Over these past three days I have become a recycling machine turning things I already own into new things I didn't know I had the potential to create. I've shaped the mold for a lost wax ring, carved a woodcut block and made prints, begun two collages that I mailed to the woman I love to complete, arranged tassels, sequins, fabric and card into four pairs of nipple pasties, sewn and hemmed a fox fur collar and today I will commence that most 70s of crafts: bead tapestry finished with macrame edges. Many of these pursuits don't coalesce with my wider aim to create artwork that is aesthetically and conceptually rich, but they have an equally important function of NOT DESTROYING MY SOUL.
Plus who isn't enticed by lime sequinned nipple pasties with pompom trim?
I need to have fun, because recently my capacity to laugh has been limited to a bitter chuckle when watching others in pain or publicly embarrassed, and that's the lowest form of humour there is. University put a tap in my brain and then turned it on full blast until the reservoir completely ran dry and a possum went and set up house in the tank - the bottom of which was subsequently coated in a pungent layer of possum faecal matter. Perhaps I shouldn't liken my brain to an empty black hole with possum shit at the bottom, but that's honestly how it felt by the end of this university semester. So now I'm doing what any sensible person would do: filling it with funny pretty things as quickly as possible so it stops feeling empty and black and smelly.
At a point when all my brain juice was gushing from my head and I felt woozy and weak, one of my most lovely friends commented that the problem from his point of view was that he sees me as an artist who is being asked to spend all of her time in academia where the demands of reading and writing don't leave much space for any sort of connection with the material world and a creative engagement with it. Indeed I had begun to feel like I had no body and that I was just a brain floating in space, used to calculate the appropriate locations for full stops in citations for essays... the last indicator that I had a soul buried somewhere deep inside me was evident in my eyes which, despite the hunched and weakened image of my form, would stare with a penetrating longing at any artworks shown to us in lectures, taking in the elements and principles of design as a sort of war ration. When times are tough we revert to the elements and principles.
I love reading and writing. I'm here now writing so that in the future I can read this. But I can't live inside words alone and neither can I live inside images alone. In fact I love instances when they commingle and interblend... for example in many religious scriptures. I think this gives me the feeling that I'm being fed wholesome food for my left and right brain.
There is a slight concern regarding the veracity with which I apply myself to the making of things. I tend to leave a trail of canvas and glitter glue and block ink and varnish as I puff like a little tornado through the flat, propping up an animation disc against a chair in the dining room and setting up an easel in the kitchen. Eventually it peters out and I end up lying, smiling in a small nest of sandpaper and wood shavings. At the time I feel incapable of stopping. I'm not being romantic about that, there's a tinge of hyperactive obsession about it and it becomes quietly aggravating if I can't devote complete concentration to the task at hand.
I suppose from here I need to learn how to rest and how to clean up.
Plus who isn't enticed by lime sequinned nipple pasties with pompom trim?
I need to have fun, because recently my capacity to laugh has been limited to a bitter chuckle when watching others in pain or publicly embarrassed, and that's the lowest form of humour there is. University put a tap in my brain and then turned it on full blast until the reservoir completely ran dry and a possum went and set up house in the tank - the bottom of which was subsequently coated in a pungent layer of possum faecal matter. Perhaps I shouldn't liken my brain to an empty black hole with possum shit at the bottom, but that's honestly how it felt by the end of this university semester. So now I'm doing what any sensible person would do: filling it with funny pretty things as quickly as possible so it stops feeling empty and black and smelly.
At a point when all my brain juice was gushing from my head and I felt woozy and weak, one of my most lovely friends commented that the problem from his point of view was that he sees me as an artist who is being asked to spend all of her time in academia where the demands of reading and writing don't leave much space for any sort of connection with the material world and a creative engagement with it. Indeed I had begun to feel like I had no body and that I was just a brain floating in space, used to calculate the appropriate locations for full stops in citations for essays... the last indicator that I had a soul buried somewhere deep inside me was evident in my eyes which, despite the hunched and weakened image of my form, would stare with a penetrating longing at any artworks shown to us in lectures, taking in the elements and principles of design as a sort of war ration. When times are tough we revert to the elements and principles.
I love reading and writing. I'm here now writing so that in the future I can read this. But I can't live inside words alone and neither can I live inside images alone. In fact I love instances when they commingle and interblend... for example in many religious scriptures. I think this gives me the feeling that I'm being fed wholesome food for my left and right brain.
There is a slight concern regarding the veracity with which I apply myself to the making of things. I tend to leave a trail of canvas and glitter glue and block ink and varnish as I puff like a little tornado through the flat, propping up an animation disc against a chair in the dining room and setting up an easel in the kitchen. Eventually it peters out and I end up lying, smiling in a small nest of sandpaper and wood shavings. At the time I feel incapable of stopping. I'm not being romantic about that, there's a tinge of hyperactive obsession about it and it becomes quietly aggravating if I can't devote complete concentration to the task at hand.
I suppose from here I need to learn how to rest and how to clean up.
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