the investigation continues

oh me, oh my... i'm such a fucking nutcase sometimes. ha!

(i have to laugh at myself.)

i woke up feeling remarkably lost and somewhat defeated today. it's wearing off now that i've ranted and raved inside my notebook and discovered that the root of the issue is that i am simply afraid. simultaneous fear of failure and success. they are probably actually the same thing. and not knowing what to do with myself, which direction to go in. i'm talking about the business end of things. career concerns and all that. which, honestly, i'm sick of thinking about because that's something artists have little control over anyway. all anyone can do is know what they value. that's it. and then work hard based on that set of ethics. nothing more, nothing less. the world spins and things come as they may. the conciliation there is that Quality attracts attention. as does devotion, staying power, refusing to give up. and that is, across the board, true for everyone. and that's something i've only recently learned to how to actively trust.

this season of self-discovery has been hard and strange. and it remains hard and strange. it isn't a process that ever really "ends". like art, it is a life's work. and as i proceed, i see how completely necessary it is to being/becoming an artist that one undertake self-investigation. and pairing that with going through the portfolios and taking pictures and really looking at what i've got, seeing the progression that has taken place over the passed two years, seeing how much growth has been had during that short amount of time, and realizing how naive i can definitely be, is exhausting. but it's also pretty encouraging too.

but it's also fairly daunting. anxiety producing. we live in a culture that demands we KNOW what we want. in the 6th grade you're expected to have a career chosen already. that's ridiculous. and almost everyone i know is on Plan D at this point. i'm one of the lucky few that figured out what i truly wanted to do with my life pretty early. but that doesn't make things any easier necessarily.

certain questions have been put in my head recently. questions that i'm simultaneous thankful for and a bit pissed off about. but that's just fear talking. fear of taking risks, fear of the unknown, all that stuff everyone deals with to one degree or another. i'm still too green to KNOW what kind of career i'm going to have. that seems like something you can only see when you look back over the course of a life. there's no way to know that at the beginning. and i am still very much at the beginning.

and so i am wrestling with wants and needs and dreams. and i look at my drawings and paintings and poems and see a definite lineage emerging- the influence of particular artists and writers whose work has hit me so hard, left such a deep impact on my heart and mind that their whispers stand strong in my ear. i'm attempting to listen to them... draw courage and poise from them. persistence is a necessity.

i got some really good advice from an artist friend of mine who told me to not only look at The Work of artists i admire, but also their resumes so i can see how they got from point A to point B. it's helpful and overwhelming at the same time. so many residencies and programs and grants. this is the Competition end of things and i feel anxious about leaping in to that pool. i want to leap in... i guess i just don't know how to. and there's no other way to learn how than by doing it and to accept the fact that there are no promises and no safety-net.

the drawing in the post below and the work pinned over on the side-bar to the right is work that i feel very connected to. committed to. love.

and so that's the road i must go, the road i must trust, the road i must protect. it is the work in this grand array of modes and styles that needs a wall other than my own.

and so the question becomes one of place. and how to catch those eyes.

or if i even want to catch them right now...



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the thing i like most about this blog is that i can throw all the work out in to the world in the form of a JPEG, show my process and meanderings, talk about my concerns and fears and attractions. it's a notebook. but the actual items are still here with me. not everything is "show worthy". and this morning i realized that that's a great thing: i have them. at least some of them. and i can look at them, hold them in my hands, spend time looking at the real thing. they function as maps. documents of the questions i ask. they help me define my values as an artist and as a human being.

i also went back to the beginning of this blog and looked at the work i was making at that time. the change is glaring. the work has undergone a huge metamorphosis- a deepening. this is something i can be proud of. i can look at these images and see progress, see the struggle, see the moments of "failure", and then see that i didn't give up as a result. proof of life. proof of love. proof of seriousness even if/when the work wasn't "serious".

i've been thinking a lot about that e.e. cummings quote: it takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

(side note and digression: i don't write in all lower case as a nod to him or bell hooks. it started in high school when i wanted to be a writer and wanted capital letters to emphasize importance rather than the beginning of a sentence. i didn't even know who those two people were at the time and then felt very smart when i finally stumbled across them. ha!)

and that quote has become extremely important to me this year. extremely.

i think it's important to have good manners and be friendly (to me personally as a mode of interacting with others) but i don't want to make polite or friendly art. i don't want to make Shock Art either but i want to be able to do it if the work requires that of me. i want to be a person who is courageous and passionate and brave enough to make mistakes and risk failure. i want to be dedicated to art. and diligent. and faithful. i want to make smart art, concerned art, passionate art... art that has a function and can offer a site for discussion and hope. even if it is angry hope. that site is what makes Art a necessity.

check out Claes Oldenburg's lovely manifesto on this.

ahhhhhhh. fucking bootstraps. sigh.

but this stage is important.

i know it.

i won't deprive myself of it.

onward. upward. trembling... but moving moving moving.