I had a pretty awesome studio visit with SWN today which proved my theory that there is not enough time for us to talk about the many subjects in which we share a passion.

I recall the first day that we all got together on the tipping floor and she and I knew that we had RISD in common. Prior to that, we had seen each other’s work and each got the quick elevator speech delivered during the meet and greet, both of which whet our pallets for deeper conversation. It seems like since then, we have both been waiting with anticipation to have one on one time and it has taken us four months into the residency to have that happen. But today it finally did and I couldn’t be happier or more satisfied.

Sarah sent me home with two books from her juicy library. I have been thinking a lot about Brian Jungen lately and honed in on his title publication from his show at the Vancouver Art Gallery. We nerded out (actually the majority of our 3 hour long meeting was nerding out) about his ability to transform objects, which led Sarah to suggest a second catalogue from a recent show at the MOCC titled Manufactured: The Conspicuous Transformation of Everyday Objects. We referenced similar inspirations and opened new doors for familiar trajectories.

I shared my recent frustrations and we got lost in points and lines and planes and volumes and talked about Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and drew lineages within our greater scope of making. She drew out of me the connections that I didn’t see before our visit and we allowed to lay rest the points that will never become lines, but regarded them as pertinent positions of trajectories- potential or not.

She reminded me of my infatuation with the line when she showed me her metal “drawings” and gave me permission to explore the non-linear trajectories when she showed me the small Bible works she was composing on plywood.

I really admire the faith that she has in herself and the work that she creates. She has so many ideas happening simultaneously and allows them to exist in the their own sphere. My constipation has been the over-intellectualization and the hard hand that needs to draw the line and make the connection.

I have just recently relocated, both my studio and my living situation. In the move, I purged and eliminated. I’m sure you have experienced the letting go of objects and ideals that come with moving. I chose to make this a very conscious effort and subtracted the majority of the work that I have created for this residency. It takes me a long time, with a lot of bad work to figure out what I really want to do. Unlike Sarah, I am not good at organizing and just need to poop and poop and poop until my intellectual colon gets a feel for what it wants to digest. So I have pooped the baroque comparison to the French revolution. I have pooped the idea of making a literal representational landscape. I have pooped the idea of having commentary be bigger than the sculptural considerations and am left with the fiber that will take me through the end of this journey.

I have decided that I want to make representational likenesses of scavengers. I want to celebrate the biological necessity of our decomposers. My first task is the vulture and I have a hyena in waiting.