An Interview with UCP Resident, Will Meier
Will Meier, 2013 KCAI Painting alum, is a first year UCP Resident Writer.
Have you made any new discoveries within your work since becoming a Charlotte Street Resident?
Throughout my creative development there has always been a competition (often productively, sometimes not) between writing and visual art. Writing, however, has always been subservient to the other, or at least of secondary concern. I deliberately applied for a writing residency because I wanted to see what it would be like to subvert that relationship and bring the writing mindset to the forefront of my creative output. I write mostly art criticism and I tend to lean toward a treatment of that process that is similar to the concerns I think about in my studio, and so the leap between the two halves of my practice is not as wide, as if I were a fiction author making color field paintings or something. But writing is still a very different way of thinking about ideas, where things need to be more fleshed out and cohesive and concretized as opposed to exploratory.
That being said, my efforts so far in my UCP studio have largely been dedicated to a piece I just completed concerning my thoughts on James Turrell's artwork, which I saw much of this summer and before. The piece is weird. Many people have told me how much they like it, and many people do not like it at all. This is because the style of writing is something very unfamiliar for me, part of an effort I am making currently to distance myself from my standard hyper-academic treatment of ideas that is gratifying to execute, but boring to read even for me. This new writing is much closer to the sporadic, ADD, tangential, and layered way that I think in real-time, and thus much closer to the way that I make visual work. It blends poetic, philosophic, and somewhat humorous 'ground-level' lenses into a multi-tiered set of vignettes that ultimately (I hope) reads less like a this-is-what-is-right, thesis-based assertion, and more of an exploratory (though refined) gesture at a more complex composite of feelings and beliefs. It may also just read as scattered and confusing, as some have remarked, but I'm not too concerned with those criticisms at the current moment because of how fresh this new piece is. It's a stepping stone towards a new way of thinking about writing that is more invigoratingly organic than formulaic in approach.
How is the community of artists and others in association with UCP influencing you/ your work?
Kate Hackman (and of course Pat, though I've had less interaction with him) are super forthcoming and try to be as helpful as possible to all the residents. Considering that this is the first year that writers have ever been included in the UCP program, I am a bit of a guinea pig that nobody knows quite how to perform tests on yet, I think. It is much easier to relate to a group context when your work is visual and can be experienced collectively, as opposed to necessarily being experienced in the privacy of individual minds like writing (esp. headier stuff). It's a different time-based relationship between work and viewer.
I have recently just gotten assigned a mentor through the program–Tracy Abeln, art critic for The Pitch–and I am excited to see what this more focused 1-on-1 relationship will yield. As of yet, the space I have is AMAZING, but it has been a complicated challenge I haven't figured out yet, trying to understand how I can benefit from the group. Of the other three writers in the program, two are older playwrights and very interesting people but without much in common with myself. The other, Kent Szlauderbach, co-curator of Front Space gallery and a more experimental fiction writer who comes from a film/art theory/crit background, is someone I look forward to collaborating with over the course of the year.
How is this residency allowing for opportunities within the local or national art community?
Kansas City's art scene is really in need of heightened critical dialogue that isn't just hugs and kisses and stuffed animals for everyone because they made something. This is a very concurred-upon belief across the board with anyone I've talked to in recent years. Plug Projects' 8.5x11 publication is the most proactive example of a gesture toward that sort of change. By allowing myself the opportunity to focus primarily on writing criticism, with the stigma of UCP attached to my name, I hope to get my work out there more to add another (hopefully more raw than could be achieved at a mainstream publication) critical agenda to the conversation. A big goal right now is to hone in on the specific audience I want to cater to and to try to publish some more work accordingly. Once I have made steps in that direction then I think that I will feel like the residency is 'allowing for opportunities,' but it's important to keep in mind that UCP is really a self-driven experience, much like school. Charlotte Street is there to aid you in whatever way they can, but it is honestly up to you to cut your own path, regardless of residency or no.
What do you feel are the benefits and downsides to being a Charlotte Street resident?
Benefits include a ton of space, affirmation, stigma of CS branding, resume points, networking connections, being one step deeper into the KC art community, accountability and expectations for output, internet!, um... probably other stuff...
Downsides I'm not allowed to talk about. No, I'm just kidding, but there really aren't any that I can think of, except that sometimes when I am wanting to work more primarily on visual art I start feeling guilty because I have this obligation to put on my writer costume for this year. And obligation is never conducive to true creative processes (maybe?), but this is really a marginal concern because I am used to producing under pressure and I have good juggling skills and work ethic so I just do my thing and try to remember my responsibility as a resident.
Could you elaborate on the transition from student to now independent professional studio
I don't think I am a professional, but to speak to post-graduateness–it's weird and hard and it sucks if you worry about it more than you have to. Having a job that gives you enough money to live on and doesn't suck your soul out of the back of your head was the biggest challenge for a long time. It was super stressful and depressing to have an irregular schedule and mind-numbingly shitty work as a pizza waiter all summer, but that paid the bills to go to Houston, LA, and NY for research for my Turrell essay. Lately I have been doing art-handling for various museums and the KC Collector's Fund whenever gigs come up, and otherwise working full-time at a custom woodworking shop in the West Bottoms (conveniently right down the street from the Town Pavilion residency bldg) and so making money and being happy at work has been extremely helpful for R E A L L I F E. But I mean, really, you have to do everything yourself now. Including motivating yourself and staying busy and educated with fresh material that is stimulating. You have to be SO rigorous about whatever kinds of sacrifices (socialization/intoxication/relaxation/hobbies/etc) are necessary to be able to support yourself and also be creatively productive. Everyone tells you this all through school, but until you really live it, it's just words.
All that about the STRUGGLE out of the way, I would say that lately I have been having a ton of fun getting in touch with many pursuits that got dead-ended due to the fast pace of school. I have been revisiting a lot of old ideas and gaining new perspectives on their linkages, and all-in-all getting to know myself as an artist again, probably better than anytime since before college. The independence of truly self-driven artmaking and absence of constantly, obsessively mining into every idea for assessment of its worth has proven more and more to be extremely helpful to my creative mindset and mental state alike.
I loved school intensely, worked extremely hard at it, excelled in most areas, and I have few regrets about those years. I definitely, though, lost a part of myself from being such an obsessive workaholic and so deeply programmed into an academic mindset. It has been really great to remember the part of me that isn't a nerdy jerk, and to try to reconcile both mindsets into A Whole New Me. It's all a balancing act, way more than in school, even.
It's all a double-edged sword, though, too, because at times I really miss how nourishing KCAI was for new thought-processes, particularly the teachers, most of whom I rarely even talk to anymore aside from Jonah Criswell, who I've been keeping up with somewhat regularly.
Also, a side note: you need a space. If you don't get on this RIGHT AWAY after graduating, then kiss your art career goodbye. When you are in school and that is given to you then you take it for granted, but without a space specifically for making (I spent the first half of summer setting up a visual studio in my garage, and so I have one for artwork there and one for writing through UCP) then it is probably just not going to happen. Maybe that's just me, but I don't think it is. Space becomes more sacred once it's not a given. And especially when fewer people you know even talk about art at all, and it is almost never that you have a super stimulating group convo, then you really need to have a space that is dedicated to the art ritual, however you define that for yourself.
Is there anything you would like others interested in this residency to know?
Everyone should apply because it is definitely one of the best immediate post-grad opportunities available in KC.
