This is quite a week in regards to work and art making. Yikes. Two big projects happening in the same week. For CORE Studio (my main studio class for my fine art studies) we install our first show on Monday September 26 in White Walls. This is technically our first contract or project that is leading up to our thesis preview show in December. My work is focusing on...well, i'm not entirely sure yet. I've been reading this incredible book The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard, and it has really helped me to understand my work and my thoughts on my work in ways that I suppose I knew was there somehow, but hadn't been fully realized.
My first piece is dealing with horns. But it's mostly about how horns (and teeth, hair, etc) are just by products of things our body doesn't need anymore and we shed it, and what our body produces that will help to protect us. I've always identified with the bull (being a Taurus) and these specific horns have always fascinated me as objects - i've incorporated them into my work for a long time but didn't understand the connection they were making to me and my work.
I've made many of them because it's my favorite mold in the ceramics studio - but it wasn't until the Poetics of Space and my more detailed understanding of space and home and what makes a home a safe place that these horns have taken on a new meaning. I see them as an expulsion of my self and the repetitive creation something that - in mass quantity - can be rather agressive looking and protective. In my one-on-one critiques with my instructors we've discussed the many possibilities for this piece and I'm excited that even up to the last few days of work-time, I still don't know 100% how the final will look. (the old art-making me would be having a nervous breakdown at this point.)
Speaking of me making pieces that I don't know how they will be finalized, I started working on my installation at the (e)merge art fair. I'm revisiting a piece that I did for CORE last year that was a further exploration of my cloud installation (which you stood inside of) but instead, it was me making a cloud but intentionally allowing the materials and the process dictate what happened. This was very helpful to me because it made me have to NOT know what the end result would be. Working with the garbage bags was a great way to wrestle with the act of creating, but having to give-in to unseen forces (air leaking out of the bags.) In the end, I had a piece that was enormous and showed my process as well as my efforts.
When I was invited to be in (e)merge I was talking with Joe Hale (our exhibit director) and was talking about what I should do, I mentioned the cloud piece and he said that would be great because he needed installations. This piece, when finished should definitely command a presence in the show (good or bad) and will hopefully be the bait to bring people to our booth/area so they can see the fine work from my fellow students in the Fine Art program and Photo/PhotoJournalism programs. There are 10 of us total, and only four fine artists (well, we are all FINE artists...) I plan to do a few different things with this piece and with the help of my good friend Andy Martin (from Philly, and graduate from the Tyler School of Art) so, again, I'm not entirely sure what the end result will be - with the exception of a marketing tool to get people to our space. . .
guess i'll be a marketer until the end.