I wrote something the other day, and it was pretty honest and it was good. So I read it over and over again. I remember when I was an art student. When I made something that felt “finished,” I’d do the same thing, and stare at it. I’d gaze, from many angles, think about the messages within it, behold the layered paint, and wonder about the meaning that seemed to come out of it (I did abstract art, with some surrealistic elements). When I did this, I’d feel… something…
I don’t think it was pride exactly. It was more like surprise or catching yourself in a mirror looking like someone else. Like, “wow, is that who you are and what you think?” or “where did this come from?” It was like I didn’t know myself, until I saw what I had made outside myself, just there.
Like many artists, musicians, writers, etc., I often feel like the work comes through me. Not that the work has nothing to do with me or my life (my short films clearly depicted many perplexing things about being a young woman, for instance), but that I didn’t really understand what was taking up my spiritual and mental space until I saw what I made. So I watched it afterwards with amazement. Astonished.
This still continues… the ‘wow, I made that?!’ feeling, when I make something honest and good. I wonder how many other creative people feel this way? Surprised?
One time when I was in college, working feverishly late night to finish several paintings for a big crit, I discovered a passage on a piece. I had pulled apart an unsatisfying/go-nowhere pile of art and reworked it into a 3D multi-painting structure with some images of pillars, instruments, some symbols, safety pins of an old ‘chastity belt,’ some woven stuff, some words… I took a rest, I think, or went to the bathroom, maybe.
I remember walking over to the piece to evaluate if it was done. I had a feeling of “coming to” or “waking up” as I looked at it. The piece said in what seemed a man’s scrawl, complete with taunting tone, “so you think you’re an artist?”
And these words were in my own hand, on my own painting, but I didn’t remember putting them there. It seemed nearly a mocking accusation, I felt attacked. And yet, I knew I must have scrawled the words there, I had just forgotten for a moment, or had been in another dream-like dimension when it happened. (This happened often, since I consider 1/3 of my life happens in those realms.)
I left the words there for my critique– it was a solid piece of work, words included. And people asked about it. I told of my momentary confusion, and realized those derisive, taunting words had dared me to answer, and that I was embarrassed, fearing arrogance or delusion. But that when I first saw those words with my ‘other eyes,’ it was undeniable, the answer was yes. And I had made myself know it.
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I haven’t looked at this piece for decades, but here it is from a slide taken in college. Shortly after finishing it, I moved to NYC, into a professor’s sublet on Forsyth Street, with $50, a bag of pasta and sauce and a sheet of slides. I had no job, no roommates, no money, just one month’s rent pre-paid and piles of innocent certainty. I spent my first days in the city alternating between applying for jobs in restaurants and walking into galleries with my slides. Within 3 weeks, I had a job cocktail waitressing on Bleecker Street (at NY’s “Corner of Walk and Don’t Walk”) and my first gallery show at The Emerging Collector, run by French curator Christine Drf… (I can’t remember her last name). The gallery was located on Second Avenue, north of 2nd Street, and it was a third, comfy home to me behind my apartment, and my quirky, loving work community.
I sold work at this gallery for 4 years, usually for a few hundred dollars each – maybe one piece every 3 months. I was awarded a window installation a year or so later, had my work included in traveling European shows, and had my first non-student solo exhibition there which opened on March 4, 1996. After that opening, I stopped doing art. The opening was terrifying to me– being gazed at while I gazed at what I had made. I felt as if everyone wanted to eat me up, asking incessant questions about “what does this mean?” “why did you do that?” “Can you come with us for drinks?” I faced a nervous breakdown shortly after that show. My work friends and I had also all just been laid off, a very sad ending to an important creative community and second family to me. I didn’t care if I ever showed my work again. I didn’t know who I was, and people wanted me to answer from whence the work came. I simply couldn’t and was upset by the question.
I look back on this time now with compassion and care. If I knew then what I know now, perhaps I could have carried on in the art world. Perhaps I would have surrounded myself with a protective cocoon or entourage to shield me from the hungry ghosts. Or maybe I could have been arrogant and stand-offish with a turtle shell of mean to protect me. Being a ‘celebrity’ of sorts feels very frightening, if you want to please others, and are an open, raw ball of emotion and vague selfhood. I didn’t know who I was then, and perhaps still don’t completely know now. I do know that I want to be honest about what I make, and that I must create. It’s what has always come easy to me. Stuff pours out, just now, it’s for clients and family. It’s in over-talking and writing and making myths in my head that I hope to ‘someday’ have the time to commit to a place where I can read it.
I guess this is just a piece of my story. Getting derailed by openness, by weakness, by raw emotion and forgetting one needs a protective shell. Maybe now I’m old, crusty and non-trusting enough to be honest again. Maybe now, no one dares try to take a piece of me. Or they just aren’t interested. Maybe now I can live my purpose, without feeling taunted or embarrassed about it. I think I’m an artist. I am an artist.