The art I've been working on lately...

I posted this before, but I wanted to talk about it and my ideas behind what I’m doing and will continue to do because I think I really did find my niche.

The text says “sometimes the only person you want to talk to is the only person you can’t talk to.” I wrote this phrase over and over on an old bed sheet, and I’m close to being done with it. Once done I am going to hang it up somewhere in my house, potentially cutting them into strips and hanging them on various walls in a room.

During my junior year of college I took an independent study with my sculpture professor just to research more artists who have made or were making things that inspired me. I didn’t feel like my university’s art history department focused on any current or recent artists, and that was extremely disappointing for me. I discovered new movements and artists that I don’t think I would know about without my professor’s help (that’s how I found my favorite artist, Jenny Holzer).

I stumbled upon an artist one day when looking through the books he had me purchase.  This artist, Jackie Winsor, had an incredible piece that I’ve been fascinated with ever since. It’s called Bound Square.

It’s a process art piece, something I’ve never heard of before. I really didn’t understand process art, but Winsor has described working with these materials and said that she keeps working on them until there is a sort of balance between the wood and the rope. She doesn’t know when that will be, but it’s more of a feeling than a set destination. I really like that.

So I took that, along with my love for Jenny Holzer’s text based truisms (shown below) and ran with it. I combined my love of tongue in cheek, inspirational, gritty, emotional, and/or simple phrases and started writing them over and over until they felt done.

I want the words that I write to become so familiar to my hand that I can write them out of muscle memory, instead of thinking about each word. I want to say the phrase over and over in my head until I forget what the phrase, or even each individual word, means. I want to write until I forget why I’m writing in the first place.

I’ve decided to use similar words in all of my phrases in order to keep a reoccurring vagueness to them:

Someone, anyone, everyone, no one, sometimes, anytime, every time, something, anything, everything, nothing, nobody, somebody, anybody, everybody, any day, someday, everyday, every way, no way, some way, any way

Basically I want to use some- , every- , no- , and any- in all of my phrases. 

I have a few pieces in mind that I will be working on after the bed sheet one is complete; the phrases include:

“Sometimes everyone is out to get me.”

“Someone will write a story about today.”

“I can’t seem to feel anything substantial.”

“Sometimes an answers worth can be measured by whether or not the question should be asked.”

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I have some old pieces before I started writing phrases with those words.

“I’ve yet to define myself.”

The hands, made of chicken wire, spell out “FOREIGN” in American Sign Language. The words on the back wall are just synonyms for the word “connection.”

“Holiest Matrimoney”, “Planned Parentless”, “Overpopuleaving”, and “Best Fitting Genes.”

(Based on issues that people view as intrusive [gay marriage, abortion, immigration, and surrogacy (I think? I forget)] but really don’t affect anyone but the people involved. So I made them physically intrusive by placing them in the middle of a sidewalk on my campus.)

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So yeah. I’m trying to get pumped about making art again since I haven’t done so in a while. I’ll try to keep everyone updated on what I’m doing, and hopefully the piece I’m working on now will be finished, hung up, and photographed soon.