Beyonce
I committed myself to completing a project within a deadline: "Beyoncé + Visual Albums pt. I"
I still daydream about returning to school, still wavering between academia and laying down self discipline. Waiting for more to come.
I use the abandoned gallery for personal projects, breathing in the large space and loving the polished concrete floors. Hungry for the state of mind that will allow me to focus on my thesis and ignore the rest.
More free time has me leaving skeptical of how to use it. I've spent the last year focusing so hard on job-work and not self-work that the transition confuses me. More or less, the same scenery is welcome and expected.
I've reaffirmed my current projects, all under the heading of "nesting." They move out of focus as my attention wanes and I find interest in the next sketch. I reinvented the basket reed-and-crochet project, seeing it with wire and in a similar size as the small acetate sculptures (my next big interest). I picked up one of the drawings I made last July when we first moved west, cutting into the image. The most liberating. I am finally hungry to do more in studio, lending it more time and energy.
Similarly, I have also revisited the Beyoncé + visual album topic and how it relates to the cinematic realism ideology. I am beginning a new blog post on NDF for the first time since the end of 2015, and it feels right. I can see myself taking real and concrete steps toward furthering my studio work since graduation, not just wishing a schedule into place. I am setting up old habits that have waited so long to be in use again.
A lot of people have asked me what "being a fiber artist looks like." Fiber artist because that is my identity at the yarn shop I frequent/work for. Fiber artist when introduced to directors at the gallery I intern at. Fiber artist as told by my bachelor's degree.
And yet I never willingly made any work out of fiber art, until lately. I am a draughstman, I tell myself. I make perfect, controlled imagery unless I am in over my head—my thesis, the reflection of my tulmutuous last semester.
I tell them I intern at a gallery and work for the yarn shop part-time. The other time I spend in the studio. But is that true? Have I really made any of "my" work lately? I opened an Etsy. I made myself a capelet, a business card holder, numerous necklaces. I set up a Wordpress blog to start writing "my thesis."
One long, ugly drawing does not count as "my" work.
Constant movement to flush out gravity; "Partition" is a new anthem. An organized painting found me nights ago, so I sit on asleep nerves and arrange pieces from magazine pages. I've only eaten sausage and potatoes and rice. I desperately long to cope.
Moving west like a treatment, but we know it's only because I want control .
I'm documenting dreams and filling out a social schedule. I'm lusting after a Filofax planner and Beyonce's new album. Research is slow because Breaking Bad replaces all motives. A betta fish moved in with me; he's yet to discover I feed him at the same time daily.
I want to rent a wall space permanent, a whole semester unobstructed mapping. It requires a 16:9 lateral movement of butcher paper beneath loose quoted ideas. The wall in the center of studio will do. I will sign the lease on January 27th.
Past few days I've tested my frustration and each conversation resolves the same; "keep doing." Funny how one has blessed guidance but no fine print about reassurance,
Self-doubt is a blasted think.
Using Christmas cards to detox from the semester, self-imposed deadline instead of appeasing dialogue.
Track for continuation of detox and output of work include: at least one drawing/organized collage due every Saturday, an explanation of how to thread a loom, reading The Economist every week (as a coffee muse), catching up on lost reading, start and finish Breaking Bad, "researching" the radio/Beyonce's new album. All this is held accountable by others; it is easier to construct when people are relying on you.