wondering, wandering, wondering...

yesterday, i had the same conversation with three different people about how to define a "body of work". what is the criteria?

materials? concept? aesthetic? serial? a combo?

one friend offered up the word Time as part of her personal approach to grouping work together and calling it a Body- that the work in the collection is representative of a particular time in her life... a time (or era, moment) defined by particular concerns... not necessarily whether or not the work LOOKS a certain way. another friend offered up the phrase "themed accumulation" which i really like. and again, nothing really about the LOOK of individual pieces but rather the concerns of the work. there is freedom in that. i like it. but it also starts complicating my already complicated issue.

my practice is, by nature, full of multiplicity. though i speak to the same concerns in all my work, the voice changes. multiple personality disorder, for sure. and though i joke about that a lot here on the blog, when sitting down to the task of putting things in order, i get lost pretty easily at first.

right now, as i continue to wind my way through all my portfolios, taking pictures and seeing what i've got, i find recurrent themes or modes or LOOKS that guide me in putting all this work in to Bodies... but i also see how these Bodies are really body Parts... and how they relate to one another and how i got from point A to point B, shifting through voices, making the issues deeper, more complex and multi-faceted. like Sharon Olds' book "Satan Says".

i see how i do not stand firmly in either camp: critical vs. emotional. my work is a blend of the two. i care about both spheres equally. i think both are necessary. the union is necessary.

and so... how to group things? since the aesthetic i operate in is so strong - black and white - i have to be very careful when putting things in a line. they all LOOK good together because they are unified by palette. but just "looking good together" isn't enough. we black and white artists run the risk of looking "slick" if we go off looks alone. and, in art-speak, SLICK is not a good thing to be called. it means the work is superficial.

and so grouping work based on looks alone isn't going to work for me.

also, i very rarely stumble in to a "series". when i try to force a series, the inspiration for it dries up pretty fast because i start feeling like i'm just making the same painting over and over and over again and not really investigating anything. i'm much more interested in artists like Banks Violette who create collections of work rooted in concept, who trust the intelligence of the audience, who understand that the audience is entirely capable of seeing (or even making) the lines that connect one piece to another... that the audience can see the corollary between a painting and a drawings and a quilt and a found object thrown on the floor. it doesn't need to be ALL drawing or ALL painting or ALL sculpture. the audience does not need everything spelled out to them that way. to me, it's so interesting to see artists working across disciplines, embracing different modes and means of creating an image or object... giving substance to an idea by whatever means suits it best.

when i was first at CCA, i said that to a teacher and the teacher said "if you attempt to be a jack-of-all-trades, you'll be master of none". at the time, that statement was definitely warranted. definitely. i was all over the place in a very uninteresting way at that point. the work looked amateurish and floundering. and that's a stage everyone spends a pretty big hunk of time in. also, i didn't have any real conception (at that point) of what art is good for, how it can be harnessed, what its Past has been, and what it is up against now (thank you critical theory!). also, i really had no clue what I wanted to use art for... what I cared about and wanted to speak about and wanted to wrestle with. now, i do. and 2 years later, that same teacher totally encouraged me to let a painting be a painting and a drawing be a drawing and YES go ahead and nail a rope to the wall and a doll head and a rope of my own hair and see how these things function together. see how these seemingly "disparate" items speak to one another, see what dialogue arises. and it is so compelling (i think) to work that way. i love seeing other artists take that approach within their practice. it creates multiple layers of meaning. so much meaning that everyone, no matter what camp they belong to, can get something out of the work. it's an inclusive way to work.

the audience trusts the artist. artists who reciprocate that trust, artists like Banks Violette and Kiki Smith and Jordan Kantor, create spaces for experiences that are amazing and deep and i admire that so so much.

and so, as i go through this huge documenting phase, i continue to make new work too, getting inspired over and over again by having artwork spread all over the house. and i see that the lines connecting one piece to another are totally there, that the audience will see them too, and that my job is to not overload the issue... to not appear slick, the keep it sincere and meaningful and to really wrestle with the ideas i investigate by not compromising the work to any degree. especially not by sticking to the easy connections: all drawings on one side of the room, all paintings on the other. it feels false for me.

but tell me- how do YOU define a body of work? what criteria do you use? what assumptions do you discard? and how big must a collection be? could a collection consist of only 4 pieces? can it be small? do writers allow themselves the luxury of saying "these 4 poems or pieces are all it takes. finished!" visual artists do that all the time. if it is cohesive, it's cohesive. does size really matter in that regard? "narrative" will occur no matter what when you put two pieces of art side by side, whether or not they are similar.

so how do you group things? how do you define a body of work? what strictures do you impose? what is your governing logic? tell me. i am eager to learn.