13
Jun
2013
0

day 4 | i keep bumping up against writing

in grad school, i studied graphic communication, design. i literally ate up the language, socio-psych, philosophy, and cultural research along with the manipulation of the flat static space. ha. glasses then bifocals required in support of that munching. pushing back from the computer at professorly insistence and pulling up to old fashioned digital technologies, all ten of them, i really began unfolding. the scents of contemporary art and design history fascinated not in and of themselves, instead, primarily as a context, a setting, in which to translate the hum and thrum of what was happening around me both then and now. the discovery of my own ten digit technology (using my freaking bare hands composed of two opposables with eight clutchers and pointers) was like stepping into my own skin for the first time. i began the course change from designer to artist. frankly though, i wouldn’t even have noticed these changes except out of fear (again, fear? really? well, the low grade kind) i couldn’t get to and hold or maturate an idea (thesis) plus fear of boring art historians through regurgitory acts of research shoveling. the low grade performatory fear had me unpacking it all on the page. forget the academic writing etiquette which had bound up my pen historically, just lay it all out, don’t worry about cutting the fat off either. well, not all of it came out via my unpacking pen, some manifested in objects occupying real space. self side-note, i didn’t knowingly write or make about my tribe or the unit. knowingly came later. underneath designer, artist, educator, once tribal member and wife, laid writer. it gave access to all parts of myself.

what kind of writer is yet to be determined for it is still a tad unruly, visceral. scratching pen to page, thumbing my way across a keypad with all its faulty but humorous auto corrects and my embarrassingly frequent thumbos, to what intent? to make writing a full blown habit, moderately tameable, perhaps even a professional practice, harnessing it to some degree to see where it will take me, i have some hopes. i don’t want another CAA ad for a professor of experimental art writing or a position to facilitate the play of language between design and studio to pass under my nose because i’ve not prepared. i am not sure were writing will take me, but i am pretty dang sure i would thrive to return to the studio mentoring environment to guide practical art writing, writing as sketching, experimental writing, both linear and nonlinear process to get to the visual gesture, to get to the meat, to facilitate the practice of making, to explore the intersection of written and visual language in studio practices. the writing life is a key component in the contemporary art climate. 

writing already informs my practice, unpacks my life, but where will it take me? pretty clear on that i want to follow.


PRACTICE TO DATE 

art pocessing writing practice 
art + life merge | thinking outloud blog [evolution viewing, begin with 2006] 
art writing practice 

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