Notes on Hesse article in ArtForum.

I actually bought an artforum, a magazine i love to hate, except that they print good articles. In the most recent issue was a 1973 interview between Lucy Lippard, Nancy Holt, and Robert Smithson about Eva Hesse’s work while Lippard was writing a monograph on her. I have such a hunger for conversation about Hesse recently, i didn’t know much about her until a few months ago when i read Encountering Eva Hesse, but since then i’ve been kind of obsessed. There’s a lot there with her. There’s a lot going on now that she should be here to work out, a lot of things after minimalism that i would have liked to see her grapple with.  The article. I think whenever someone is talking about another artist they end up saying more about themselves, and are only peripherally addressing the actual work, a condition for living in the body we’re given. Smithson said a lot about himself, responding to what he saw as bondage fantasies in her work. I can see where he’s coming from, but no way do even the corporeal rope-wrapped balloons have to do with S/M. I see containment, i see issues of breaking out of prescribed boundaries, but the Freudian interpretation feels grossly off, and a little shallow.Most interesting to me was how they all agreed that Eva Hesse hated the landscape, didn’t enjoy even being outdoors, and noticably less so in a rural or semi-rural environment. That is striking to me, who relates to her work strongly and who viscerally needs the land, needs the idea of it, the fact of it. Part of what i identify with her is wrapped up in biological/organic forms, to find that she brought all of that out of herself in an enclosed urban space is fucking remarkable. It’s enough to think about for days.  

On that note, a small experiment: beginning on Saturday, i will try as much as possible to eliminate my cultural consumption. I’d love to do two weeks but will be satisfied if i make one or one and a half. This means no books, no museum visiting, no internet surfing (i’ll still check my email but that’s it), no newspapers, magazines, movies, or (gulp) music. At work the music’s on constantly so i can’t help that, or the trillions of ads me and my fellow new yorkers are subjected to on the daily. But otherwise i’m going to try to really delve into myself, into the meaty underneath-ness, really sit down and think and breathe. I’ve seen so much in the past few months, so much art, read so many amazing things, and i feel i’m carrying around these half-digested thoughts that are getting in the way of newer ones. Hopefully i’ll have the courage to get them out.

bready video.

A time-lapse to show how bread dough rises through bone. I’ll try to make another one in the next few days that hopefully will catch the bone in the process of cracking from the pressure of the yeast.

   

Also, a group shot of the guys for some context.

Knock loud (i’m home).

I just discovered this track from the 2001 Neko Case Canadian Amp EP, which is actually a cover of the original by Sook-Yin Lee, who starred in Shortbus. None of this is really as important as the song, which i can’t stop playing over and over. It is somehow the perfect complement to the fact that i am cradling a ball of raw bread dough in my left hand, waiting for it to set to the contours of my palm, hoping it will solve the problem of creating a sculpture out of raw dough in the round without using a mold. As it rises and hardens, i’m thinking about my mom, who just had her knee replaced and is bearing remarkable amounts of pain, but is still silly with me on the phone. Her optimism stretches out like a road. About Eva Hesse, whose work, whose life calmly explains that happiness isn’t as important as i thought it was. 

There is the work, this soft weight in my hand. 

bread!

I’m finally uploading some of the sculpture series with raw bread dough. Part of what i like about them is how they’ll crack/decay over time, which i’ll document. These have a bit too much yeast, and kind of inflated overnight from how they where when i made them; i’m working with a batch now that has almost no yeast at all, so hopefully they’ll set with more of the detail intact. I really like working with the dough as a medium, the stickiness and elasticity. Part of it is also the connotations to domestic life, to an era when most bread was handmade, not bought, how rare the act of making loaves of bread is for people in their 20s/30s now. Most of them are organic shapes, cocoons or little coils, they seem to make the most sense, and i can’t get over how beautiful the dough gets as it stretches from being hung on something.

The last image is from a batch using beet juice instead of water, i hate all of them except this one.

 

Startin’ to thinkin’.

Okay and i will write about disease is a relationship. If disease is a relationship, what form(s) does it take? The science texts in my studio (most form the early 90s) all prefer military terms, as in “the macrophage is an incredibly efficient warrior.” This feels a little too g.w. bush for me.

Firstly, immune responses depend upon the ability of the T and B cells to recognize a pathogen as opposed to one of the millions of “foreign cells” our bodies normally house. What constitutes “foreign?” The bacteria living in our guts, helping digest our food, could they reasonably be called “us?” Our bodies have evolved to be dependent on them, they spend their entire lives within us, but yet they could, technically, exist elsewhere. How important is it to define where i end, where nonself begins? To the B and T cells, it can mean life and death.

The boundaries are drawn here, internally.

To me, it is not so important. My skin feels a tangible boundary, supple but definite, contrasting with the wooden arms of this chair, the coarse fur of the dog. But even on this surface, conversations are taking place. From Wikipedia:

“Sebaceous glands secrete an oily substance called sebum that is made of fat and the debris of dead fat-producing cells. In the glands, sebum is produced within specialized cells and is released as these cells burst. Sebum acts to protect and waterproof hair and skin, and keep them from becoming dry, brittle and cracked. It can also inhibit the growth of microorganisms on skin.”

Some things are certain. I am not chair, i am not dog. Exactly where my transactions between them stop, though, is not so easy. Aren’t there molecules constantly exchanging glances? Don’t i swallow, inhale hundreds of dog cells each day? Here is the definition of reciprocity, and of course these words are spoken between my immune cells and their antigens. There is a need, each for the other.

And there will always be more.

Coming home to the power out.

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.

Public disdain. Or, disdain for the public.

I spent the last few evenings thinking about various perspectives i have, how those shift over time, things i am doing now that could affect them adversely, things to continue. Working in the restaurant industry, and specifically working for a clientele that i largely resent is changing me in ways i can’t even squish off from myself to evaluate. I just know that i am falling into that characteristic “front of house disdain” that is rampant with most of my coworkers. A friend said the other day, “I already think 75% of the people i pass on the street are impulsive, largely thoughtless, and not worth my time. Once i set foot at work that percentage jumps to about 95.” And mostly, i agree. So what? Maybe it’s true, maybe there’s merit in focusing your energy, especially in this city of 8 million, of filtering out who can get something from you and who can’t. You can’t relate to everyone, and everyone makes choices based on limited time and resources.

The problem is twofold. It seems arrogant to say that there are people not worth my time, as though my time is worth more than anyone else’s. As though people actually exist that i should not give the directions to if they asked me, no matter how much of a suit they were, or how entitled their behavior seemed. I’m sure suits are mostly people too, i’m sure they are just as lost and scared and lonely as the rest of us, maybe more, and therefore deserving of my time and eye contact. Because i’ve noticed that i have trouble making eye contact with the customers at work that for whatever reason attract my contempt, i have a very deep urge to not acknowledge their humanity by looking full in their faces. Certainly everyone deserves, unless they’ve committed something terrible against me, to be looked at, right? And yet several times a night i will speak to someone without looking at them.

Which brings me to my second point. Being around people that i would ordinarily not associate with for roughly 35 hours every week is eroding something that i can’t exactly name or understand. There’s a trust i used to have in people, you know, the idea that we’re all basically good but self-absorbed, trying to find our own ways. I think to create something for the public you have to believe this to some extent, believe that the people seeing a piece that you’ve spent a significant amount of energy and thought on are worthy of seeing it. Otherwise the work will probably be cynical to the point of meaninglessness. Even artists that dislike most people still trust and rely on those that “get it,” though that usually indicates a deeply suspect elitist and privilege-oriented attitude. For me, for the work i want to do, i need to see the public as important, even suits, even hipsters, even white boys hauling their powerbooks on their fixed gear bicycles. Lately, I see people that i have contempt for when i am not at work and where they with all certainty are not, which means i am taking it out of the restaurant and applying it to people that don’t deserve it. Not that even the suits do, but definitely the people riding the train don’t. And i have to get to a place where i trust that the people that could wander into an installation of mine or pick a piece up off the street can genuinely bring themselves to the art, can make it meaningful. Otherwise i’ll just be making art for myself, and that’s not why i’m doing this.

I’ve just been thinking about the work i’ve really been getting into lately, how vulnerable the artists are, how they ask the audience to let themselves into the pieces and trust them to go where they are gently led. This is the kind of work i want to come from myself, and i think if i stay in restaurants i’ll eventually be unable to see people with such love. I don’t know what the solution is in the short-term, how to guard against it while i still need this to pay the bills, but i do know that there is a count on the days i can be there. And, honestly, that gives me hope.