Plateau

The micro docs are no longer micro. I originally intended them to be 3 minutes. In general, I think this is a good thing. Maybe 3 minutes was too short. The last clocked in just shy of 6 minutes. I'm currently at 5 minutes and I still have about 18 minutes of interview to work through. My goal on this one was 6-9 but if I can top it out at 10-12 I'll be happy.

And if you're just tuning in after a hiatus, I'm working on 3 projects simultaneously. All relative. It's interesting.

One for the Road

This is what 4 days of work looks like. That would be 4 afternoon espressos and this morning's coffee. I have very roughly assembled 8 mini-segments and I'm still listening to Peggy Lee, just because. 

Index cards.

I'm working on the 4th micro-doc. The footage has been uploaded and I'm in the middle of logging. I had the questions written out ahead of time. Everything was set to go smoothly, but we ended up conversing on and off camera which made it difficult to remember what was on and off camera. There were tangents. I should have kept the camera running. My goal is 3-5 minutes.  I shot on Friday, uploaded on Saturday, and on Sunday I began looking at footage. I'm currently at about 18 minutes of selects and have 14 more minutes of interview to screen. I took a short break to check a message. My computer had a bizarre crash. Black screen with multiple languages telling me there was a problem and it had to shut down. I was watching Dick Van Dyke advocating for Bernie Sanders on Facebook. Dick began stuttering like he was having stroke and I was wondering wtf was going on when the computer crashed. I'm still not sure what happened. I started back up, but it's late- 10:30pm. I'll start cutting tomorrow. I'm nervous at this stage. I always am. Once I see structure, I'm okay. Sometimes I start cutting B-roll to music I'll never use just to see hope. Right now it's Peggy Lee, "Is that all there is?" I'm obsessed with that song lately.
Index cards. 

Cicadas.

Periodically I reflect on the lackluster name of this blog, Process, and wonder if the title is still accurate. Some days I wish I had been a little more witty in my titling, maybe addressing some kind of word play with a specific nod to philosophical influences or something a little more obviously Zen, but having passed our 10-year anniversary rather quietly last fall, I’m happy to report Process is still on the mark. 

I’ve privately archived posts the majority of posts from 2005-2008. I left an art review and an essay about John Baldessari for old time’s sake. 

State of the Union. 

It’s 2016. Near, mid-February to be non-exact. The show at Marcia Wood Gallery comes down this week. Three reviews, all good. The Atlanta crowd was gracious.

I’ve been in Nashville past my expiration date, as noted by the recent letter I have received from the DMV. I have the option to have a new picture taken in which I will appear 5 years older, or to keep the last picture where I look like Aileeen Wuornos. I must have been wearing a scoop neck top at the time, because I look like I could be naked, only Aileeen Wuornos naked. It's not a look that works on me. 

The studio and the concept thereof, have shifted in the last year or two. Nothing to cause alarm. I am a periodic cicada. I produce work in prolific cycles. By accepting this, I've experienced a great freedom. As I write this, I’m building stretchers and have the beginnings of my next solo conceptualized and gestating in the room I call the paint studio. The idea came while driving one of the two loaner cars I had while my car was being repaired due to rodent damage. In other areas of my home/studio, I’m working on a Repair Project involving textiles and labor, and in the office/edit suite I am playing around with “new casualist" video art, (to co-op a phrase from Sharon Butler).

But that’s not all, gentle reader. Once I let myself leave the cult of painting, even more flow happened. I’ve been interviewing female artists and those in the arts for a series of micro-documentaries I’m producing—and writing, the thing I have the most trouble defining, figures in all this work prominently, if only for the sake of language. I’m voraciously reading like it’s  1988/89/90.

I wrote a ton of poetry in 1988/89/90, which in my mind, is one long year. There is a valid explanation. As a day job, I waited tables on a train car and travelled. I took poetry classes at the University of Chicago Graham School, and I broke my leg and wore a cast up to my pelvis for almost a year. Actually, the cast went through 3 phases becoming shorter with each cast. The actual casting sitch was about 6 months with crutches and and your basic gimpness lasting for the remainder of the year. I’m not sure if the above order is even correct. It was a long year and lot happened. Merlot and caffeine were involved. Chicago. 

Like everyone just discovering themselves, I got hooked on the Beat generation. After doing a few poetry readings, my poetry teacher invited me over to her place in Hyde Park for tea. She told me I should be submitting my work to publications like the Paris Review. I never did. I don’t know why. Most of my poems were about food. My day job was as a waitress. Later, a flood came along and I saw my writing folder floating in the basement. There was a red millipede or two. I let it all go. Only one poem survived and in the interim I had chronicled the better parts of my first marriage in a zine. My ex asked me not to write about him after the divorce. Or maybe I was afraid writing would beat painting, like paper trumps rock. When you’re in a cult, you get like that. Everyone is competing for your attention and in some weird way you champion the underdog until it’s no longer the underdog and you let it work itself out. The same happened with abstraction and representation, painting and video, video and writing, writing and painting. Cicadas, all of it.

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Feb 9, 2016

What I do when I should be looking for work*

Nashville

* more on this later