what was the most valuable lesson-whether in the classroom, during a crit, or from a fellow student-that you learned in school? why? who taught it to you? Two experiences stand out from my first year of graduate school. They rest back-to-back in my mind. but in reality they were probably experienced at distinct point in the year. they helped me to understand what embodied making might be-to see the differences between a thing and a picture of a thing; and, perhaps most important, how to work with my own hands.
the first look place during my first graduate school critique, for which i had made a pretty terrible installation in my studio, a kind of exploded room as if it was frozen in time-furniture stuck out from the walls, and everything was painted white. i thought it was capital A art. Everyone agreed the project was pretty awful, which was hard enough to admit after so much effort, and the ask myself one of my peers' questions: "How this is a demonstration? how is this an experience for us?"
the second conversation, also with a fellow student, came a few months later. i had covered a suit in toothpicks and was deliberating what to do with it. Should it be on the floor? On the wall? On a hanger? Melinda Hunt patiently listened and then reminded me that it was a coat and i was body and said,simply, "why don't you wear it?"
in art school,did you learn how to sustain yourself as an artist, both creatively and professionally? did you feel prepared to be an artist when you graduated? I don't know whether i felt prepared; i think i was all too aware of the holes in my knowledge and in my inability to be articulate about my work. i was, like everyone graduating, overwhelmed by the prospect of balancing the making of work and making a living. actually, i don't think that has changed too much- it's not a challenge that goes away. but was i did feel prepared of balancing for was having a studio practice; i knew what the meant to me. i knew that my studio was in the books i was reading and in the flea markets and junk stores i visited. i knew i liked to look at object and that the forms i created came as a process of response to a situation. i was just coming to understand, as i graduated, that a studio is a state of mind and not a physical location.
what matters most in art making for you? Did art school have anything to do with you coming to understand this?
what matters most to me is paying attention. Art is the result of multiple acts of attention, and i hope that art making cultivates forms of listening. it seems to me that making allows one to create a situation to find what one needs to do in the world. It's a way to short-circuit your self-consciousness. i wait by keeping busy, by not worrying too much about whether a project is "good"
or began to realize how making something is very different form thinking about it. if you sit around and wait for an interesting idea, you will wait for a very long time. i now believe that making is a form of thinking; experiences are a set of questions that are a set of questions that propel me forward. they may be small questions , but they offer nourishment for the long term.