PACKET 1
Dear JJ,
It has been a whirlwind of a summer, followed by a very abrupt transition to starting up the schoolyear for my kids and my husband. Immediately after the Vermont residency, I spent a little less than 2 weeks at home finalizing details for the Port Townsend residency, packing, traveling to Washington, coordinating the residency, traveling to Olympia to visit friends, then finally traveling back home Sunday evening. So yes, it has been a busy summer! My sleep patterns are completely whacky after a couple of nights of jetlag and Mica’s night terrors. It sounds like your weeks after the residency were very eventful as well!
Before I respond to the details of your packet, I want to share with you the letter I wrote that is addressed to everybody in our advising group.
Dear JJ, Lisa, Paul, Tina, Becky, Grace, and Cherie,
Writing the first packet response always feels so very exciting and yet a little awkward at the same time. Though we have met face to face, the packet and correspondence exchange is where the relationship building truly begins, where we get down to work. So I want to begin my response with some comments about how I work and how I think about my role as your advisor.
I tend to share my own creative practice with advisees pretty extensively. I know this practice is somewhat controversial. When I was in graduate school, my professors would rarely show their work to us students, and even more rarely talk about their own process. It drove me crazy. The process of artmaking (and the experiencing of art) is clouded enough by mystification. I suppose they feared influencing their students too heavily; or maybe they feared the criticism of students. In any case, I share my practice because I figure it’s only fair; I’m asking you to expose, probe, and deepen your practice. You ought to have the privilege to see how I’m doing the same. In sharing my process and my practice, I invite you to critically engage with me the way I will with your process and practice. Like Keith Johnstone, I’m inspired by Anthony Stirling’s approach of “non-interference”. Johnstone’s summary of Stirling’s method: “The teacher was not superior to the child, and should never demonstrate, and should not impose values.”
A word about my thinking about hierarchy—hierarchy not always destructive. Hierarchy is sometimes necessary for groups to function. Domination is harmful and destructive, but hierarchy does not equal domination. In a progressive pedagogical model, the tension between hierarchy and equality is heightened, because we are challenging and reconstructing the relationship of domination between teacher and student. We are all in the process of reconstructing that relationship in a more egalitarian way. So the idea of leadership, of authority and authorship, are always in question.
Sometimes I like to address you as a member of the advising group as a whole, as a cohort (as I’m doing now, and will continue to do each packet). I began doing this because I found myself often writing to several advisees about similar concerns. Now I recognize that this shared letter has an important pedagogical role. It reminds us all that the advisor-advisee relationship exists within a context, the context of a model of education constructed on the belief in student-directed, peer learning-driven learning communities. In addressing questions or concerns to the Advising Group, I’m affirming the members of the group as a support network. One of the tension points for me at Goddard is the kind of sanctification of the advisor-student relationship that has become accepted. I don’t mean to belittle or make light of that relationship by any means, but I do think we as a community could do better at fostering other relationships. All of us can learn from each other. Your advisor in a particular semester will certainly have a lot to offer you, but maybe someone else in the community might have greater expertise in a particular area on which you need guidance. So I hope the group letter will encourage conversation outside our advisor to advisee exchanges.
About writing: I’ve struggled mightily with writing for much of my life. While I could, with much sweat and tears, turn out something that would stand a chance of being called “good writing”, I more often would distract myself from the blank page with trips to the bookshelf, library, bookstore and rewards of snacks—and never get past the point of writing page upon page of disorganized, incoherent notes. In my final semester of my graduate program, I finally found a way to get from the notes to writing something that other people could understand. Finding this had to do with accepting my messy process and being able to look at my piles of incoherent junk and see something meaningful, then slowly pulling threads together and making connections. It feels very much like weaving, unraveling, knitting thoughts back together. I think so much of my arrival at this turning point had to do with my teacher in grad school, Hans Breder, who I thought at the time wasn’t very much of a teacher. He never gave lectures, rarely “led” workshops. But he created a space that instilled in us all a deep sense of permission to find our own paths. It’s that “permission” that for me is at the crux of progressive pedagogy. This is not the kind of permission that can be granted by an authority outside ourselves. I’m talking about the internal sense of permission.
Progressive pedagogy: On the other hand, an environment of permission is not the same as permissiveness without limits or structure. Nurturing these conditions doesn’t mean it’s just “letting everybody do whatever they want.” It’s keeping hold of the idea of freedom, the idea that you have choice and could do whatever you want, ever-present… and at the same time offering challenges, limits, structure, even opposition. I see my role as one of presenting options you might have overlooked I say, “here’s a structure, limitation, or concern—you can choose to dive in and dig into it—or not.” Either way, reflecting on and writing about why you make the choices you do helps us both understand your process and to deepen it. I believe that most of the time, each of us is our own best teacher. Each of us knows on some level how we learn best. Sometimes our self-knowing is obscured. I think an advisor ought to help shed light on what might be obscuring your own process of constructing knowledge.
Here’s a part of my aesthetic history:
When I was a young child, I begged and begged my parents for music lessons. Finally my parents bought a piano and my wish was fulfilled. But after the first few lessons, I began to get bored while I was practicing. I had wanted to play music so badly, how could I be so bored? My mom would yell at me to practice, then set the timer for 30 minutes. And I just plod through the notes, playing scales over and over, then practicing the same passage over and over, until the prescribed amount of time had been filled. One day my father came up while I was “practicing” and said, “I don’t feel anything.” At first I didn’t understand. I just looked at him blankly. “Music is supposed to make me feel something, right? I don’t feel anything when you play.” I was so hurt and furious. How could he say such a cruel thing? That was my first experience with a critic. But years later, I realized what he was saying. He was calling me on my passionless, uninspired practice. What I was doing was training myself to play boringly, because I was bored. My dad was trying to tell me that he felt bored listening to me. Although his words felt harsh, they were probably the most memorable and important words I have ever heard about what it means to make music. This is not to say that I will emulate my father as a teacher—that was not his shining moment as a teacher. For me this story shines light on the discomfort, even pain, that is inherent to the process of deep learning. (Many scholars of education have said this in more scholarly ways. If you’re interested, Piaget, Vgotsky, maybe Dewey)
I think to nurture our art practices, we need both affirmation of our abilities, our inspiration, our soul… and we also need prodding, challenges, pushing, failure. So when I offer you a nudge or disagreement, when I might sound contentious, it’s in that spirit. In the spirit of offering you a learning moment, an opportunity to embrace failure, discord, disagreement, and transform it into something beautiful and thriving in your own practice.
I’m a slow writer. And did I mention, very non-linear thinker? I work hard at getting packet responses returned within a week, but I also feel committed to responding to your packets with deep thought, compassionate presence, and appropriate questions. But thoughts don’t just flow out through my fingertips in readable fashion. I typically work on several responses at a time, moving on to another when my intellectual brilliance? pieters and returning when insight strikes again. Working on several packets at once also helps me see connections between your work, common themes or questions on which you could help each other. Nurturing peer support is another way for me (“teacher”) to step back.
QUESTIONING: The word “question” carries around some negative baggage, as does “challenge”. As does “critique”. What are the differences? After many years of teaching in institutions with a progressive pedagogical philosophy, I’ ve come to see the QUESTION as another keystone of deep learning. Your self-evaluation asks you to articulate your central question of the semester. I think we should also ask, how have your question-asking skills grown? I can look back on my adulthood and see how my ability to ask nuanced questions, as well as my ability to appreciate the context of questions asked of me, has grown over the years. I remember that in my youth when I was first dating men, several relationships crumbled around seemingly innocuous questions. Deborah Tannen looks at the very familiar scenario in her book, You Just don’t Understand, in which the wife asks, “can we talk”? That simple question has certainly wreaked havoc in my relationships! As Deborah Tannen (and other scholars of gender roles) has confirmed, men in our culture generally communicate as though there’s something to be won or lost; conversation is more like argument, and questions set off debates, challenge the other person’s authority, rather than instigate conversation. Someone’s gotta be right, so that means the other person’s gotta be wrong. Women more often ask for conversation to elicit support or affirmation. The same question can mean something very different to each person, depending on their upbringing, their cultural context, etc. So I want to clarify here that I will always ask questions that arise out of curiosity, not to put you on the spot. I would like us to assume that our questions to each other are asked out of a sincere curiosity about each other’s process, thinking and journey. Sometimes we’ll need to remind each other of our intentions in asking questions.
More on questioning: in life as in art, learning how to ask for the help you need is one of the most important skills you can learn (I believe). When stuck or blocked or feeling lost, you first try to call on your own resourcefulness, of course. But then if you still find yourself stuck, you need to be able to acknowledge that you’re stuck and going nowhere; and then to be able to ask for help and communicate about your situation. Think of the metaphor of being lost at sea; when you can call for help, you’re more likely to navigate out to safety if you can stay present to what you are able to see and hear around you.
Finally, a word about how you write your packets. I experiment with different ways of writing my responses, and I encourage you to experiment with your packets. I love when advisees challenge and question what I wrote, turn the words inside out, so to speak. One effective way to do this is to quote a significant chunk and insert your comments in another font or color. Another way is to do this:
Sometimes I’ll send a text file back to you that you have sent me, with comments inserted like I just did above. What I’m saying is the packet/letter exchange ought to be a DIALOGUE. If I ask a question and you don’t feel moved to answer it, just acknowledge that you read it.
To close this group letter, I want to ask a question as an invitation to discuss on the Advising group on-line conference. Our conversation raised lots of interesting questions about status and how status games are played in society. Through our conversation we were constructing knowledge together out of this experience of reading this text. This is another fundamental belief of progressive pedagogy; that knowledge is constructed, not absorbed. I’ve just re-read a great essay by Walter Benjamin called “The storyteller”, which I think JJ quoted in her packet. In this essay he talks about how “story” offers wisdom that is useful in our lives, whereas “information” whittles away anything that’s not verifiable. This is kind of an unfair simplification of what he said, but I think what he’s getting at is the idea that journalism’s need to tell a certain kind of truth (verifiable, provable) excludes this other kind of truth that’s closer to wisdom, lived experience. How is this related to Johnstone? Well, I think if we were trying to distill the “information” from Johnstone’s chapter on status, we might not get at the full meaning of his story. Maybe the Notes on Myself chapter spoke to us more effectively because it was more of a story or bunch of stories. So if we think about the status exercises he did as stories, what do you find useful in this way of thinking about status? If these stories didn’t work for you, what status story might you tell?
Time to end this group letter now. They won’t all be this long, I promise.
Conversation to be continued,
Ju-Pong
Okay, JJ, so finally we get to your packet. I really enjoyed reading it on the wiki! What a great way to deliver a packet. I love being able to read and look at the images right next to what you wrote. Your children are very unique and individualist. They seem to have inherited your aesthetic sensibility and creative spirit. Your journal entries depict a dynamic household, and you write with a lot of care for the people with which you live. I also saw throughout everything you wrote and made, a deep sense of loss. The little girl in you who was abandoned and discouraged and stonewalled looms everywhere in the background, sometimes in the foreground. Your stories really help me understand the images you’ve created and the aesthetic you have chosen. The sketches remind me of a book from my childhood, the name of which I cannot remember. It was about a little boy having elephants over for tea or something like that. The illustrations were pencil drawings done with very heavy lines; I was always a little afraid of the pictures, even though the content of the picture was friendly and warm. In your sketches, there’s a page with a little girl face-front, head tilted, looking as though she’s holding her hands behind her back. The next image shows her from the back, holding a knife. These two images really struck me; the face-front image is the picture of innocence. Then when the knife is revealed, a whole story is set into play. The second image makes me re-imagine the first, and makes me question my own ability to see what’s in front of me. This is a classic narrative technique of the comic or graphic novel.
So I have a couple of questions. 1. Have you ever read Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud? I know the book you’re working on is not a comic, but the style seems very influenced by the structure of the comic. He has a great website, and considering the link you sent of softerworld.com, I think you’ll find it interesting and helpful. If you look under inventions, take a look at the 24-Hour comic. This might be a fun exercise to try at some point. You wrote in your journal that you felt like you did not deserve to call yourself an artist (which, by the way, is a very common feeling among artists! we all go through dry periods). When I feel stuck on a big project, I sometimes give myself a really small project with a short deadline (like 24 hours), to fight my procrastinating self. When I taught film I used to send groups out to make a short film in one day. It’s a great exercise.
As you can see I tried to use the “discuss” feature, but I found it kind of constrictive to write in the little box. This time around, it was great to read about the people in your life and the intimate details of your story. Next time, if I run out of time, I may kind of skim your journal; so maybe you could highlight sections you’d like me to look at or think it would be particularly helpful for me to read.
I’d like to make a few observations. It looks to me as though writing is very therapeutic for you. I wonder if you can tell me about your writing process and how it has served you in the past. Are there some kinds of writing that come more easily than others? In your Notes and Others section, your writing appears to gather up notes into visual groupings and reads almost more like poetry. I’m very sympathetic to this approach; as I mentioned earlier I have had a tough time in the past with writing. It looks to me as though this way of writing works really well for you as a record of your thoughts, and I’m very glad to see this writing at this stage. As a reader, I’d like to ask you to go another step in organizing your writing into an annotation. It was hard to figure out when you were quoting an idea from a book and when you were writing your own original thought. Also, I recognized the Benjamin quote about the storyteller, but didn’t understand the context in which it was quoted. The purpose of the annotation is to summarize the main ideas of the book so that your reader can have that context. I noticed you used Refworks for your bibliography. That’s great! It’s terrific that you’re starting that now. You’ll be happy you did that when you get to the portfolio writing. You may not have seen yet that you can edit your bibliographic entries. If you click the little “edit” button in the upper right hand corner of your entry, it will open up all the fields, and you can go into the Notes field and add your own annotation. You could also add a new field called Annotation or something like that and put your annotation in that. If this method seems cumbersome, you can write annotations separately in Word.
Another observation, which is really the second question, is whether you feel your aesthetic is influenced by Japanese contemporary art or popular culture. I’ve been seeing a lot of Japanese contemporary artists lately and saw some of this in your drawings. I’ve been trying to find a reference for you of this artist who makes these paintings of kind of creepy girlish figures that have strong overtones of sexuality and death. Can’t find it, but I’ll keep looking. Her work was in a show at the Japan Society in New York about a year ago, if you want to try to search for that show on-line. You might also look for Murakami’s Superflat—I looked briefly at the website and thought the article might be helpful.
You mentioned a couple of artists that you found on-line searching. I think it’s great that you’re looking at contemporary artists; I remember at the residency that many of the artists you mentioned being influential were artists from earlier decades. Of course the historical perspective is important, but just as important is looking at the work that other artists of your time and in the recent past are doing, and engaging with this work critically. It’s part of the process of locating yourself as an artist in the world. So it’s in that spirit that I ask about Japanese art.
Two other broader contexts in which I can see your work is in the context of art created in response to trauma and art about death. We’ve talked a little about trauma, and I recall adding some of those references in your bibliography. I want to mention an artist whose work I find very inspiring, Beverly Naidus (http://faculty.washington.edu/bnaidus/). She is a former Goddard faculty, actually.
Your story is intriguing, and the idea of creating your own mythology seems to be a helpful way to think about it. My only advice on it at this point is to give it time to ferment. I find that after I’ve written a story down, it literally ferments, and the meaning of it deepens and clarifies over time. My stories are intended for performance rather than print, but I think the same would apply to either form. For me, each time I tell the story it changes and sometimes becomes entirely new. For you, it might be that each time you come back to read your story you see a new layer or nuance. I think stories once told take on a life inside you, and like a spore they mushroom into new stories.
The other thought I had about your stories is that you use archetypes and characters that might carry cultural meanings beyond your own personal interpretation of iconography. This is another reason I thought Japanese art might be interesting to study. Many Japanese artists draw heavily on icons of popular culture or a style that’s very popular (such as anime, manga). So it’s worth considering where is the boundary between pop culture and art? You may feel that there shouldn’t be a boundary, but the boundary exists in the social realm in which your work will be seen. I wrestle with this question in a slightly different way. For me the question is where is the boundary between art and craft (when is my knitting seen as art? and by whom? and for what reasons?)
So I’ve tried to respond to the major topics or questions that your work raises. Please let me know if I overlooked something you wanted to discuss. Next packet it would be helpful to me if you write me a cover letter to orient me to what’s in your packet. Take a little time to reflect on the packet period and let me know what you felt were successes and where you might need guidance. I would prefer if you post the next packet in a new section (rather than, for example, adding journal entries to the one you have already started on the wiki).
Peace,
Ju-Pong
P.S. I just added some more to the group letter:
After writing above that I share my practice, I realized that I didn’t in this group letter. So here’s a brief report on my current project. As I’ve told you, I’m involved in a long-term project of collecting stories about neighborhood and carrying them from one neighborhood to another. While I was in Washington, I had a chance to tell a story as part of a Story Circle we did at the Port Townsend residency. We all told stories of arrival. As I listened to other’s stories, this is the one that came to mind for me: when I was 3, my family relocated from Taiwan to Canada. My father had gone ahead of us on a scholarship to McGill University about a year before. Most of my memories of early childhood are pretty vague. But the memory of this voyage seemed vivid. I remember walking up the metal PLANK (NO LOOK UP THIS WORD) and getting on the huge ship that took us across the ocean. I remember standing at the railing and looking out over the vast sea… and feeling seasick.
Most of my life I had carried around this memory of the voyage. When I was in my thirties, I began interviewing my mom about her life in Taiwan, giving birth, and coming to the North American continent.. And she showed me a picture of us just before we boarded the airplane that brought us to the Canada. she told me that I had been very anxious about the trip. One of my shoelaces was dark and the other light, she said, because I had peed in my pants. “Airplane?” I repeated, “We came on an airplane?” Yes, my mother confirmed. We flew. “But then did we sail on part of the trip? From Hawaii or something like that?” No, said my mother, we flew to Japan and then to Canada. This revelation upset my whole sense of self. I felt in an instant that the ground of trust in my own memory had been pulled out from under me.
The story I’ve been telling about sailing across the ocean… was it a lie? Was it untruthful? I thought about the piece I made in which I suspended a huge block of ice over a circle of MARINE rope, creating a small pond in which small paper boats would be set afloat as the ice melted. I thought about the video about my grandmother that used the text,” oceans between us”. Something about the image of crossing the ocean was essential to me. The ocean is the vast unknown, and at the same time, water is life. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how many stories about my relationship to water I carry around and have told. No, my memory was not a lie. It turned out to be inaccurate. But I think there was a truth to that story that I needed to preserve. That’s the poetics of “story” that factual reporting doesn’t tell.
I’ve told neighborhood stories in a few venues, but one of the things that has felt unresolved for me is the lack of a clear vision of how I want to be perceived. Am I a Town Crier, a Storyteller, an Oral Historian? I definitely don’t want to be seen as a Performance Artist (at least in this series of performances). While I am all of the above, none of those labels in and of itself quite fits. None of them feel like they really invite people to tell me the kind of stories I’m most interested in hearing, stories that haven’t gotten air time or print space. After telling this story in Washington, I came home and realized that I needed to Name myself, and the name I would use was, “Neighbor.” A good “neighbor” feels like the kind of relationship I want to cultivate in these performances. So now I’m in the process of making myself a knitted “sandwich board” that I’ll wear to announce myself as Neighbor.
Packet 1 response back
I’ve struggled mightily with writing for much of my life. While I could, with much sweat and tears, turn out something that would stand a chance of being called “good writing”, I more often would distract myself from the blank page with trips to the bookshelf, library, bookstore and rewards of snacks—and never get past the point of writing page upon page of disorganized, incoherent notes. In my final semester of my graduate program, I finally found a way to get from the notes to writing something that other people could understand. Finding this had to do with accepting my messy process and being able to look at my piles of incoherent junk and see something meaningful, then slowly pulling threads together and making connections. It feels very much like weaving, unraveling, knitting thoughts back together.
This is what I want. I want my words to make sense. I write and think in a line of consciousness that very few are able to follow. Brian does it too and the two of us can talk in that fashion for hours, circling around and around, leaping from topic to topic and making complete sense to each other… but no one else.
. 1. Have you ever read Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud?
No, but I have read some stuff by scott mcloud and I like his work. I am a big comic fan, so you are not off base. Actually my middle school kids are focusing on comics this semester to help me with my own work. I will definitely use the website. It has some good stuff on it. And I really like the idea o the video in a day. I still haven’t used the video camera. I have a small camera/video thing that I take everywhere, not the bigger one… and willow has been taking more videos than I have. I think that in this next packet I’m gonna try to make a video in a day and comic in a day as well…
… I’m having trouble realizing I can do small projects that aren’t “directly” related to what I’m doing, but rather exercises… I’m assuming from what you said that I am allowed to. That kind of freedom is difficult for me. I’m use to having deadlines and goals or something to adhere to. So, for instance, the small works, sketches, whatever they would be called in the “other” link were tentatively put up there with an expectation of “why are you working on this stuff??” I would like to know what you thought of it, if that’s ok. I know you asked us not to ask this question, but I don’t know how else to put it.
As for the Wiki, there will be a new section for each packet, the only thing that will probably be the same link will be the story page… and as it gets longer I will break it down into sections or something. The page discussions are more for if there was something on that page you wanted to comment on, then it was available and I added a forum for conversation. I made it public because I had a couple of other people I wanted to be able to read and comment on it. I hope that’s ok. If not I can make it private… and if it doesn’t work for you, I can be more traditional.
I wonder if you can tell me about your writing process and how it has served you in the past. Are there some kinds of writing that come more easily than others?
LOL, that’s funny… sorry, my writing process has gotten me in trouble a couple of times actually. I have this need to not only write but “publish” as well. So I don’t just have note books full of random writings, but blog after blog as well. 2-3 years ago I had a blog that I had been building for years and I was going through a depression. Some of the stuff I had written was VERY dark and I was reading Sherwood Andersons Winesburg, Ohio the first chapter of which is “the book of the grotesque.” He talks about truth and beauty and how when people take up a truth and try to live by it they become a grotesque, defiling the very idea’s that they say they hold.
My blog was not private, but I didn’t think it was directly related to me either, I didn’t use my name or anyone elses name that I knew. We all had pseudonyms. A coworker dug up some info on me and found my blog and showed my principal at the time. They misread my work on grotesques and evidently thought I was talking about killing students. Anyway, it was a big deal and I left that job that year. They forced me to take down the blogs I had or they said they’d fire me. I copied them, I still have them somewhere.
Sorry I rambled again… I use the writing to get things out of my head, when I put it on the web and know that it can be read, I somehow feel better, I prefer, especially in my blogs, for my readers to be anonymous if for no other reason than my friends (and especially boyfriends) always assume that everything I write is about them. I had for a while a large anonymous internet circle just for this purpose. Then Mark started infiltrating them pretending to be someone else. I ended up making all of them, except my business, private so he wouldn’t know what I was taking about.
Poetry, automatic writing, and lone of consciousness writing have always been my styles of choice if there is such a thing for me. Usually I just write the way my brain is working at the time.
Annotation… got it.
is whether you feel your aesthetic is influenced by Japanese contemporary art or popular culture
Again, you hit the nail on the head. Japanese culture all through history has influenced me. Manga and Anime are words that are spoken regularly in this house by all of us. I remember reading about marukami’s show in NYC. That was the one with the elephants right? I didn’t realize that superflat was considered and art movement now. I just found that out on wikipedia. I have been making a conscious effort to seek out more current artists, though I’ll never remember their names unless they are in front of me. I like a lot of stuff out there. I just don’t usually know who does it.
I will look into Beverly’s stuff. Trauma is definitely part of my work, I just have problems feeling justified in calling my experiences traumatic when I’ve seen other people with things that are so much worse. I just think I deal with overly active emotions.
Ferment and simmer… doing that now partially on purpose and partially because I don’t know what to write next.
I try to be knowledgeable of the archetypes I am using; I do research to find out meanings of certain animals, characters, players… etc. But I would like to hear what your thoughts are and if I missed something. Write now I am reading “animas and anima” and “archetypal patterns in fairy tales” by Marie Louise Von Franz. If we are talking style, I am trying to connect to a certain cultural thing, but I’m not sure what… I know it’s there, maybe it’s the comic thing, I am heavily influenced by alternative comic writers.
Where is the boundary… I don’t know. I could say it’s money, or mass production of process, or intent, but I think there are arguments for all of them that I would say yes in that case… and if that is the case then there is no boundary. I think the boundary can’t really be defined, especially not by the artist. I think it is decided by the general public and the people who look at it, the audience decides if it is art and if someone thinks that it is, then it is. IDK… I’ll think about this one some more.
I wanted to ask if it’s ok if I put our conversations on the wiki page so that I will have everything in the same place. If you don’t want me to put your words (just to me) up then I won’t, but I think I will put my responses so I can refer back to them without looking them up on my hard drive.
Wow, a knitted sandwich board… will you put any cardboard or wood in there to keep it like a sandwich board? When you advertise yourself as neighbor, are you a neighbor to everyone? I would love to walk down the road and see a person wearing a knitted sandwich board that said neighbor… although I know I would not approach or speak, it would make me smile and feel slightly better about the world.
-J<3
PACKET 2
Dear JJ,
How are things with you? I’m juggling a lot this week; actually this month and next feel really busy. September always does, and then before we know it Halloween is here. We’re trying to stay a step ahead, but we want to have family over for Thanksgiving, which means we have a lot of house projects to do before then (make bench, move shelves, move Mica’s Lego table etc). I know it sounds far off, but I know how quickly the fall months whiz by. And then there’s art openings, festivals… they all seem to crowd into September and October! I’m trying to just accept the pace of things and enjoy it.
So how’s your job going? And home life? I’m concerned about your living conditions, having read in your journal and your cover letter about how overwhelmed you feel. You’re taking care of a lot of people, and it sounds like maybe having some trouble setting limits. I remember when I was a single parent juggling graduate school and work…my house was always total chaos. Whole rooms would fill up with unfolded laundry, books, art supplies, toys, all jumbled in piles. It was in graduate school that I was exposed to the idea of integrating art and life (mostly through Allan Kaprow). I really began to ask myself how I could use my art as a way to help me solve the problems of my life. I did many performances that were really more like healing rituals. I’ll tell you about one of them, as it seems pertinent. The condensed version of the story was that I had been in a situation in which I was involved in non-consensual sex (I can’t really call it rape) with the husband of a good friend of mine. Their marriage was on the rocks, basically, and she was out of town and he asked me to babysit. When I discovered I was pregnant, I revealed the story to my friend… and decided to keep the baby, against everybody’s wishes. Needless to say the scene turned ugly and I lost many friends. Sexual abuse is in my past, and this experience triggered a major period of healing for me. So I did a performance in which I asked people to come into a darkened space one at a time. As each person came in I asked them to sit in a circle around a small lit area. When all were seated I entered the center of the circle, took off my earrings, jacket, and shoes, placing them on the floor to represent my body. Then I walked around the outside of the circle telling the story of what had happened. After the story, I bent down and whispered to each person, asking if I could wrap a length of gauze around them. As I got permission, I wrapped the gauze around the group a couple of times, then unraveled it as I walked out of the space. The performance really restored for me a sense of support and literally replaced my lost Circle of Friends with a new one. The name of the piece was Circle of Friends.You’ve mentioned creating rituals for yourself, so I offer this one as an example of how ritual can heal deep wounds. Now I want to ask you, how can your artmaking help you solve the problems in your life?
Writing cover letters: this is one of those challenges unique to Goddard. I want to explain a little better why I do ask for a cover letter. One reason is that for the model of progressive education for me is grounded in the importance of the learner taking charge of her own learning process. As I wrote in packet 1, I don’t believe people learn best when they learn passively, accepting the teacher as the expert with the knowledge and believing that knowledge can simply be transmitted from teacher to student. Those who advocate for a progressive model think of knowledge as something that is constructed—in other words, you learn when your own mind/being creates that knowledge in yourself. Knowledge is constructed when a learner reflects on her experience. It’s in the process of reflection that deep learning happens. So when you read a book, I don’t think you learn much unless you then reflect on what you have read; that means you use, reject, question, challenge and interact with the ideas in the book, i.e. construct knowledge for yourself. Or when you look at the work of an artist and include a link, you can reflect on what aspects of the work really speak to you or concerns you have about the ethics or intent, etc. I have found teaching at Goddard that the letters we exchange really encourage that kind of reflection. I think this is true for two reasons. One is that the form of the letter is informal, so it’s more flexible to whatever direction you want to take the reflection. Two is the deeper, engaged relationship we have as advisee and advisor that facilitates the process of finding your own words, your own voice for expressing the messy process of learning. So I hope that helps.
The letter is also often my starting point for interacting conversationally with you. For example, you wrote about the journal that it is important in some respect because “they show I am working and am in the process but they are not finished or anything I would consider art.” Well, that is very helpful for me to understand. It give some language with which to talk about your process. I can ask questions to deepen the reflection; Why is it important for you to “show” you are working? When do you know when a work is finished? What are you learning as you go through the process of making a particular work? what are the qualities that you would consider art? You also wrote, “I think the story, the notes, the sketches and the character pages are the most important. I feel like these are the things that are directly relating to what I am trying to do. They are the core of my "studies" at the moment.” This is a great beginning of the kind of reflection I’m talking about. Now if you looked back over these most important sections as if you were the advisor, could you think about what makes them directly relate to what you’re trying to do? How are these character sketches, for example, helping you understand what a personal mythology might look like? When I look over these sections it strikes me that your process seems to guide you to build the characters before you construct the story.
Here’s what I think about the difference between myth and fairy tale. When I tell a story, I’m aware of the particular way that stories impart some kind of lesson, as you noted. But the most interesting stories, I think, are not so didactic that the listener/reader can’t interpret the lesson for him or herself. They’re also not only didactic, but poetic as well. A fairy tale is a fantastical story, set more in a “pretend” world than the practical everyday. I enjoy working from practical everyday material and moving into the pretend, magical world, and back again. Myth is much more complicated and contentious in some contexts. Roland Barthes examined cultural myths as de-politicized stories that could be used to exert control over the values of a society. You’re more interested in the use of the term, myth, to describe stories that come from what you believe is sacred. You mentioned that what you’re reading about ritual is not very helpful. I’m going to ask you to go further with that comment. Could you reflect on specific sections that you disagreed with or did not understand or rejected for some other reason? As I write this I think you might find this book helpful: If This Is Your Land, Where are Your Stories, by Edward Chamberlin. This book honors belief in sacred stories at the same time as it addresses the politics of story.
Another question that seems helpful for you in thinking about creating a personal mythology might be, what is the difference between myth and autobiography? How does a personal mythology then transform into something more universal? If I haven’t recommended Mircea Eliade, I think his book Myth and Reality would be really helpful. He talks about myth as an explanation for ritual, as the foundation out of which ritual arises. There’s a helpful article on wikipedia about “myth and ritual”. Have you seen that?
Finally I want to comment on the length of packets. I can really spend a lot of time on packet responses (and I often do spend what amounts to a full day) but I need to put a limit on how much time I spend on them or my family life really suffers. This time and last I pretty much read everything and watched videos linked, followed your links. But I won’t be able to continue doing that because it would take me more than a day. So this is one reason I ask you to advise me what to read and prioritize it. What do you need feedback on? I enjoyed your video collaborations with Paul! You really have a wonderful sense of time. I could go into more detail on these if it’s helpful. For this packet I felt like the discussion about myth and story would be helpful. But I need to hear from you how I can be more helpful if this is not doing it for you. I’m enjoying our interaction a lot, JJ. It always takes a couple of packets to really get into the conversation, to really begin to know each other through these letters. I think you’re doing a fine job. Now for the group letter.
Writing and reading are very interconnected activities, yet for me they feel like they come from utterly different parts of my brain/being. In a radio book review of Janet Malcolm’s new book about Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, the review, Maureen Corrigan, spoke of another book by the same author about Sylvia Plath in which she drew up an image of a chaotic kitchen piled high with dirty dishes and rotting food. Writing for Sylvia Plath must have felt like this kitchen, she said,—overwhelming with possibility, yet tortuous process of cleaning, sorting, choosing just the few right ingredients and tools out of the chaotic frontier surrounding her. This is often how I feel before I begin writing responses to each of you, like I’m standing in a very messy kitchen, and I have to clean up and see what I’ve got before I can begin to put things together. Reading, on the other hand, is like soaking in a hot tub. I love absorbing language, letting ideas float into my body and my mind to intermingle, bond, transform, connect with the ideas inside me. Reading always germinates new ideas, and I feel I can’t write fast enough to note them all. So I have found that I simply can’t sit down and just begin putting words to paper. I get stuck, and I have to shift to reading a little, like feeding the yeast, to activate the ideas I want to express.
What is reading like for you? How do you experience the process between reading, thinking, writing…making art? For me this space in between is a terrain in which I often find myself lost.
Speaking of lost… here’s a blog-style musings on or from my artistic process and what it means to be a “public artist”: Last week after taking Mica to school, I was headed home to a pile of dirty dishes and unraveled yarn. I’d just gotten a new knitting machine to knit the sandwich board, with text; wound up with dropped stitches, wrestled with machine to produce the word “neighbor”; unhooked the 84 stitches to find the words …upside down and backwards! Finally… many hours later, a small hand-knitted scrap of text. Wasn’t too thrilled to get back to the machine. So on impulse, I turned north and took a short drive up to the one, wooded park near my home. As soon as I got out of the car, my body inhaled a huge breath of relief. Why don’t you come here more often? she asked me. I happily began to walk the trails… and then I let myself get lost. The woods were filled with walkers of all varieties, unlike the Northwest woods I once regularly walked. These are urban woods, filled with beautiful granite boulders and lovely trees, and all kinds of people getting exercise, recreating. Picnic areas were scattered throughout, numbered both at the site and on signs that marked out “neighborhoods” (e.g., Sites 34-44). [Paused to re-imagine neighborhood]. Cairns marked the pathways, just like they do in “wilderness” areas everywhere. [Cairns as universal form of communication, conversation between travelers. Like little altars.] The trees began to stir my imagination, as they often do. I imagined knitting cozies for rocks and setting them on cairns. I imagined myself knitting by the side of the road, near the parking lot, at hiking path intersections.
INSERT SKETCH of big umbrella/parasol-looking-like-tree (draped over with knitted willow leaf pattern, willow leaf fringe hanging around edge). Underneath is some kind of portable chair, ideally rocking chair. [my sketch stinks, so words here instead]
I thought about the life of a tree—the stillness of a tree, what it sees, how it experiences the changes around it. I’ve loved trees ever since I was a young child, loved to sit in the shade of a tree and imagine being the tree. We’re such a mobile society; being still like a tree feels radical.
Lost in reverie, I strolled into an open space. A huge granite boulder confronted me—-covered with graffiti, “tags”, names of couples, “Denise and Keith”, “Bob and Amy”. Why do people do that? I silently asked in dismay. The woods are a spiritual site for me; I felt the rock had been desecrated. De-sacralized. Well, maybe I could make art in response. I wandered down another path to consider this possibility. Totally lost, I noted that I’d just left #10 picnic site. Crossed paths with an asian couple each carrying a white plastic bucket and small knives. Hm… I asked if they were harvesting something. The man smiled sheepishly and showed me his bucketful of mushrooms. There’s another story here about asian refugees “making home” here in a foreign land… But I was beginning to get tired and so I tried to find my way back. Eventually I found myself back at #10. The image of knitted rocks came back and warmed my heart. My question, “why do people do this?” wasn’t really asked with open heart, I realized. So I asked again, this time imagining that I was speaking directly to the people who have made these marks. Suddenly I saw that here was an audience, evidence of an audience, looking me right in the face, and they have expressed themselves. I felt encouraged to find a new perspective on the graffiti, to look at it as visual representation, as…cairns… as signatures. Questions began tumbling into my foggy brain: What is in a name? What meaning do we inscribe when we sign something (work of art, homework assignment)? What is the power of the signature? What is vandalism? Who names it criminal? Why do people vandalize? Who vandalizes? Those who feel excluded from a space, a territory. Graffiti marks territory. It’s a claiming of territory, or reclaiming of territory that has been co-opted (or stolen). Okay, so these marks don’t match my personal aesthetic—but can I step outside the cultural codes that tell me to read them merely as “disrespect”? How can I respond by engaging those who made these marks, instead of denouncing them, trying to obliterate the marks, erase them—which would most likely lead to the mark-markers feeling erased. Could I look at their tags as an invitation to a conversation (rather than provocation to anger, punitive reaction)? [This is the public conversation I’d like to have]. A Big Idea unfolded: I could knit the graffiti into a huge blanket that could temporarily cover the boulder. I could add names of famous couples—Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Romeo and Juliet. The Butterfly lovers Tristan and Isolde. John Cage and Merce Cunningham. But would that be the best way to engage the mark-makers? I could put up a kind of canvas, asking them to sign the canvas instead of the rock! And I could knit their names into this blanket. I could go to the high school where I worked and recruit knitters; the knitting of names could be a performance at Site #10. Performance(s)—the performance could happen in the city and in the woods. There could be a website where people could track the progress of the knitting, locate events. When completed the blanket could tour. Etc. Etc. BIG IDEA.
I’ve been reading Carol Becker, Surpassing the Spectacle.
On page13 she writes, “Artists have sensibilities that are distinctive and important to the well-being of society. Were artists taken seriously within U.S. society, were they sought out for their opinions and concerns and recognized as having rare skills, some of which are about how to see the world, they would enter their chosen profession with a much greater sense of confidence and self-esteem. Were society ready to accept them into its fold as fully participating citizens whose function, like that of intellectuals, is to remain on the margins, asking the difficult questions, resisting assimilation and socialization in the traditional ways, refusing to accept the simplistic moral values that reflect the present political climate, there would be a great deal of psychic relief for artists.
So as an artist, I’m encouraged by Becker to stand at the margins and ask the difficult questions about public space and private space, about who has the power to exclude and who is excluded from fully participating as citizens. To make art as form of inquiry means I put more emphasis on questioning than on finding answers. Professing answers, “making a statement”, positions the audience to agree or disagree, accept or reject; it shapes the conversation in a dualistic structure. Art as inquiry, as playful inquiry (that’s for Tina), suggests investigation and conversation that can potentially lead to collective answers no single individual could construct on her own. The process of making art is research, is my research method.
Perhaps under such conditions artists would be less engaged in a frantic clamor to reach the top of the art world pyramid. Artists might be freer to focus on what they do best—concentrated visual experimentation that, when successful, advances society’s ability to see itself more clearly…in their role as spokespersons for multiple points of view and advocates for a healthy critique of society, certain artists should be understood as public intellectuals—those who believe in the importance of the public sphere and who create, for a collective arena less able to house real debate, work they expect the world to recognize as potentially significant to the evolution of the species.” – Becker p13
What I have been researching: neighborhood. Placemaking. In perusing books about urban planning, neighborhood organizing, and art in public places, I’m finding more inspiration and tools from people doing community organizing and neighborhood improvement than from looking at the work of other artists. Like many of you, I see much more art that doesn’t seem meaningful, doesn’t engage the public in a meaningful way. Too many artists trying to race to the top of the pyramid.
I’m on page 4 and I said last time that I would make this letter shorter! But I was on a roll. About ready to wind down, so just a few more thoughts. What does it mean to express oneself? what does it mean to “say” something with our art? What does it mean to “engage” an audience? I was walking through the woods, and I got lost. Getting lost is a way of playfully investigating new terrain. This letter is evidence of what I found.
Art can have a message. It can make meaning. It can express your deepest self. It can make a statement. It can do all those things. But each of those words, “message”, “meaning”, “expression”, “statement”, seem inadequate to describe the potential of art. Carol Becker’s words come closer to the ideal I’d like to hold up for myself: to make work that is “potentially significant to the evolution of the species.” That’s what we do. Individual works of art might make statements, or make meaning, etc. but to think about Art as significant to the evolution of the species expands the landscape, of how we engage with others, with our world; it expands the possibilities of how we “give shape to knowledge” (Carol Becker again).
Go forth in creative bliss,
Ju-Pong
response back
Ju-Pong,
Things are as they always are, hectic, insane and chaotic. I totally understand the busy part. My kids want me to make their costumes, I’m a wiccan based pagan so this is a big holiday time, Mitchell parents are coming for Thanksgiving and I have to face my parents and tell them I’m not going down to their house. That is me at my most stressed when I have to go there. Nothing is far off in this house. My kids start talking about the next birthday/holiday/whatever-day as soon as the last one is over. I completely understand having way too much to do.
I hate my job, I know tons of people feel that way, but I really don’t think I should be a teacher given that I really, REALLY don’t like doing it. It’s why I quit last year. I just have a very firm belief that teachers should be people who really want to educate and believe in the system or either really wants to fix the system… I was that person at one time, but now I’m more concerned with making sure I have enough money to keep my house and car, which is why I’m a teacher… anyone see the catch-22 here?
Home life is weird; it’s the only way to describe it. Even though I don’t have to be in control of everything I feel like I should be, and that creates a weird guilt thing. We have sooooooooo many pets and I feel responsible for them though they are suppose to be the responsibilities of others. So one of them gets sick and I take it upon myself to research and find out what’s wrong with them and then try to fix it. I just can’t stand to see something suffer. Woody goes from great wonderful house mate to annoying teenager in ten seconds flat. He walked in and paid his rent ON TIME last night, only to walk out of the house with my camera today without permission. Mitchell goes from amazing boyfriend who cooks and cleans and helps out, to psycho boy who won’t leave me alone to do my homework even though he can clearly see I am getting aggravated with him. The kids are my kids and I jut want to be able to spend more time with them before they don’t want to spend time with me anymore.
I’m stressing about being a “Good mom” my parents have threatened to take them away from me before, and I have a constant fear of someone trying to do that, their biological father, grandparents, DSS… whatever. Kessy told her teacher the other day that no one was home to help her with her homework all day, it was a complete lie, but I had to punish her and that always bothers me, then Willow had a weird thing happen with her earring that made me feel like I wasn’t paying enough attention to her that I hadn’t noticed it happen and a man at a football game was rude to Willow and I didn’t say anything to him and it is still bothering me for not standing up to him… I know it would have been pointless but I just hate feeling like I turning into my own mother who wouldn’t stand up for me no matter what.
Wow I complain a lot. Sorry, went off on a tangent there. I love the fact that you mentioned the unfolded laundry and art supplies. I was in the middle of a “soccer mom” conversation the other day as two of the teachers from one of the schools I work at were going on and on about how they didn’t understand how a mother with small children could go to grad school, and how they couldn’t stand for their houses to ever be even a little messy, meanwhile I’m thinking about my house which needs to be cleaned badly (Which was done this weekend) and I just didn’t say anything. It’s kind of amazing how people will always assume you agree with or are one of them if you don’t say anything.
I really like the circle of friends performance you did, at least I like the sound of it considering I wasn’t there. Loosing the circle of friends really made me rethink my whole world. People that say they’re gonna be there for you forever and then just bail. I think this story is kind of doing for me what your circle did for you. I am able to look at who my friends are and place them in importance in my life. When I explain our family to my kids I use concentric circles and explain to them they we, the four of us only are in the very center one. The people we love the most and love us the most and support us are in the next circle. Usually only 2 or 3 people are there and there have been times it was 0. The next circle are friends who we care about and care about us, but maybe aren’t there for us all the time, when we need them. I keep going in this fashion until we have all the people in our life in a circle and the kids understand that the people in the first circle are the ones that we can trust the most. So I have my concentric circles of friends I guess, though sometimes the circles are empty, at least for a little while the smallest one will have us in it.
How can my art making help me solve problems… I have no idea. I’m gonna have to think on this one for awhile. I’ve created a page on the wiki to answer these questions on. But I will send a response as well.
I understand the cover letter better now. I think I was just thrown with the name cover letter, I was thinking of a cover letter for a resume which didn’t seem right and it kinda threw me. I like to think that I reflect I just think I don’t document or discuss the thoughts that go through my mind. I didn’t really think they were pertinent. I will start paying closer attention to myself and my thoughts.
… Three weeks later… I still didn’t pay as much attention to my reflections as I should have. I have been thinking on the art helping question. I think I am in too much of a domestic/technical mind or something, I can’t think of anything except “How can my art help me get to work on time/get the house clean/get the kids to do their homework/etc.”
I was suppose to complete the ritual, the one that has been in my mind for several months now, this weekend, technically I should be doing it right now. Miranda had to work and I didn’t have anyone to keep my kids, Mitchell is working and I couldn’t have done what I really wanted to do. So I’m going to redo the ritual so that it can be done by myself or with my kids that way I can do it no matter what. It seems really important to me that I go to the actual places rather than substituting which leads to another problem. If you look at the forum on the Wiki page, you’ll see a comment that doesn’t have a name. I traced the IP address and it is coming from North Myrtle Beach which is where Marks girlfriend lives. I’m not sure if it’s her or him. Then to top off my paranoid feeling, he tried to add me on Instant messenger again. So there is a fear there of him showing up to the places that I would go for the ritual. He seems to always know where I am and what I’m doing. It freaks me out. So I’ll be very paranoid and scared to go anywhere near Laurinburg.
Let me explain a little so you don’t think I’m in some kid of danger. It’s nothing like that, not in the traditional sense at least. He has a hold over me that I can’t shake, which was the reason for the ritual, the story, all of this. I want to get him out of my head and get rid of the hold he has over me. I hear so many people tell me that it’s all in my head and that I just don’t want to let go but it’s something else, something almost intrinsic, he transcends the idea of partner or soul mate. No matter how hard I try to get rid of him and purge him from my life there is this stamp or shadow on my brain, no matter how small that keeps him there, here, forever. There is a certain spirituality that is not meant to poetic, though I know I’m sounding that way, but rather dominating. Like the child that will rebel against everyone but listens intently to one person, no matter what they say, even if the child knows that it’s bad for her. This is where the story is coming from, this power he has over me that I can’t get rid of. …
I’m sorry, I’m treating this response more like a blog and I’m suppose to be talking about my art and my practice. It just seems that most of my life is wrapped up in some way around him. As for my practice, I’ve realized that it is not just my family that is making it difficult for me to work, but also myself. I can not force myself to create. I can force myself to do research or make something that I have guidelines for, but if I am making “art” it has to come from inspiration and for me it is more spontaneous. So I keep a journal to write in if I have an idea and I keep a sketchbook and pencil with me so that I can draw if I feel the need. The video and painting is a bit more difficult. I can’t always do them when I feel the need. This has lead to my realization that I still do want to be a professor. I had lost that for a little while. I feel as a professor I can work on my own stuff as well as student’s, I may be incorrect in that assumption, but I know my mentor, Dr. Labadie, would often work on his own stuff and still be teaching or a teacher. I know in my current situation I can barely get a line drawn before I am having to yell at a student, write someone up, tell the class to quiet down or re-explain the assignment for the 50th time. That’s only in the middle school, I don’t attempt to do anything at the elementary school.
I went to high school art room for a meeting the other day and it was the situation that I had been trying to get into for the past 7 years, but every time I go to a high school, they pull the rug out from under me. They promise a lot and end up not having any of it. Plus every high school is pretty much the same way as the middle schools and I can’t get much of anything done without having to discipline students or making sure everyone is on task. …I did it again. The last tirade was to help me prove my point that I think I would be a better fit in a university or college somewhere. Plus, I am far more comfortable in a college setting.
Myth and Fairy tale, I have decided that for me it is the fairy tale that I need. Much of this will be in the reflections section in the packet 3 menu. One of my talents is timing in video and dance. Problem is I don’t actually know what I’m doing. When I force it, it doesn’t work. So I’ve learned to just go with it. I think where I want feed back is the story, and the art centering around the story. I’ve put some comments up on the work that is more finished and less sketch, as a guideline of some things I’m wondering. I would also like an opinion on the type of artwork I am choosing to do. I intend on the style changing with almost every image,but still illustrate the story. I want to integrate it all into video and I’m still working on how I’m going to do that.
It’s funny you mention Sylvia Plath, I’ve been compared to her so many times by my more literary friends I’ve considered buying a gas stove. The bell jar was one of those books that had a huge influence on me, but I feel like every angst-ridden teen girl with depression issues says this. I’ve answered the reading question on the Wiki page on a new page titled questions.
The boulder thing… That is what I do,that is the process my brain goes through… but I don’t remember it after it happens. Along with all my day to day problems I also have two seizures disorders, and basilar migraines, which, although the dr’s say aren’t the cause, I believe are causing my memory loss. Thoughts are like water for me and if I don’t write them down when I’m thinking them, they are completely gone, down the drain. Sometimes… a lot of the times, I will look back at something I wrote and not remember it all. So I have to write in pretty good detail what I’m talking about because a simple note will not do it most of the time. There, it just happened, I completely forget what I was talking about, thinking about. I had a thought but it’s gone now. I hate that. Anyway, I have these long rambling evolutions of thoughts that encompass such great ideas, but many times I don’t catch them before they are gone and I loose them. Is the boulder thing what you mean by reflection? And to respond to a question you asked, for myself, I feel that I tag and create graffiti (though, not in nature, only on mad-made surfaces) as a call back to my nomadic heritage all those millions of years ago. It’s a way to send messages to people even if you don’t know them, if they know the language.
Quick story that I always think is funny. A group of us (delinquents evidently) went out tagging and tagged some trains. It was Joe’s first time out and he didn’t know what to do. SO he painted a penis on the sign of the train… REALLY BIG. About four or so months later the train (remarkably still unpainted over) went by while I was sitting at a RR crossing. I called everyone from that night yelling, “I just so Joe's Penis! Joe's Penis just went by on the train!” End of story.
So art as the question and artist as the philosopher is not what we do now? I always saw artists as this kind of questioning group anyway? Munch- Why do I feel this way? Da Vinci- Why can’t we know more? Maplethorpe- Why can’t a stick a bullwhip up my bum? J/k kidding on the last one, obviously, but seriously I always thought of artists as this group who constantly thought and questioned and their art asked questions to me, Who’s missing? what’s going on? why is the world like this? I guess since I am not in the midst of NYC or some other art competition I don’t see the battle for #1, but when I look at art if it doesn’t ask a question to me, then I don’t really see it as art. That was a little heavy handed… technique can be art, portraits can be art, but even a portrait can ask a question…. just look at the Mona Lisa. We are still asking questions about it hundreds of years later. Maybe i’ve misunderstood what you are saying.
Art that engages the public… well what does that mean? There is this horrific sculpture in Raleigh. Thousands of dollars were put into it. It was a commission piece and is still up, thought unless you know it’s there you don’t realize it’s an artwork. It looks like a cellphone/radar detector thing. I saw it tons of times and didn’t know what it was… and it made me wonder what it was, I pissed me off when I found out and artist made it and was paid quite nicely for it… but it engaged me. Even though it is pretty much accepted by everyone as a colossal waste of money, it engaged us, even if it was negatively. So isn’t it the public choice whether to be engaged or not? Or did I misunderstand again?
I answered the Expression/meaning/engagement question on the wiki page. Evolutionary art? Will this be the name of our art movement in the history books 100 years from now? Art that helps society evolve and change and become a better place… Or will this evolution take us to a dystopian civilization? Maybe we don’t want to evolve, but if there is going to be a catalyst it might as well be art.
