nest

Re: Steady Forward

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.

Lead-er

Things have picked up for my studio work; I am motivated to meet deadlines and set realistic goals that are checked off and archived. Waking to lightning and rain (the strange mystery), I see myself steering for the first time in months. I am energized and daydream about making work, no longer To-Do. No longer What-If, How-Come, Why-Not. 

I ordered some basket reed and it arrived by way of USPS today. Soon I will soak it in the bathtub and wrangle it into a form, nest-like. I will buy paper already pulped and stretch it across the basket reed bones. I'll take fabric and yarn scraps and learn new things about twining and form and color. 

Nest "ing"

A student came into the yarn shop yesterday looking for materials; a project with the prompt "nesting."  Today I woke up with an inspired list of things that could improve my living, including closet rearrangement and accumulating just one more bookcase. After dropping off another load of items at the thrift store donation center, I browsed for homeware. My errands closed and I went home to block some projects I had begun/finished. I submerged them and lined them out to dry, my rug a disappointing conical shape. I dreamt new forms for it to take, perhaps I rip it out or shape it into a pillow—both still round, domestic ideas. 

I spend all of my energy on building a home. Keeping my apartment clean, accumulating a surrogate family, claiming a gas station, grocery store and route to work. I can trace this mode all the way back into July, when I attended Mildred's Lane. All along I thought I was meant to study knitting and its construction. Study the history of software in contemporary media today. Pull these ideas together with everything I've read about folds and the electromagnetic spectrum, a stake-out while I want to fly back "home."

The funny thing.