Another Question

"So What?"
I was asked this question recently.
I didn't know what to say.
I said nothing.
If I am asked again, I would say;
'If a gardener plants a nut, that grows into a tree,
does a squirrel ask so what?"

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

The most difficult question for me has been simply, why do you make art?
I am not sure if there is an answer. It cant be, because I like to, or because its cool, or fun. When I was younger I thought I would pursue architecture, or biology, herpetology, or professional skateboarding. I thought it would be great to raise birds or turtles; which is somewhat of a creative process, but there is something that I was born with that forces me to interpret the world through my hands and eyes. It is somewhat of a condition or disease that I cannot really escape. Regardless if I have to be a brick mason, I will go home completely exhausted, hardly able to move and I will draw and fabricate the objects that I have been thinking about all day as a means of escape and obtainment.

Questions

My hardest question (which has come both from others, but most often from myself), is similar to what others have already posted thus far: Why do I do what I do? Five years ago, I was asked this question before a fiction reading--I said, "I just like to tell stories, I guess." But if that was ever true, it isn't anymore, and that has made the question much harder to answer.

Because I don't like to tell stories. I like words. It isn't the story, the what happens next of it all, that fascinates me, it's language--sound and rhythm and the un-fixedness of meaning. So I write because I like language? This has always seemed insufficient (and perhaps linked to the problem of saying "I am a writer" rather than "I am an artist," because really, who among us isn't a writer, in the sense that we are able to write, and exercise this skill?). Really, I don't know the answer to this question. I would like to say it is because I was destined to, I can't do anything else, but I suspect deep down it may be because I make myself do it, because hard as it sometimes is, and much as I sometimes don't want to, there are questions I still haven't answered, and ones I haven't asked.

I forget this often in graduate school, when the next deadline or assignment is looming, when I have 24 freshman research papers to grade. And it's hard sometimes, to make myself. But I always come back, again and again, because the one thing I think I know is that I don't want to stop.

Hard question

I've been thinking all week about what I would write for this post, and I think in the end it's really a question of honesty, both with all of you and with myself. This first year of grad school has been rough stress-wise and challenging work-wise. It has made me question myself and my goals, and has led me to the following hard question: Does being a costume designer make you happy?

Hard to say. Sometimes the show can break your spirit. Sometimes it's all the outside stuff that happens with living and going to school that does it. I'm certainly not ready to throw in the towel on theatre by any means, but I would say I'm still working on the question of what I want to be when I grow up. If I had to answer that question, I would say I just want to be happy. So I guess I'm still working out if theatre is the path that will lead me there.

I had one professor in my undergrad who said that theatre design is pretty much hell on earth, and if you could see yourself doing anything else in the world, you should probably do that. Hmm...

Then again, he was a bit jaded. I think maybe the thing to consider is that I can't wait for life to present me some great revelation about my future, but rather to make it happen myself. With that in mind, it is another piece of advice that came out of 'MFA Kabarett' that I will remember dearly for a long time: You have to fall in love with the show. If you don't, your design will suffer.

So, I figure there's nothing like being in love to make you happy, and maybe that will be the key next year and forever.

Hardest Question

Can you see yourself being happy doing anything other than music?

I spent many years pondering this question which now seems easy. No. The desire to make more money and have a more "normal" lifestyle could not trump the spiritual and intellectual rewards of performing and teaching music. Because of this realization, I decided to start work on a doctoral degree here at OSU.

Hardest Question?

I think we were supposed to post something like the hardest question we were ever asked. There have been many, but here's one:

If you could wake up tomorrow one of 3 things: you could wake up as a director of a film and have to face the challenges of organizing your crew and calling all the shots to make sure that everything gets done properly or if you could wake up as an actor on the set of a film and have to face the challenges of preparing for your role today - mentally getting into the place you need to be to deliver your dialogue and get into your character and taking direction about what worked and what needs to be fixed or if you could wake up as an artist and face the challenges that would come to you in the studio - deciding how to go about working on something, how to talk about something, or how to begin or finish your newest work...which would you choose?

Trisha Brown Rep- Sololos

Sololos showing schedule:

May 27th @RPAC 12:30pm

May 28th @OVAL (Rain Date) 11am

MAy 30th @ Sullivant Hall Atrium 10:30am

Wish to see you there!

YF

"...explore the space!"

Extroformalist Potentialities: Form, Variation, Effect
I will be presenting my exit review at 3pm tomorrow (Wednesday) in the Gui Gallery on the first floor of Knowlton Hall. You are all welcome to attend, anyone can come. I'll be discussing a potential trajectory for practice in the context of art and architecture. You can come and mock my ignorance in art!

FRIDAY may 16th

Caitlin, Amy, and I will be discussing poems and short samples of our work in Hopkins 052.

See you then--
Sara

Point A to Point B

I refer to beginning and end as Point A to Point B because for me that is what is important. The beginning is a thought. The end is when that thought is no longer important and I have moved onto a new thought. So rather than refer to it as an end. I will refer to it as Point B. The next point on a journey that has multiple beginnings but no end.

Begin and end

The beginning is hard to trace.  I can understand an epiphany but beyond that immediacy it becomes grey.  I don't enjoy the process of painting, but I have fallen in love with it's economy.  When those feelings of anxiety and rank have calmed, that I would say (if it exists) would be closest to the end.

a circle's round it has no end...

For a possible explanation of how I begin and end here is my statement that hangs out with my piece:

Loud patterns and vivacious colors run throughout the clothes I wear as well as in my work. The articles of clothing become pieces to the greater whole, the outfit. I hoard ceramic commercial slip casting molds, much like I sift through the clothes in my closet. The finished accumulations of final cast objects are equivalent to shirts, sweaters, socks, and pants when they are put together. In the work the appropriated forms are placed into a copious arrangement of bright colors and combinations of pattern. Each individual part is monochromatically glazed in a shiny, candy-coated surface to complement the sumptuous and entangled congregation. They are packed together like a puzzle to satisfy my desire to arrange and organize with ultimate control. By this I mean, I dominate them by stripping their singular identities and positioning them so they are facing the same point like a crowd at an assembly. In this installation, the flock's locale in the space is near the stairs, which gives the viewer a range of vantage points.

*apparently I made up the word monochromatically, Steven Colbert was right it feels good.

FRIDAY may 9th

this Friday May 9th, we will meet down at the historic Lazarus building at the new OSU Urban Arts Space. Chris, Lisa, Rain, Eileen, Mike and myself have our MFA thesis shows up. the Arts Space is located at 50 W Town St....basically at the corner of Town & High. enter the side of the building off of Town, the Arts Space door will be on the right.

it's pretty easy to get down there by bus. the no. 2 will take you there and almost drops you right in front. get off at town & high, it follows the stops at broad and then state (for location reference). allow for at least a 20 minute ride if coming from campus. (that's my guess...someone else can chime in)

if driving, i suggest parking in a structure vs. on the street. it'll save a bit of money... the meters are highway robbery and only take 2 hours worth of coins.
see you then.... -meredith-

Beginning and Ending

Beginnings, for me, are usually the result of an obsession that finally gives way to a sentence. Most often, it's a scene I can't get out of my mind--a moment that was either transformative or characterizing of something/someone important to me. I'll play this scene again and again, and then I'll find myself telling a friend about it. (Oral communication is really the key to any of my written work; I almost always have to work out some complication in speech before understanding why I feel urged to the page.) The storytelling turns into a search for insight. If there's enough energy, I'll work on the issue for a long time, much to the chagrin of my company, perhaps, until I stumble upon the line or question that demands the memory be turned into art.

I suppose, then, that beginnings are the catharsis part of art-making for me. How cliche.

I tend to write slow. While some of my peers can dash off an essay or story or poem per week, it often takes me months to complete a single piece of prose. Every day, I start at the beginning and revise until I come to the white space that still needs filling, and then I slowly fill it, sentence by sentence, day by day. It's sadly not uncommon for me to spend an entire day working only to end up with one meager paragraph. It's also not uncommon for me to delete that paragraph once I overcome whatever roadblocks the piece presents. Very rarely does an essay or story come with the grace and inevitability of a waterfall, just flowing out onto the page of its own momentum. Though some writing sessions seem propelled by something other than me, the cynic inside remains convinced that some days are just good, and others, well, not so good. The acceptance of this has been hard. But I no longer worry that a bad writing day is a signal of the end of my career.

Endings are another matter. The beginning of a piece always carries with it the implication of the end, and so I cannot begin without looking ahead to the resolution. It's the only part of prose-writing I attempt to plan, even though my "planning" looks an awful lot like insomnia. While my beginnings are born of urgency and possibility, rather than careful assessment of an issue, my endings try to be more calculated. This does not generally work. Even when I'm so clever as to come up with the scene that will refract the opening just so, this cleverness hardly ever results from my nights toiling over how to exit the story in which I've come so far.

Stephen Dunn once said of sleep: "how hard I'd try when I couldn't,/how it would come/if only I could find a way/to enter and drift without concern/for what it is." I find endings to work similarly. The best ones are usually surprising. Their finality comes in the sentence I never expected to write, the sentence that overturns the insight that brought me to write in the first place, the sentence that does something wonderful and frustrating at the same time: makes me rethink my beginning.

How to begin and end

Beginning: I have a fortune cookie message in a small frame on my desk that says, "A job well begun is half done." I got it six or seven years ago, and its gone with me from an executive assistant job at a science museum to program director at an art college to here. As someone who has struggled with procrastination throughout my life, this little phrase has helped me avoid many of the inevitable all-nighters that go with meeting academic and professional deadlines. Thanks, little fortune cookie.

Also, when I'm really dragging my feet out of fear or uncertainty to start a project, I hear Bob Newhart's voice in my head. What he says comes from a skit on Mad TV where he played a psychotherapist. A patient comes into his office, complains bitterly about her boyfriend and how bad he makes her feel. He listens patiently, and then asks if he can offer two words of advice that will fix everything. She eagerly awaits his advice. He takes a deep breath, and then shouts at the top of his lungs, "STOP IT!" And then over and over again, "STOP IT! JUST STOP IT! STOP IT!" So, when I complain to myself about not knowing where to begin, Dr. Newhart reminds me to get over myself and just get on with it.

Ending: Beginning is much easier for me; I've got all kinds of beginnings all over my studio, and as my husband will attest, at home as well in the form of countless half-read books and half-finished home projects. I have about seven different journals that are half full (our yet-to-be-born children will have a field day trying to get it all into some sort of order when I'm gone); I just love writing in a fresh notebook! It's not that I will never finish these things; I do. But I realize that I need to have several things going at once so that when I get stuck on one, I have another to go to. All of these things influence one another, weaving a rich and interesting web of ideas.

So, how do I end? When I see the final piece, stroke, element, page. It's like music: there are certain notes and chords that signal the completion of a piece. Without these, the audience is left in suspension, not knowing if it's over or not (in the right piece, this can be the perfect way to end). The fadeout is another method of ending for music. I think I just "hear" the final touch needed, and stop. There is a sense that to go any further will ruin the piece or set it off on another path that would need to be followed for a long time to reach another conclusion. Sometimes I chose to keep going if I've got the energy; otherwise, I end the first piece and do my favorite thing with the new idea: begin again.

Job-Hunting Post-MFA

Fellow classmates,

To explain my recent consecutive absences, I've promised Rebecca to blog about where I've been, and how it's been going: the dreaded job hunt. In the past two weeks, I've spent 42 total hours in the car, traveling everywhere from upstate New York to the Black Belt in Alabama, interviewing for teaching positions in English departments as diverse as this campus, meeting with students, and generally putting my best face forward, which is exhausting.

(In Alabama, by the way, my "best face" was the fiance face. My boyfriend, also graduating this year from OSU's creative writing MFA program, took us to interview for positions at Judson College, a 192-student, all-girls' Southern Baptist College. We were warned by the head of the department--a hip thirty-something who wishes the campus who go co-ed--to pretend we were engaged, rather than "living in sin," as we do here in Columbus, where our progressive adviser refers to my boyfriend as my "partner." I donned my great-grandmother's engagement ring, which has a re-sizing device on it, and kept my mouth shut most of the time. We'll hear about the jobs in two weeks.)

It is impossible for me to discuss the job hunt without discussing MFA programs in general. First of all, I'm a big advocate. My three years here at OSU have been incredible, not only for the time they've given me to write, but for surrounding me with people who obsess about 'narrative intentionality' and 'point of view' as much as I do. MFA programs of all disciplines help students hone their gift of time with the self-motivation necessary to pursue fine arts, and introduce us to people in the field who can guide us in our future careers (is networking not one of the most important things we learn?). These programs also require of us final projects that translate into portfolios we can use on the job market.

But MFA programs have some downsides. The most major of these is that MFA programs produce a certain number of graduates per year with relatively comparable CV's, making it difficult for search committees at other universities to pick out the most worthy candidates. Now, I don't profess to be more experienced than my competitors. Most of my classmates in Denney Hall are excellent teachers and writers who deserve every opportunity to succeed. Some of my classmates are writing books I expect could redefine some of the genre lines of our MFA program (Caitlin and Sara are two of them). But when similar teaching credentials are placed side-by-side, the new criteria becomes publications.

I am twenty-five years old. I came to OSU immediately after my graduation from Ithaca College as an undergraduate. With a possible recession on the horizon, MFA programs are getting younger and younger; undergraduates look to the safety and experience a graduate program can provide. And I've gained invaluable teaching experience here in addition to writing. And I've even got a draft of my first book, which I expect to be completed by the fall. But that book is not published. Not yet. It is hard to convince a search committee of your potential--even more so that your potential is greater than another candidate's.

I try to tell myself that next year is not the end-all-be-all of my career. Most likely, my career and most of yours will continue to evolve for the next forty years. When I'm fifty, I'll probably have a hard time remembering that year I spent bumming around, doing odd jobs at twenty-five. But now, of course, I am panicked. Student loan repayments, health insurance, credit card payments--I can't remember the last time I slept through the night. I have to buy the expensive eye cream in order to combat the bags and dark circles that have made this one year look like ten. I wish I could set aside my penchant for instant gratification, and just be happy to have turned in my thesis on Monday, complete with a title I actually like and 200 pages of the most enjoyable prose I've ever written. I should be amazed that I wrote nonfiction based not in the depression I once anticipated, but in the joys I've discovered during my tenure here.

If I can offer any advice to third-year MFA students, it's this: don't spend your last year living between lives--the one you're in, and the one you want. It makes both of them feel muted. Remember that despite any successes around you, most of your peers aren't sure how they're going to make their degree translate into a career, and that we chose the fine arts field because we love it, not because it's necessarily secure. Learn, if possible, to embrace the decades ahead as uncertain, and to trust that your career--unlike that of say, an accountant--ages well. Our art gets better with age; this is practically inevitable if we never stop working. And though teaching provides a reliable paycheck, and though students provide energy for our own pursuits, we remain ultimately responsible for the growth of our work.

My apologies for what probably sounds so cliche. But this is stuff I've periodically forgotten this year. And the stuff I wish I could have channeled more when I was sitting in the interview seat. MFA students have already proven their dedication to work; that's how we've all gotten here in the first place. But it's easy to don your academic hat when going for a job. It's much harder to bring yourself into play.

I'm uneasy with the idea of saying I'm engaged when I'm not. I'm uneasy with the idea of required chapel on Tuesday mornings. I'm uneasy with how much I'll agree to when a job is dangled in front of me.

I have no answers. But it's good to be back. I look forward to seeing you all on Friday.

FRIDAY the 25th

We are going to start at Room 443 on the 4th Floor of Hopkins Hall, then move to nic and Scotts Studio just down the hall

To be more specific

Gemüsetotenmesse
Gemmüse- Vegetables
Totenmesse- Requiem
Vegetable Requiem or Requiem for Vegetables
-I don't know enough about the language used in music to know which would be a better translation.

ten words

love
loss
loneliness
emptiness
family
brevity
death
desire
image
sound

Directions to the Drake Union

Hello all! The Drake is located at 1849 Cannon Dr, which is directly between Morrill and Lincoln Towers and the Olentangy River. CABS Campus Loop North will take you to the towers, and Campus Loop South will take you directly to the Drake. We are going to start off in room 78. The easiest way to get there is to enter the building from the parking lot level (as opposed to the pedestrian over passes) on the East side of the building. You should use the entrance on the South end by the loading dock. Once you enter, room 78 is all the way down the hall on your left. See you there!

http://www.osu.edu/map/building.php?building=296

Directions to Hughes Hall

Hughes Hall is located right on College Rd, across the street from the Wexner Center. Enter the building from the north entrance off college rd, go down the stairs and head towards the west end of the building. I don't believe it has a room number. It is a medium size lecture hall.

http://www.osu.edu/map/building.php?building=042

Tuba Quartet, Tuba Solo mp3

The first audio clip is of a rectial of mine from last year. It is one movement of a Sonata by Telemann originally for flute. The second clip is a tuba quartet with the lead voice being played on Euphonium by my former teacher from Manhattan School of Music Toby Hanks. This recording has special meaning for me because the composition, Dances, was written by John Stevens, also one of my former teachers. This was composed and written in the late 1970's. I am sure you will hear the musical influence of that time. This is from Toby Hanks solo album, Sampler.

http://boxstr.com/files/1773726_eetkj/02%20Track%202.mp3

http://boxstr.com/files/1773678_yd9nb/01%20Dances.mp3

Corrected link to Brass Quintet

http://boxstr.com/files/1749443_oolh4/03%20Track%203.mp3

Brass Quintet- sound clip

This is my first attempt at linking to audio files on boxtr.com. This link (hopefully) will take you to a live recording in 1993 of the Manhattan Brass Quintet, of which I was a member, playing one movement (summer) from John Steven's Seasons. This represents one of the main types of ensembles I perform in regularly. The standared brass quintet consists of 2 trumpets, 1 horn, 1 trombone, and 1 tuba. Many Universities have professional brass quintets as part of the standard load for music faculty.

[url=http://boxstr.com/files/1749443_oolh4/03%20Track%203.mp3]03 Track 3.mp3[/url] [b] [url=http://boxstr.com]HOSTED FREE AT BOXSTR.COM[/url][/b]

form reconciles animus?

As a preview to my presentation... Many critics in the past few decades have manipulated the phase "form follows function" to reposition the relationship of architecture to its constituents. Though the phrase can be traced back to American sculptor Horatio Greenough, its architectural roots are with Louis Sullivan who triggered the careers of such architects as Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Alvar Aalto, Mies van der Rohe and Gerrit Rietveld to name a few. Function, or "program" as we refer to it, is a rather impossible thing to avoid, yet we can consider more contemporary issues to associate with form.

Attempting to frame my work in a more diachronic relationship with this issue, I've revised the statement to "form reconciles animus". The most prominent techniques with form today revolve around an issue of effects generated by form (a few of which I'll discuss in my presentation). The "thing" that generates the effect could be called its animus...the disposition or animating spirit about the architecture. It's no longer the idea of the Sublime mentioned countlessly through art and architectural history, but more of its antithesis.

Since I will be showing a lot of work this week I won't post a lot of images, but here is one of my first projects in grad school. It dealt with adapting a new wall system to a historical Usonian house in northern Ohio by Frank Lloyd Wright. I chose to work with light and form. Here's my "solar aperture wall".

Directions for tomorrow - West Campus

Hi all,

The Sherman Studio Art Center is on west campus. Here's the URL for it on the OSU website: http://www.osu.edu/map/building.php?building=358. If you are parking on main campus, it's pretty convenient to take either Campus Loop North or South, or North Express bus. All of them come out here. These buses take you down Woody Hayes, which then becomes Carmack. The bus will go under a footbridge, turn left, and circle a large parking lot, making a few stops along the way. You will pass ACCAD and Sherman on your right, and then the stop is on the far east end of the parking lot near large sports fields and the Jesse Owens West field house.

Otherwise, there are large (W)B and (W)C lots right by the building. I would assume B and C permits would work out here; does anyone know differently?

The building has a "blow glass" neon sign on the east end of the building. The sculpture section of the studios is on the west end of the building. Go in the west door that says "Art Show" on it. My studio is off the wood shop in about the center of that wing.

See you tomorrow!
Nicole
614-961-0790 cell

Between You and Me...and what we share and not share

What I do.
I move around and I arrange images of people moving around.
I am interested in looking at the dynamic of dance and the metaphor created through the image that contains moving bodies.
We (dance artists) are dealing with momentary images that are not possible to duplicate.
So, what happens during this moment that we share in this particular place and time?
What can remain with us and what has already gone by?

Rather than looking at the actually content of a dance I created,
I look at what was created in the room between different audience members and the dance.

My recent project, the one that premiered two weeks ago, dealt with manipulating the boundary of seeing. The audience were seated in one of the biggest studio space in an arena setting while the piece happens in and out of their sight, sometimes up close and sometimes blocked by other audience members. What I intended to highlight from this piece was that it is the act of watching that dictates how an event was remembered. Therefore, what the event "was."

My blog/website

Hey, I am developing a blog/gallery/website of sorts for another class and thought that now I have it up and running a little bit I'd share it. It is still under construction of sorts, but I thought you might like to check it out!

www.sx0t.com

Yet more words from the Theatre

evocative
contextual
dramatic
symbolic
communication
dynamic
translate
reinterpret
imaginative
collaborative

words schmerds!

domestic
ritual
hygienic
sanitary
surprise
residue
contamination
grotesque
repulsion
anxiety

This Tuba is is my main instrument. It is pitched in C and was designed by OSU professor of Tuba, Jim Akins. He based it on an old York tuba which was owned by the previous OSU tuba professor, Robert Leblanc. The York Band Instrument Company was one of the few American producers of tubas. The tubist of the Chicago Symphony, Arnold Jacobs, played on one for his 50 year career. His sound help define the "American" sound as "dark" and "warm".

Song
Wind
Vibration

Repeat
Emote
Explore

Ingenuity
Inspiration
Perseverance
Patience

wiggity words

photo by Christoph Turowski

dynamic
body
improvisation
intuitive
real
unreal
abstract
evocative
funny
idiosyncratic

words...

Repetition.
Accumulation.
Accretion.
Stacking.
Crocheting.
Tatting.
Texture.
Billowing.
Monochromatic.
Beige.

Tincture

sublimate
dissolve
evaporate
transmute
sinter
calcine
coagulate
putrefy
liquefy
digest

boundaries

space
wonder

this is

open
raw

maps
& mirrors

missing

Pictures, as promised

Untitled, After Rilke. Ink and acrylic on panel, 2007.

As yet untitled. Charcoal, graphite, and ink on calque, 2008.

Words

Please, don't leave
I need, want
Love still [though]
Already gone

Or:

search, tear, unearth, reflect, mirror, lose, discuss, dispose, refute, regain

Word

Ten 

words

that

describe 

who 

I 

am.

blank

blank

blank.

words

surface

kneading

expansive

attitude

residual

saturated

burst

force

steak

interstellar

rhymes with birds

ocular
homemade
olfactory
pattern
contradiction
trajectory
sensation
interruption
memory
transference

some words

accretion, landscape, infinite, cloud, surface, mark, figure, material, execution, time.

Words...

Edit
Blur
Fame
Celebrity
Conversation
Abstraction
Leo
Distraction
Obsession
Discovery

Words.

Absence.
Absurd.
Grotesque.
Miniature.
Magic.
Neo-real.
Non-sense.
Phantasmagoria.
Repetition.
Uncanny.

nicole's ten words

accumulation, evaporation, transparency, water, absence, distance, migration, subtlety, peripheral, aviaries

upcoming show

Adriana Durant's MFA project, Life Like Make Believe, will be performed this Thursday-Saturday at 8pm in the Sullivant Hall theater. Tix are $5 with buckID. Come if you can!

No Pictures!

Amazingly enough, we still need cords to move images from cameras to computers. Since I don't have a cord, I will post images later on. (This cord makes me think of the umbilical cord.) I have a slight "thing" against blogging, so I am a bit reluctantly writing. I will tell you all more later and show some images.

Do you recognize this face?

In process is a new member of the protobird lineage. This one is being manipulated by hand.
Go to my blog to see the history .

I find this strangely beautiful

Words from the Theatre

I am an MFA costume designer in the Theatre department. So in a nutshell, I read scripts, analyze characters,themes, etc. and work with a design/production team and actors to create a portion of the physical environment of the play. I am currently in the middle of designing for "Wild Stages: Kabarett MFA!" which is an original work (meaning there is no set script, making this a non-traditional process) based on the cabaret scene in Europe between 1890 and 1930. It's sort of like old school SNL. The show opens in early May, so it's going to be a busy quarter for me!

My sketches are in the costume shop right now, but hopefully I'll steal them back for a little while so I can share some of the process work with you. And then, in the end, there will be production photos and of course the actual play. (May 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 17 at 7:30 pm, May 4 at 3:00 pm at the Bowen Theatre)

It is difficult to say what my "style" is or to give some sort of artist's statement, because the nature of my work is to be adaptive to different projects' and directors' needs. I will say, though, that the notion of collaboration is very important to me. I could sit around and draw or paint all day, but the excitement for me is in interacting with a whole group of people to eventually come to a common vision that facilitates the communication of an idea or story to the audience.

at a certain point you have to look elsewhere

I’ve posted below a link to some older work of mine. It’s been a loooong time since I posted anything new to it, but it’s a solid body of work that I recognize as important to what I’m doing now. These older works are a sort of “dumbing down” of painting for me; looking for what's important in the idea and nevermind the product. How many different types of solace are there? Through that detachment in the work I became bored with satellite thoughts orbiting the bigger questions and started paying more attention to the spaces of the wall revealed in between the way I was hanging these pieces. Making that space just as interesting as the decoration are to the wall, instead of a respite. That in-between-ness in the works, in the studio, language, understanding, conversation, etc. is what I’m working with now. The weather is changing. The studio pictures I’ve posted here are of recent works based on fortification patterns: migraine-induced concentric patterns I see when my eyes are shut.

www.paulwaltersimmons.com

Recent Conjurations.

SOMEONE TOLD ME ART WAS NEAT!

 

"My refrigerator sounds like Flipper.   I like the sound of switchblades.  A Ghostbuster would be the best job ever!    I will conquer ugly!  Jens Lekman April 1st!  I love people who love robots more than people.  I want to go back to the first time I heard Daniel Johnston in a wet basement in the guts of an anonymous  East Lansing College basement, that night was like a mountain.  I passed out in front of a church in bed of rhododendrons.  Names of flowers are tough to spell.  Always bring weapons when you time travel. " - Ryan Estep

Welcome to Town

"I have found the most satisfactory anaesthetic to be the one, two, three, mixture; by which I mean a mixture of alcohol, chloroform, and ether, in the proportion of one part alcohol, two parts of chloroform, and three parts of ether."
-What A Young Wife Ought To Know

dinner time.

"Ritual is an action frequently repeated, in a form largely laid down in advance; it aims to get those actions right. Everyone present knows what should happen, and notices when it does not."
-Margaret Visser, The Rituals of Dinner

check out my blog: meredithhost.blogspot.com

Chopin's Cantabile, etc.

Hi everyone! I wrote my thesis on a short, overlooked and untitled work by Frederic Chopin from 1834, marked Cantabile. (Above are a facsimile of the original and my transcription.) This word—literally 'singable' in Italian—became the springboard for a broad investigation into its eighteenth and nineteenth-century uses as a broad style, tempo and expressive markings (written on scores), a specific type of aria that peaked in the 1830s, and a musical texture with certain melodic, harmonic, and embellishing characteristics. For the Phd. I am currently most interested in the powerful eighteenth-century aesthetic ideal of 'cantabile' that initiated these later manifestations. I recently explored the angle of 'musical government,' and the fact that a restrained style like cantabile regulated expression and conditioned a response of unanimous enthusiasm from the eighteenth-century collective. Because of my background in piano, I'm most interested in opera and works for piano, and the merging of singing melody into keyboard works. But I really want to make sense of this powerful musical aesthetic that dominated for over a hundred years...

Hi Everybody

To begin. I write both fiction and poetry (fiction being my official academic designation here at OSU). At the moment, I am working on a "poetic project" developing around my research of the history of anatomy theaters and medical dissection. This subject has acted as a kind of springboard, which has launched me into a (for me at least) complex navigation between using research and events as the basis for work, but not making the work "about" them per se. Needless to say, I like taking up medical terminology and using it in different contexts (the inner spaces of the body are named with such pretty words!). On the page, I am interested in space, how the body of the poem operates both on the page and aurally, how the visual shape comes to interact with the "map" of sound (I have recently been re-inspired by Ann Lauterbach's visit). At the moment, this is the work I am most excited about--I hope ultimately to turn this into a chapbook collection of poems. In terms of fiction, I am working on a few very short pieces that experiment with the ways in which changing syntax can change affect, and the ways we need to change language in order to write about trauma (or from a traumatized perspective). On a side note, I have also just written a story "about" gorillas. I am currently reading Ann Lauterbach's collection of essays ("The Night Sky") and a book by David Ohle called "Motorman." Also, some Amy Bender and Jane Austen, just for fun.

My palette and my brush strokes

that becomes...

text + images

The landscape. The surface. The figure. Movement. The indefinite. The infinite.

I am interested boundaries and thresholds, experiences at the edges of perception. Beneath a façade of quiet, of perhaps emptiness resides an accumulation of information, the product of a single process followed to its logical conclusion. In some cases, the event itself has passed and the work is residue. In others, such as my sound and performance work, the event is unfolding and encompasses the viewer.

In all of these investigations, the passage of time and its relationship to bodies, marks, or sounds is pivotal. Each work evolves out of a system, an order of experimentation. Whether it is the dripping of water onto a page or walking for miles in the desert, each work speaks to a question about the nature of time, of intimacy with material and place, and a physicality of experience.

Included here are several images of drawings from last quarter and documentation of recent performance work in the California desert.

Dance

For my MFA conert (next weekend), I have choreographed Life Like Make Believe, a twenty minute dance theatre piece in which five physically dynamic dancers inhabit a world where the quirks of the Sullivant Hall theater are exposed, 2x 4’s are suspended from the ceiling and a broken cot serves as the set design/playground. Arriving in masquerade costumes, dancers flaunt their musical talents, translate memories and hurl pencils. Life Like Make Believe is a story-like mosaic.

As a dance maker, performer, and teacher, I address the effort and dynamic qualities of the body in performance as they relate to time and space. My choreography explores movement invention as a main component of dance making, drawing its content from improvisation, imagery, and thought. The work involves an experimental movement vocabulary, supported by a solid technical base, driven by action and risk. As a choreographer, I create abstract atmospheres that depict character and relationship without plot, and reality without being narrative.

Obsession...the good kind

Idolizing Leo Version 2.mp3

(Be sure to check the link to the mp3)


This is a little snip from my artist statement:

"My recent work develops out of a fascination for exploring Hollywood films and celebrity as a process. I start by finding images or references that serve as a visual point of departure. It is most often a pop culture reference which has some level of personal significance or attachment. My process of working involves taking these images and allowing them to be deliberately manipulated and broken down, separating the image from its original meaning and content. My goal is to allow myself to become completely immersed in my image and explore these images to a point that they begin to take on their own identity. I consider myself not only a “consumer, watcher, recipient, and victim [of mass media and pop culture]. But also a user of that media and culture: I am a chooser, interpreter, shaper, fellow player, participant, and storyteller” (Gerard Jones, Killing Monsters). The finished artwork is often a byproduct of the process.
When the work is reassembled, in whatever form it may take on, it becomes something that begins to transcend its origins and take on a new existence. For me, the process of this work is a digestive process. By turning these references into shards and fragments and subsequently reconstructing them, new work emerges. Through obsession, I create."

I hope this quarter to begin examining what it means to be obsessed with the movies that I am and to dig a little deeper into ideas about recreating celebrity and whatnot.

Amy's First Post!

Here are two links to pieces I have on a couple of small online journals. Both pieces are part of my MFA thesis, which explores the relationship between my parents' courtship, marriage, and divorce, and my first major relationship at seventeen years old. I'm working on a particular use of the present tense in my writing; although my thesis takes place entirely in the past, I'm interested in the conflation of time, so that the insight of an adult narrator can very subtly shadow that of my characters at different points in the narrative, analyzing their motivations with each other. The two links I'm posting show pieces centered on my parents, whose romance, for me, is as Kathryn Harrison's describes in The Kiss--a lifelong obsession of all sons and daughters. Thanks for reading!

http://www.wordriot.org/template_2.php?ID=1398

http://www.flashquake.org/archive/vol6iss4/nonfiction/errands.html

a pinch of salt, a dash of water, a sheet of newsprint

Using easy-to-find and cheap materials, I've been trying to make pieces that transcend the sum of their parts. Newsprint has provided a lot of inspiration, as has road salt, ceramic slip, charcoal, fabric, paint, and water. I have a background in painting and ceramics, so it's really interesting to see how they are making their way into the work. I'm trying to generate as many experiments as possible, which has been a really liberating way of working in comparison to the narrative, symbolism-rich work I made prior to OSU. The predominant themes I see at play so far include: making evident the presence and absence of water; referencing fabric without using fabric; challenging viewer expectations of materials; and engaging the floor/the lower periphery of the eye. Over the break, I put together a blog: http://www.nicolemgibbs.blogspot.com/. I feel so official now!

It gets into your eyes

Above are a few images from recent work that was included in my second quarter review and also parts from my statement and some questions to think about.  My most recent work consists of largish (around 6ft x 5ft) paintings on canvas and small, odd shaped drawings on paper.  I am interested in the ability of the painting surface to provide a space for fragmentation and flux, simultaneous associations and stimulate sensation.  Painting is an open, liquid form and is received through the openings in the world, through the senses... I don't know why this paragraph is looking like a link....it won't take you anywhere...this is where you need to be... I will put some more images on some sort of blog or my space page by Friday!

Everything is fragmented by everything else.

It's a cut.

This A cuts this B cuts this ship cuts this sky cuts this water.

Platinum Black.

Your love has just gone platinum.

Language can both cut and inflate.  Each word occupies space on its own.  But a word is never on its own.  A mark is never on its own.  The conflation of marks and words fills a pocket of space with air.  Sometimes the pocket bursts.  Sometimes the pocket of space becomes so enormous, its skin rubbing up against the farthest matter in the universe.  Sometimes the pocket of space catches the gaze of a viewer and fixes itself to the gaze.  

It gets into your eyes.  Sometimes it gets into your eyes like glass sparkles.  Sometimes like fireflies.  Sometimes like a kaleidoscope filled with tilt-a-whirl and mountain dew.  The catching and fixing is a sensual event that suspends time and transcends times.

It's a form of mediation.

The scale of a gesture is determined by the next gesture.  Even the frame is a gesture.  Is the frame even a gesture?

Be the Ultimate Juicy Girl.

The everyday affair.

Catch a piece of pickled purple sparkling slipper and slip into backwards, towards, higher, further, faster, than tangerine graffiti.

Hard hats required.

The artist is the great punctuator.

Questions:

Where in the world do the materials of my art come from? What are the actual materials and what are the visual materials? Is there a difference? How does the visual transform the actual? Does it at all?

Do my paintings direct the sentiment or the viewer in anyway?

How is a still object punctuated? Choreographed?

How is a painting read?

How does an event take form and what does it look like?

what role does fragmentation play in relation to the visual event?

What is attitude and where does it come from? Is attitude visual? How can it be visual?

What is meant by cultures of color? cultures of mark?