Week 3

Funny enough, I already answered about my three essential questions in last weeks journal about my big idea, but I'll restate them. Is identity only referencing the thing itself, or the thing in contrast to other things around it (whether we're talking about people, objects, time, plans, ect)? How are the ways that identity can change depending on context? Is it really realistic to expect someone to understand their own identity at any given point in time? If not, how can we accommodate in our work the room to fluctuate our ideas?


I must admit, the commands make me uncomfortable. (I'll scan the images of what happened later.) I am very much a, "I know what I'm doing because I planned everything out and this is how I work," kind of artist. To allow for complete and total chance was stepping out of the box for me.

At first, I pulled the word "postcard." I thought rather literally and cut one of my pieces into postcard sized pieces and put a space for a stamp and mailing address on the back. After that, I had multiply. I took the birds that I cut out of paper on one of the pieces and drew them over and over, then multiplied the house on the same piece. After that, and I can't remember the exact phrase for it, but it was something about hiding certain parts. I took one of the postcards and drew over what I thought were important parts in black sharpie in large boxes.

The exercise was a good idea, I believe. But, it really made me uncomfortable. On top of the fact that I it wasn't falling in my idea of plan plan plan, I had already really enjoyed what I had done, and if I had it my way, would have stopped then.



The quote that I liked the best out of the ones that were given is the one by Ann Hamilton.

"On one level you do this intellectualized research and you think you're really onto something - but it's almost as if you're keeping yourself busy because you're blind to deeper issues. It's like you set up a process that allows these issues to rise to the surface."

This really makes sense to me because of the type of artist that I am. The fact that she mentioned research was interesting to me. Of course, although everyone goes about things in a different way, there are still common threads among us. Most people that I know (admittedly around my age, which is 22) don't seem to do much research behind their projects before they start them. I, on the other hand, refuse to start a project without some kind of background information to go from.





The funny thing is about doing all of that research is that it all seems to fly out the window once the project really starts moving. For example, for A Greeting of Sorts, my series about awkwardness, I spent so much time thinking about how people are awkward, and how to put them in an awkward situation that it took me a few weeks to realize why I was doing it. I wanted to make them feel like me when I'm in any kind of dating situation. In fact, I went so far as to recreate how my first kiss went, down to the colors in the fabric behind them. But, I was so far into what was my technical reasons for doing things that I almost lost what was really happening in front of me. I was making unconscious decisions that had blatant references to things that had happened in my own life.



This happens in almost every project that I do. My current project for my thesis, about peoples' safe places, follows along the same lines as the rest of my work. I just need to make sure that instead of paying so much attention to the science behind things, that I pay attention to what people are really saying to me in the images. And that instead of thinking that I know everything because of my time and research into something, that I allow for some learning myself.