My first artist residency and the creative process

The creative process is difficult to pin down and work into a routine for me. I spend most of my time floundering around, unsure of what to do or where to begin.

Working on my BFA thesis show this semester was difficult. It took me half the semester to hone in on what I wanted to do for my thesis, I started out way too broad and general. I was trying to tackle subject matter and imagery that didn't relate to my own experience as closely as I needed to hold my attention. I ended up lighting on the subject of habits and waste, though the imagery still isn't solid. I have managed a couple of prints I wouldn't mind showing in the Spring BFA exhibition.

I'm supposed to be making artwork over winter break, and I've arranged an artist residency in order to focus. My teachers told me to work on my drawing over the break. I've been doing that, but I also feel like I should be coming up with at least one print during my residency that I can put in the show. My problem is I can't think of any ideas. The one thing I was working on is a bust; badly composed, boring, not engaging in any way and not worth my time to carve and print.

I've been struggling with feeling like I'm doing enough during this residency, but I have to keep reminding myself that this is my very first and I will spend a lot of it figuring out how to focus and schedule myself. My creative process is still developing, probably will always be developing, and I need to allow myself space and time for that.

Water falling

A meeting halfway between the worlds: A dream from so many many years ago, about a person who no longer/never really existed

It's halfway between day and night. I'm in another world, one that didn't exist until I slowly woke up. Rain softly falls on the tin roof overhead, contributing to the surrealness of being awake, and making the pre-dawn light an even softer blue-gray than normal.
There is something about rain that just makes me feel as if it was lightly storming in my bones, my soul turned to white-gray. The storm creates a sense of tranquility; a sense of calm and peace. I feel completely comfortable, alive, and in the moment, even as I remember a particular dream from the night before.

Rain had been pattering softly on the roof in that one dream, too.
******
There was almost a bitter-sweet sort of anticipation in the air, a sort of lemonade atmosphere. Someone was coming, someone who had to travel far and long to see me, someone who I had never met before in the physical world.
I had been hurriedly cleaning the room that I share with my three sisters when I heard someone softly coming up the stairs.
It was him, the one who I seem to know so dearly, but have never seen in my life. We hug, long and happy, the moment savored.
There is a certain amount of awkwardness after the hug, neither of us really know how to behave, we are both cautious, overcome by the strangeness of the moment,  though we don't feel shy or uncomfortable. I suggest a walk, even though rain is still pouring outside.
*****
Most of what I remember about the dream are colors and feelings, black hair, tan skin, gray light. Happiness, and a sort of sadness. Perhaps that is my outside awareness, the part of me that knows it was only a dream, the part of me that so much wishes it could happen in real life.

I once wrote of a chance meeting, a meeting with a person I would never see again, I wrote "The heart hopes on, as it always will". That line perfectly described how I felt then, and how I felt as I woke up in the peaceful gray of a rainy dawn. It wasn't real, but, oh, it was beautiful.

Clarity of Sight

Clarity of sight, the practice of seeing and understanding people and things as they are, comes from the ability to push aside, though not entirely forget one's own desire. 

Desire blocks understanding, as does fear, fear being a result of desire; a side effect to desire, for if one desires, one also does not desire. There is an outcome or thing one does not want.

One must be okay with bad as well as good to gain clarity of sight. Even better, lose the concept of bad and good, for we desire good. Instead of choosing between the good and the bad, choose the things that truly resonate with your heart and transform or discard the things that don't.

Clarity of sight is often the key to true understanding, and the path that leads to true understanding frees you from fear. 

Clarity of sight is essential in our interactions within the world and our relationships with other people, as well as enables us to view ourselves and our feelings and actions, with kindness and understanding.

One understands the interconnectedness of everything, and hopefully, one can follow every thread back its beginning and see every thread as many things in one whole. 

Gamblers

My parents became addicted
to gambling with their combined genes,
They threw the spiraling dice
nine successful times.

Their question:
Which out of the infinite possibilities
would be born next?
Out of their personalities and family histories;
their bodies and appearances.
-His eyes and her seriousness-
-His depression and her faith-
-Her eyes and his childhood hair.

Gambling with a pair, a handful of double helices;
Throw the infinite dice together, hold
them in your coupled hands,

And throw.

Age

Here's the thing, I really like this photo even if no one else does. (ie all of the literary journals and art places I've submitted it to.)
I just think it's a cool little accidental study on the juxtaposition and meeting of young and old.

Print Final

I gained some revealing insight into how people perceive my silly art in my printmaking class final crit.
     My classmates told me my work is understated, approachable, always contains unexpected details.
     I'm not really the sort of person to want the limelight, I like being invisible, a background character. My favorite place to be is behind the scenes. I ask myself all the time why I chose to study art. My work isn't flashy, and sometimes contains a dry sense of humor. I'm terrified of becoming self-obsessed and absorbed. This, I feel is a deep problem in the upper-levels of the art world, and to some small extent, in the college art world. I imagine this translates to my work being understated, humble (maybe, although even writing that world makes me feel self-obsessed), honest and sincere.
     One of my classmates said my art equally reaches children and adults, without talking down to one or patronizing the other. My work for that particular class focused on the problem of plastic grocery bags, but everyone felt that I was being informative and encouraged without guilt tripping.
     In one of my designs, I included a little plastic bag hooked onto a edge, as if it had blown by and gotten caught like you will occasionally see in trees. Many of my classmates didn't notice this detail until our final critique. In my perspective, this also translates to the dumb little mistakes I always make in my work and which I've become resigned to. Missing a couple pieces in a background pattern here, forgetting to color that little bit there. It's infuriating and I know for a fact that I have missed on opportunities because of this personal defect, but I try to compare it to the tradition of making intentional mistakes in weaving.
     This critique was one of the most insightful I've had in a very long time, and I felt bad I didn't participate more when we were talking about all of my classmates work. It was definitely nice to know my artwork seems to represent what I want it to.

Language

On the question of language:

Language is but a facsimile for what is really there, a construct to reveal a form underneath, and because of this, the construct sometimes takes on its own shape, not always in harmony with the truth it is meant to reveal. So the question is this: can a word, though distorted in meaning, still reveal something fundamental with its placement? 

Hecho de nada

Hola hermanita
Tengo un problema
tengo una complicación.

tengo miedo

y no sé por qué
ni de donde.

La frase en mi mente
todas las noches,
oscuras y ruidosas

tengo miedo

de nada.

Mis lados
están hechos de
agujeros
raspados
con el cayendo
de plata y seguridad.

ah, pues, no
importa.

tengo miedo
de nada.

Echo de menos

My stomach is revving 

Rearing to go

Wheels wound up 

Shoulders snailshelled tight 

Coiled to spring 

To your marks 

Get ready 

Go 

home. 

Twelve

I gave the earth my 

Heart under the lilac arch 

On a summers day