Around the middle of July, a professor at Hunter was kind enough to encourage me in this art-making affair, by asking me to complete 20 new finished pieces by mid-September. I don’t know why i expected anything different of myself, but here i am, with less than a month left, and one, one little collage that i feel comfortable turning in. Every day i tell myself, “move your legs into that studio, woman!” but most days i count the number of hairs i can pull from my dog in one swipe, or scrub the rubbery caulk-stuff in the spaces between the tiles in the bathroom until it gets dark outside and then i write off that day as you know, just not an art day. “I have to feel it, or else all i’ll make is crap.” Right?
Truth is i’m terrified, which is typical, but the tasks i’m resorting to in order to avoid even setting foot in the studio that is frankly inconvenient for me to have, but is there for the sole purpose of getting me to work, those are surprising. I have never cared about tile-caulk, never been concerned about getting my dishes really clean. “Not-embarrassing” is the level i generally strive for in all my hygiene, and even what constitutes that changes by the day. I mean look, i’m so desperate that i chose to blog about it, of all the loathsome activities.
The art i want to be making is interesting and complex and approaches form in really innovative ways. The ideas i have are genuinely interesting, about how our immune systems have to recognize what cells are us before they can figure out something’s there that shouldn’t be, about “disease as a relationship,” about dogs and how they move, about scientists writing about bodies in a tone that denies they have them. The ideas, those i never run out of, but when i sit in my studio i don’t know how to make any of that external. I just putter around with pictures that aren’t really that cool, pasting them to boards and drawing on them with the skills of a toddler. I have cool stuff that i want to think about in a visual way, conversations i feel like i could have with myself forever, but it’s that i don’t have the language, the means.
There’s so much swirling around, those metal-pointy things that some buildings have all around their cornices to keep birds from resting there, the beauty of a great-white shark leaping entirely out of the water to gulp a seal in one bite that i saw on Blue Planet, the voice of Patsy Cline, the expression my dog made this morning when i got up really close to his ear and whispered, “Good Morning!” I feel ill-equipped to process all this emotionally, much less artistically.
But. I. Have. To. Right now. I just wish i could translate, could speak this visual language fluently. Words have always been inadequate, but at least i’m fairly comfortable with them. Making images seems right, but comes so much more slowly to me right now. And it’s frustrating as fuck.
