IN TIMES LIKE THESE // MFA SPRING REVIEW
April 2020
Please view on desktop/laptop (not mobile) along with accompanying IMAGE LIST (click here). Most images on this webpage are interactive.
Feeling akin to the words of John Cage, “Instead of self-expression, I’m involved in self-alteration,” my goal in graduate school is to make, but also – and perhaps primarily – to form and shape my self by establishing a better understanding of my values, my existence, and my practice through the lens of this academic structure.
As described in an excerpt of an artist statement written at the end of the fall semester, I spent the first semester focusing on works inspired by the outdoors.
“Through photographic documentation, I capture how diverse populations interact within the landscapes of publicly-held state and national parks. I imagine their motivations and desires and how these landscapes may or may not satisfy them. I am fascinated by structures of organization and containment such as lists and kits that provide a sense of comfort or solutions to existential dilemmas found within fast-paced, production focused societies.
I play with these models and related self-help trends to create interactive sculptural objects that contain organic elements to simulate nature. While looking toward the ethnographic tendencies of artists such as Mark Dion, and the design emphasis of Andrea Zittel, I ask through these objects what an experience with wilderness looks like and how one lives both within these spaces and those of our homes. Through ephemeral, performative Fluxus-like pieces, I work to bring habits of the domestic space into the natural world and vice versa, intervening into the urban sphere of my daily life with the trail etiquette of a through-hike to highlight how society has distinctly separated the outdoors from the in and provide my personal life with the elements of comfort each space provides.”
Prior to coming to graduate school, I had worked for both a major artist’s studio and a well-established contemporary art museum. I had grown as much as I could in these positions and was eager to use grad school to finally give my personal practice priority. However, through overwork I had injured my body in a way that required much needed downtime in order to recover enough to continue forward. I planned to take the year prior to beginning my graduate program to create a self-initiated residency, work on grad applications, and heal. But things didn’t go as planned as the doctors ordered me to use my arms as little as possible (no artwork), I was diagnosed with another debilitating injury that had inflicted increasing chronic pain, and lost much of my autonomy and consequently my confidence.
I had previously taken pride and validated my worth as a person through how independent, hard working, risk-taking, and generous I could be with my time and energy. When many of those traits were tested or forcibly diminished in the year prior, I felt a great identity crisis settle in that easily clouded and questioned all I believed in.
I was determined not to allow this to be at the front of my brain when entering graduate school. I wanted to use this new space to put the recent struggles behind me and reclaim my body, my work ethic, my beliefs, and my creative practice. I should have allowed myself to understand that compartmentalizing this experience wouldn’t last though, especially amidst changes, challenges, and the unexpected trauma that lingered after the first week of classes. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, this is how I entered the program. Consequently, I believe my goals in this time of adjustment subconsciously shifted to be more self-preserving than risk-taking – embracing the little security I felt I had by actualizing projects that I had conceptualized in a more confident, but very distant past place. Thematically focusing on the outdoors allowed me a place to slow down and find solace when feeling overstimulated. These works were still rooted in a grounding, rejuvenating, contemplative space that I felt my mind was wanting to be, but I didn’t feel as curious or challenging, and the work didn’t feel nearly so urgently relevant to me anymore.
After some time away from school during the winter break, I was able to clear the air of expectations, information, and busyness enough to slow down, reflect on my past, and see myself and desired path more clearly again.
During the time that I was unable to make artwork due to my injuries, I decided to enroll in a mediation training course. In and out of my creative practice, I’ve always been interested in understanding the underlying motivations of others, communication skills, the ability to grow from conflict, and the value in emotional experiences. These courses, the community that I built, and the forced slow-down that I was personally experiencing was expanding upon my previous creative investigations, but toward more directly interpersonal and inwardly contemplative states. I was and realized I still am, recalibrating my belief system in a way that largely challenges and rebels against the capitalistic (and sometimes academic) ideas of productivity and value by embracing slowness, gentleness, warmth, community, vulnerability, and reflection. This is what I wanted to bring back to school with me spring semester.
This recalibration – embracing a different pace, focusing on emotional experiences rather than physical or intellectual pursuits, building sympathy for my body, and developing a value system based on care, compassion, and community – is what I wanted to carry forward in my graduate experience. Upon the generous suggestion of professors, I began by imagining a small group of people for which to make art for - artist heroes, friends, and professors that I felt akin to and supported by enough to buffer the overactive voices of all that was happening around me (including my own fear-brain). I chose to go deep rather than wide, by focusing on a singular project for an extended amount of time. Really feeling, exploring, and digesting, rather than spreading myself too thin over too many project ideas, leaving myself feeling dissatisfied by a high volume of surface level production. I pushed away the numbness that comes with a state of busyness and made sure I had more room to feel and intuitively create.
With these adjustments, I turned toward various modes of ritual and organized systems of spirituality, contemplation, and meditation that provide comfort or a promise of transformative healing and deep connection to the self and others. Through reading about the relationship between the church and art and their shifting responsibility to teach emotional intelligence, I began to consider how – in both comforting and corrupt ways – the structures of religion translate to the structures of the art world with idols, relics, and practice. I’ve become excited about pushing this conversation even further by critically viewing my studio practice through this lens, while also genuinely seeking solace in the idea of anything personally healing and rejuvenating.
Just as I’ve begun to feel like I’ve found my footing in my graduate school experience, personal and global health troubles have thrown a wrench into the mix. Early in the spring semester, after months of pretty successful pain management, my arm injury came back with a vengeance that required me to seek medical care – hopping from specialist to specialist, occupying great amounts of time and mental bandwidth. As you read this, I’m recovering from surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL – which comes with great relief as hopefully my condition will improve, but great fears as no tool is the same after it goes through repairs.
But this personal roadblock feels quite small after the pandemic has seeped into the lives of myself and those I care for. Not only is it hard to make work from home – physical resources are a huge reason why attending school is so valuable/necessary and doing work from home requires doing a lot of tasks “by hand” and when a dominant hand is damaged this isn’t much of an option – the emotional component is equally, if not more challenging. I’ve had waves of great worries rush over me, concerned about my aunt exposed while she works as director of disease control at a Washington hospital, hearing my mother cry with fears, finding out my best friend’s grandfather died alone. Ironically, much of my work this semester when aiming towards healing, has been about life and death, heavy conversations, and home life. These topics can at times feel too poignant to work on in this new state of heightened emotions, or too obvious when I’m considering recent work critically. When working with limited resources, I amplify my social practice projects. This is what I’ve leaned into most during this time. I may not be in a state that allows me to make many objects myself, but I can facilitate experiences that may help others. I am frustrated that many of my projects aren’t able to come to fruition right now and that I feel more scattered than deep. Most works sit in a state of potential. But if there’s anything I’ve learned from health worries getting in the way, it’s that you find a way to be content with doing what you can.
You do what you can, you feel the pulse of where you’re at, you move forward with any momentum mustered, and you harness that emotional experience to grow and reflect on how to better live and work in coming days.
