divided from my “art practice.” Or things I had wanted to be a part of my art practice but felt moved away from, discouraged from or told (or felt told) were cliche.
I came in with the contrives of responsibility: of communication, of justification, of story told. frustration of “what do you WANT,” to the seeming viewer, to myself. To those I saw as being in the role of supporting me but the action of not.
That responsibility of communication was in the first crit piece, Neither Do I, that I had promised in my Deans International Travel Grant that I would make work about my trip to Japan. But it was the whirl of fabrication that was that piece, despite the comments of the uneven table, the direct construction, the fact that I made the pillows and the cups and ordered the immersion boiler is what I still feel about that piece. And it was a bridge, between the work I made previous. The fear of nonexistence, of unjustified, so that I feel I have to hide a Concept that’s explainable, verbal, that becomes so stuck in my teeth that it overwhelmed its looser freer truer possibilities.
So many things have happened in my life during the span of time between the first piece and the second piece, and the second and the third, the things I think and how I flow, internally.
The second crit piece, Sweet Solutions, I was so nervous about. Making a small object that was presented as itself and only itself. Who even makes just “sculptures” anymore. But this was a part of me starting to look at my other blogs as well, my image dump blog, my anxiety response blog, my music, pools I let collect different aspects of myself, that I mostly do for myself, internal, private.
In notes for that piece Max said the negative space of the object was huge, so much bigger than the object itself. I felt I understood that of myself.
I was invited to be an artist in a friend’s show at Valet. Another whirl of fabrication and heaviness of my conversation with you Corin about my energy, aggressive, heavy, judgmental, probably unintentional. how much space my energies take up. Do I mean to, I mean to. I go to the show, set up on the ground, am on the schedule as being “ongoing” but really that means I’m in between the scheduled performances, which means everyone’s floating back down from each performance and not there to be present for mine, that I’m not present to be there for mine, that I’m not really ready and I don’t have any words and Sam Morgan says “what are you doing Kotone?” gently, curiously, and I say “I don’t know” and pack up, tell Silu that I can’t perform tonight. She’s understanding, doesn’t give me a hard time, but messages me a few days later asking why and what she as an organizer could do differently in the future. Sometimes things aren’t for the time they’re in yet. The objects were there and it was when they were meant to be but not to perform in that time, not yet.
I’m trying to become more sensitive to the way things want to go. Pressing my hand gently to see which way it gives.
I keep talking to my friends about romantic friendships. What do I actually feel. I’ve been joking for so long about being heartbreakingly in love with all of my friends.
I’m trying to feel what I actually feel, to be truer in my descriptions of how my body feels. It’s more than about sincerity.
I have Molly’s final crit. Just dancing alone in front of a room full of people. I do see when people come in and leave, and some of who’s there. I do have thoughts and some thoughts of narrative while I’m moving. Mostly I’m jst moving. I’m sore, already stiff and tired from saying goodbye to one of my closest most wrought friends, dancing the night before. (Is it truer to be dancing as goodbye in a roomful of friends? Am I trying to recreate?)
I’d been going to therapy. The therapist would let me speak fast and jump from one recent anecdote to another and then pull forth words I kept using. Told me I had compassion as well as feelings of betrayal of not feeling understood, not feeling reciprocated in efforts to be understood.
I tried to look more at my friend I’m estranged from, estranged myself from. Tried to see how confusing the situation as a whole was, how sudden. Tried to let go. It had been mostly rage in different viscosities, different temperatures. Tried to have some compassion.
This estrangement was where my focus on growing of my politics of deliberateness and investment stemmed from. And my focus on feeling what I really am feeling, really am wanting. I do the presentation with Isabel about Love, about action and deliberateness. There’s some spite there too. to be contrary, to have desire, to be desireable. this sentence is displaced.
Final crit piece. I tell my mother on the phone that I’m making an installation but every time I go into the studio I keep getting gentle no’s from the universe, things just being a little too difficult, and started to panic that I was listening but getting anxious to receive the alternative. Three days before the show I go home between classes and nap with/on my housemate’s cat and remember the Valet piece. Go to studio and talk to a friend about my complicated feelings about my friend who left, the one I danced goodbye to. Realize shelves. The piece that didn’t exist for the Valet show suddenly exists as it feels meant to. The fabricated pieces already exist, have been waiting.
That first performance of water to stone, stone to water felt blissful, true. The second felt like falling off my bike. Not in failure, but the tight inevitability of slow falling and hitting the ground. gravel in scraped knees. There was grit between my teeth. It’s fine, another feeling, but I think it’s its next piece, clay and water.
a chronology of the last two years:
steam. sky and horizon. water and stone. so probably next is clay.
feeling in my body. my body as a surface that feels. my body as a soul that feels (not has feelings, but feels, currents). air currents. pressing (starting a collab w a friend on body movement and how air currents are made by hot and cold pressing)
Somehow this semester was so much different than semesters before, felt truer and more focused.
turnnoffyourmind
andulkaphoto
tangentwithtanner
blakekathryn
baratheonpilled
kianamaiart
germansingergirl
theartofmadeline
