Neutrality

Happy New Year! Sorry I’ve had such a long hiatus from writing. I would love to blame it on something like the end of the semester, the holidays, vacation, etc., but I don’t really believe it was any of those. I believe my silence is the result of and overwhelming feeling of neutrality I’ve had for a while. Its not quite a depression, but more like a type of boring contentment. I’ve had no inspiration to make work in my studio or apply for shows and its really becoming quite frustrating.

I’ve started some of what I need to do to turn this around.

1. Get back on track with meditation. I tend to loose my momentum during the holidays and while traveling, something I’m embarrassed to admit, but I am getting back on track with my at home practice, and I am signed up for the next evening class, Contentment in Everyday Life at The Shambhala Center.
2. Exercise. After our ski vacation I am really inspired to exercise outside nearly everyday even when it is cold, snowy and icy here in Chicago. I’ve been cross-country skiing once and have been urban hiking around town in my new yaktrax.
3. Reading. I’ve started to dive into my new books starting with “The Critique Handbook, A Sourcebook and Survival Guide” Which will help me lead more rigorous critiques during this next semester.
4. Going to my studio. This area still needs improvement. I just need to go there, even when there is seemingly nothing to do.
5. Remain open. It seems like I’ve been short circuiting every idea. “Oh that won’t work.” or “Thats dumb.” Almost all my work is the result of making one thing and discovering something else unexpected. Without the making part, the discover will never come.
6. Go to see art. This is also on the to-do list. I want to go to some openings and make use of my new Art Institute membership this week.
7. Be Gentle. I am also reading “Start Where You Are,” and I need to remind myself of Pema’s gentle approach constantly. Beating myself up for perceived failures will not get me anywhere. Lately, even though I’ve been accomplishing things from my to do list, I only feel like I’ve done nothing.
8. Sketchbook! Work in it. I am planning to cut out everything I found inspiring from last year’s Sculpture Magazines for my sketchbook, and review previous notes and ideas.
9. Help someone. This is something I’ve been aware of since undergrad. Somehow helping someone else really gets things going. I don’t have any art friends I can help at the moment, but I will be helping my neighbor design some storage solutions for her condo.

Hope your new year is of to a more inspired start.

Walking

Today turned out great. I walked to my studio in what was unexpectedly a hot and humid afternoon for a studio visit with the director of minidutch. Lucia Fabio is really awesome, and I am looking forward to working with her for this future show there. I will be pursuing a new method of working and using up all the old supplies in my studio. Old meets new, its gonna be great, and great fun.

After we ate at The Grind, I went back to my studio to continue to work on the self portrait for the show at Northeastern, and I think its coming along great.

I am starting to believe that I may actually get my idea across. I want this piece to be about self examination. But also I want it to be about the imperfect. Some how I want the viewer to appreciate that creating something like a portrait bust comes from destroying concepts and really seeing. That even in the making process, there is a constant ebb and flow building up and tearing down: correcting. I love making this thing. I love having my mind so completely engrossed and yet so open and free. Some how I am really excited. I love that this very old fashioned discipline, the discipline I abandoned in undergrad is now really an exciting punch line to this project. I am so excited that I think I might be using a traditional craft conceptually. I just need the right title.After I worked to this point, I quit and walked home through the cool and rainy evening.

Transformation

Since the New Year, I have been making many positive changes to my life. But I think the source of all this change actually came not from my free will, but because I had to stop drinking to take Accutane. Its not as though drinking were some kind of issue, but when it was absent I noticed how much a filler it can be, much like the other things I've phased out

Reductions:

• Not Drinking
  
• Quiting TV
• phasing out myspace
• checking email less

Additions:

• Revamping my studio
• Working on exciting ideas for my new show
• reading more
• going to see more art, going to museums
• collaborating with friends
  
• Volunteering and taking classes at Shambhala
  
• Re-committing to my daily meditation practice and trying to work with lojong
  
• Keeping this blog and my accutane blog
  

Without the time filler activities, I've been able to add in so many more positive activities. One down side is that the Accutane makes me feel like a lethargic arthritic old lady, so I haven't been exercising at all, and it is driving me crazy. I am looking forward to May, when my skin transformation is complete, the accutane is over, and I can maintain my new life style, but with energy.

Redundantly American in Free Februrary

We went to see the Hopper exhibit Saturday at The Art Institute, during free February.

The Hopper exhibit was predictably lovely. His work reproduces very well, so there is not much more revealed in viewing the paintings in person. The canvas are not unexpectedly big, but the colors can be quite vibrant. I really prefer his work focusing on urban and prairie scenes which include much visible and psychological space. There were some very cool early etchings, including two depicting the first "El" car. which I've been in at The Chicago History Museum. I find his work incredibly American, and it is not secret, that I am an idealist American, and I love being an American. His work captures American scenes and psychological space. After seeing his body of work, I felt like I knew him. I really feel like he was always right there with his subjects. That he wasn't an estranged visitor to the scenes and characters, but that he too dined with locals late at night, or sat lonely in a hotel room, or chatted with bathers on the east coast. I felt that he was right there with capturing what was current, because he was doing it. In the 50's towards the end of his career, he began painting western-route 60-esque travel and motel scenes. Just as America was embracing the car and newly paved and connecting roads. He seems redundantly American- being as he appears in photos, "Joe American", he seems to live the American life of the time, and then he cinematicly captures it in paint.

The last painting was the best and truly a culmination of his life's pursuit.


Saturday during free February was not the best time to see art, but is was a refreshingly casual and boisterous day at the museum, where everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. And the museum was packed with a sea of visitors, really the way it always should be.

Don't miss "Girls On the Verge" in the basement. Its delightfully uncomfortable, sensitive, humorous and shocking.

The Art of Creativity

I've been working diligently towards my next show, happening in June at Northeastern Illinois University Gallery. I named the show "White Moment". It will feature new and "old" work integrated to create a new installation and new understanding of the "old" work. I am really excited about it. It’s almost as if I'm beginning to use my own previous works as found objects, and combine them together to recontextualize each other into new work. I feel liberated.

I googled "White Moment" before I sent it off to the curator as the title of my show, and the article "The Art of Creativity" from Psychology Today came up. I printed the whole article and taped it into my sketch book. There are so many interesting points articulated there that I have been trying to articulate myself about the direction of my work. I will be mining that article for new work and for my show statement.

I want to write a clear essay/statement for my show "White Moment” which articulates and explains my relationship to and my investigation into the relationship of art viewing, art making, and meditation. An article in the text “Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art” touches on the relationship between the three. I don’t mean to suggest that they are interdependent, but they are also not independent. The ideal moment of making, viewing and meditation is that of “no mind”.

"If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few."
-SUZUKI-ROSHI

The Caucasians

Sometimes I think about carpets. Michael and I currently use a 30yr old cow hide in our living room, which is still really cool, but as you can imagine, balding.

I've admired over time a graphic folky rug style and pattern, but finally discovered its region and makers today.

The Caucasians:


I love the brilliant colors, graphic animal and plant symbols and the use of white to emphasize the negative space.



The colors of this boarder are great. I love the variation of dye lots.



I really love this irregular pattern.




The shapes in middle remind me of quail.

Wasted Time Wakes Up

The new year is off to a great start.

I am so busy.

After reading "The Evolving Self", I was really inspired to implement many of its ideas into my life, basically that a busy, intellectually challenged person is a happy person. Here are some of the things that I am doing to stay not just busy, but engaged in things that I are inspiring, challenging, and that I like to do.

- I am teaching three classes at two different schools. I am teaching two sections of Sculpture 1 at Loyola again this semester, and I am up grading some of the tools in the shop there too. I am teaching for the first time, General Drawing at Wright College, one of The Chicago City Colleges. Teaching at a new school has many obstacles of getting oriented, and teaching a new class has many curriculum needs. I have to build the whole class in a way that makes sense to me so that it will make sense to the students. I am reading "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain", as a refresher. I also, for the first time, I ordered a free desk copy of a book recommended by a colleague. As a teacher I can request relevant texts for free from the publisher to review as optional text to offer in my courses. The book I ordered is "Drawing, A Contemporary Approach."

So I am technically teaching full time. Its been a long time now since I worked full time. And balancing all the different needs of different classes and institutions offers its own challenges.

- I bought a new sketchbook. 8x11", hardcover black. I love the bigger size. I had been using the trendy moleskin model, but it really doesn't work for me. I need a bigger book to paste things into. This alone has radically awakened some sleeping creativity.

- I started building the walls at my studio. I took this long weekend to get the project underway, and thanks to Michael's help I am more then 1/2 way there! These walls are going to help me so much, return to the installation practice that is really the foundation of my work and thinking.

- I am reading a really inspiring book, "Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art"

- I am watching almost no TV, and no network TV.

- Michael and I are following our New Years resolution to cook new recipes together at least once a week.

- I am meditating everyday, and meeting with my meditation instructor regularly. Meditation is not only good for me in terms of my mood or disposition, but it also leaves my mind loose, ply able and open. The fertile ground for new problems to be come new art.

So even though work is at times over whelming, I am trying to maintain time for my art and research, as well as a small social life, and a pleasant marriage. Balancing these things has been wonderful so far.

The Evolving Self

I have finally finished The Evolving Self by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I loved it! It is evangelical science. Its thesis is that our genetically programmed responses to desire leisure, and ease are not actually the sources of pleasure and are in fact sources of individual discontent as well as detrimental to the environment, society and the world. His solution is to work towards complexity at every choice, by choosing options that are and offer diversity and integration in all aspects of life. And that by choosing complex and rewarding options for our personal lives we have the opportunity to create harmony around us.

He suggests that evolution for the next millennium will be a conscientious choice, not an impulse of instinct.

I am very interested in his idea at the end of the book in creating "evolutionary cells," groups that are interested in researching, collaborating, and acting in complex, diverse and integrated ways. Anyone interested?