sketchbook no. 13

The other night at Red Fox, Ryan, Mikiel, Allison, and I were looking at photos we had taken over the past few years. We all had our phones out, cooing over memories and hair cuts. A few nights before that, my friend Greg, a friend from high school visiting Portland, had sat on the edge of my bed and scanned my photo album. He asked about some of the newer photos, made jokes, inquired about friends. Then we flipped through the older photos from high school. Do you remember her? Remember when this happened? Did you ever do this while at ASFA?

We looked through the photos I had taken out of Tony, talked about him and his art and his life and his death and that time he slapped me and that time we thought about running away to Manhattan together.

Why don't we do that? Have little photography viewing sessions. Particularly with printed photographs. I love printed photographs. I miss having little prints all over my house.  Growing up, our foyer was devoted to photographs of family, hanging on walls and collecting dust in frames on the top of the piano.

I propose asking little groups of friends to submit photo albums of their favorite photos. Let's print everything. Then we ask that group of friends to come in, sit on a couch, look at photos, and reminisce. And we'll do little groups of this all night long. We can look through everyone's photos and watch friends share memories and hear all the secret histories of these prints. 

sketchbook no. 12

Here's a little piece of performance art I think could have a great visual impact:

A group of actors crowd around telescope installed at a cafe/bar. They pick target who will wall by them on the street, then they'll whisper animatedly, take turns looking through telescope at the target. When the target walks directly in front of them they go silent, look away, stare. When the target passes them they commence whispering and laughing.

Adam and I were sitting in a restaurant the other day; he was talking about someone who had walked in.  I didn't turn my head.  I asked Adam to describe him.  When I acknowledged that I knew the person in question, Adam said, "You haven't even looked!" I told him I had been trying to see the person in the window's reflection behind Adam's head, and even without seeing the person directly, I had known whom Adam had been speaking of.

We do a lot of looking, and it's interesting how obvious and overt we can be about it.  Or how discreet.  And the feeling of being looked at can be disquieting but also pleasurable occasionally.

sketchbook no. 11

1.
i would like to start photographing my houseplants.  photograph them for a year.  then display them in a gallery after that year with their portraits at different intervals throughout the year, show how they've grown, document their fertilizations, their blooms.  document how i sometimes have a difficult time tending to different plants.  cactus always get me.  i say, oh hey, you look thirsty little guy.  and the cactus never is.  then it dies.

2.
how about an exhibit that consists of two receptions.  at the first reception, visitors to the gallery could make their own crystal geode things.  you know, like those crystal growing kits.  could i put one of those together, build one myself?  so everyone would make their own crystal and we'd wait for the crystals to crystallize.  how long does that take?  i should figure that out.

then at the second reception, we'd have all the crystal caves out and displayed in their glory.  glorious.  and there would be so many colors.  and everything would sparkle.

question: can crystallization be affected by external influence, as in can certain chemical process change the color and/or the crystalline structure of the mineral?

needing more time

remember years ago when we would create, all the time, when we were just always making things and reading and reading and reading and reading?  remember when i made art about reading?  remember when i painted and read about painting and planned performance art pieces and read about performance?

when i was studying visual art over a decade ago, our professors encouraged us to read constantly about art, to make it our lives.  and we took that to heart.  my sister, my friend tony, and i always toted a copy of artforum or art in america everywhere we went on top of the other books we were reading.  on top of the sketchbooks we carried everywhere with us.

i have dozens of sketchbooks and journals filled with drawings and journal entries and magazine cuttings and stickers and pictures and photographs and scraps of all sorts, bits of design and art and color and inspiration for later.

for a long time i thought that my life would be just like that: i would read and browse and collect and consider then create these art projects, create these performances and paintings and attempt to explain visually certain ideas that percolated up in my brain.

i have just finished reading allison bechdel's most recent comic memoir are you my mother?  bechdel writes about her relationship with her mother, her relationship with her therapist, her relationships in general, and ties it all together with her research into psychotherapy, particularly childhood development, development of the 'i' and attachment theories as developed by donald winnicott.

i found striking her descriptions of this psychotherapeutic investigation, the references to influences like virginia woolf, her considerations of her mother's interest in sylvia plath.  it made me realize that i do not read as much as i used to, that i do not research as much, and that i wish i had the time for more of my own research, my own development of ideas.

bechdel's mom helped pay for her life after college when she lived in new york, trying to make it as an artist and writer.  now allison bechdel is an artist/writer, has time for herself and her own project.  indeed, her research, her projects are her livelihood.

you know i read a lot.  i'm a reader.  but i don't have the time or energy or patience right now for deep research.  i do not have direction.  and though it seems like i should be doing this, like i should be making something, as i have always been involved in projects for so long, i don't know what i would make.

in thinking about what sort of project i would put together now, i wonder what fascinates me, what sorts of ideas interest me now?  and i worry i do not have enough interest in anything particular anymore.  not like i did.

i need to figure this out.