Please pardon my total lack of consideration for the people that apparently do in fact read this. I've been busy graduating (magna cum laude, with highest honors and the Mitchell Siporin Award, for those who care about such things), moving into a new habitat (which involved uhauling things from PA to Waltham like the day after graduation), and generally acclimating to the limbo that is currently my life. I know, I know: excuses, excuses.
Anyway, I'm not going to feed you lies and pretend like I have images to show you. I don't. I have tentative plans to de-install my work from the gallery "early next week" though, so I should really get on that...
Also, the studio is in the process of being renovated right now, which is very exciting. The kitchen's getting a face lift and we're getting a snazzy expanded print shop. That said, I can't exactly work in the studio right now, which is less than ideal. It hasn't been a huge deal yet, what with the spastic, ever-expanding To Do list that has been devouring my focus for the past few weeks, but I can feel the pressure building (my sketchbook feels it too, I'm sure).
SO, I thought now would probably be a good time to relieve some tension in the form of a good ol' fashioned senseless ramble. Let's take a look at the most recent pages of my sketchbook: angsty introspective rant...pretentious quasi-essay on goals/ ambitions...prolonged/overdone metaphor about works of art as children...uggghhhh....OK, here we go--something not so mortifying!
I've been thinking about this concept of artists making work that is inspired by something: a personal hero, a novel, a film, some noun that has inspired them enough for them to create something new, rooted in that experience. OK, here's the back story: Someone who shall remain nameless once suggested that I try making work for the people I admire until I figure out how to make work for me. I didn't really know how to feel about this suggestion at the time, and I still don't. I got to thinking about Emily Roysdon's David Wojnarowicz Project, and how she'd said he made her feel like she could be an artist. Phoebe Washburn was inspired by the work of Dieter Roth, and made an homage to him in the form of Untitled (Cheese). Judy Pfaff made a whole series of work when she moved into Richard Serra's old studio "in order to exorcise him". Basically every artist I've read about or heard speak has made something at some point in their career that they ground in that kind of notion. We all have heros, people who inspire us and make us feel like we could create something worthwhile and be loved for it. I feel that. But somehow this whole idea of making work for one's heroes makes me kind of uncomfortable. Maybe it's the ambiguity of the word 'for'. I think it's probably a totally respectable practice as long as 'for' doesn't mean 'to please'. If you're making something to please someone else--if you think to yourself, "Wow, this person has really inspired me. I want to try to make something that they would like," that feels dangerous to me. I think the thought process has to be something more like, "Wow, this person has really inspired me. I want to try to make something that would inspire them in return." Anything less is just sycophancy. Nobody respects a sycophant. But if you can make something that legitimately inspires your personal hero, then you're a worthy fellow artist. That should be the goal. Because that way, the work is still ultimately coming from you (it's ultimately reflecting your voice), not from some contrived facsimile of what you think your hero would want to see.
Alright, rambling accomplished. Stay tuned...Maybe if I get too bored/ stir crazy, I'll post something mortifying...
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