I wonder constantly if what I am doing is worth it. I don't really have an answer to this question. What I do know is that when I am in the studio it feels comfortable, and I enjoy making the work I make. I find it hard to understand what it is I do make. When critique arrives and my work is on the wall my insecurities are evident. I constantly try to defend my work with an authority. This approach is not the way I wish to take, but when feeling vulnerable it easy for me to adopt this authoritative persona. The truth is, that it is not me. I am confused by my surroundings, feeling vulnerable in all aspects of life. School, Relationships and most of all the instability that has come in the past six years of my life. My life is torn in two. I juggle what I have to do with what it is that I really want to do. Something I think is true for my fellow classmates as well. The structure surrounding my life enters my thoughts, interrupting everything it is that I do. When the time arrives to print something it stops. I don't think about money, calling my family, what time I have to work, what the image that I am printing means. I get lost in the process, intuitively and consciously solving problems that arise. If I can't fix a problem it pisses me off, especially if it is something I can't control. If I find something that I can't control I figure out a way to gain control of it. Most of all I like the feeling of being tired when I'm done. I enjoy the manual labor that coinsides with making my work something I feel my classmates understand completely, but most others do not. I have a problem with the idea that my generation has been taught that you can't make a living with your hands. That the "ideal" way of living your life is to do the same useless shit over and over again, day in, day out. The job is so abstract, there is not sense of accomplishment, no real cause for what is being done. Paul Virilio states in his idea about accelerated culture "If the event moves faster than the cause, then the cause becomes overshadowed" - It loses its sense of reality. People know what it is they do at work, but I think the majority of them have no idea what it is really for. At least in the corporate world, but in the end corporation controls everything.
I created this piece, if you want to see it again it is underneath the amazingly ridiculous images that make up this blog. Cats and curling, I'm liking it. I like this piece, and I am going to apologize for the way I spoke about it in class. As David stated in his critique:"I feel as though this image fails at communicating to the viewer, and bound to be looked over with a careless eye." At first this statement made me angry, I cannot lie about that, but what I do appreciate is David's honesty in the critique of my work and with that I let it go. I understand that the piece doesn't speak to the viewer and when looking at it with a careless eye it would be overlooked. As I walk down the aisles of the supermarket I think this is true as well, but when I am actively seeking out a product, say spaghetti sauce, an explosion of visual imagery confronts me when I find the area I know the spaghetti sauce to be. I am over whelmed at this point, now I have to make a decision. Do I want sauce with Basil? Do I want three cheeses, that probably aren't really cheese? Do I want to buy the cheap shit so I can buy nicer beer? I think the same goes for the work. The forms suggest pens/pencils, lines (both organic and structured), space, whales - I guess, that's what they look like to me, but they aren't really those things. They suggest an Idea in the same way advertisements do, but without the object they are nothing, disregarded as a label on the floor.
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