Juggling

 

Between getting ready for my library show and getting ready for my T.A. interview, I haven’t been getting a lot of sleep these last couple of days. It doesn’t help that my brain has decided to take vacation week seriously. But after finally getting the chance to revise my interview, I think it is FINALLY coming together. I’ve gone to four practice interviews so far, but the last one with Jamie and Gaby, was the one I first one Idid after I had the chance to revise and edit.

I’m excited about the library show too. I’ve made some progress printing my conversation pieces, which I will probably scan and make into handouts for people to draw upon. And I suspect that the make-your-own carnival board I created for open studios will fare much better in this environment than holed up in the weird room where it was before. I’m shipping old art over here and buying frames for all of my new stuff.

I heard once that the time it takes to do a task fills the time we have to do it in, and I think that is true… to a point. In terms of art-making, part of me feels that I working as hard, if not harder than I did at the beginning of the semester, but getting less done. Exhaustion and stress is a big factor. There this really annoying thing in me that rises up when I feel overwhelmed, that just wants to throw up its hands and hide under the blankets and watch Dr. Who instead of dealing with whatever is freaking me out. I had to really grapple with that thing over the holidays.  I think I mostly have it under control now, and I no longer feel that everything is totally impossible. (there could be some seasonal stuff contributing to that malaise too. Vitamin D’s where it’s at!)

Another big thing is the rise of all the non creative tasks I have to fill since the funding application reared its ugly head. Paperwork is never fun, even though it is necessary, and I do wish that the interviews were not happening just as everything has started to ramp up in earnest.

I’m working on some projects that are way bigger and take way more time than the things I made when I first arrived. Lynda’s having us churn out a bunch of larger and more complex comics within class, and it’s good that what I am making actually gets accounted for in the class structure, but I really, look forward to working on larger paper, even if it slows me down even more.

Still, this is still the fastest I’ve worked in a years. I’ve gotten used to the pace of printmaking, of planning every inch of a project, and looking at it inside out and upside-down and backwards. I love printmaking and hate to admit this, but putting it on the backburner feels almost like a burden has been lifted from my shoulders.  I can work through ideas so much more rapidly, without getting bogged down in the intricacy of the process (as beautiful as it is. )

Speed is a funny thing.  It can lead to slapdash work and lack of the loving little details and depth of thought that are put into something made over a long period of time.  Stressing over deadlines can also just drain the fun out of anything.  But working quickly also gives me the momentum to get over creative blocks, grants clarity, and can cut through the tangle of a gordian knot.  There’s this thing in physics called the Heisenberg uncertainty principal, that I think also applies to art.  a scientist can know about the position of an electron,  but at the expense of knowing about its movement, and visa versa. This mass vs. energy tradeoff has always seemed to be an issue in creating, too.

I haven’t talked about the post colloquium dinners me and a few others had going for a while in this blog. But I dearly I miss them as we have all been busy with our various tasks in the intervening weeks. Hopefully, we can get them going again soon. I did go to Paul’s house over thanksgiving at least.

As promised, here are some images of the characters I made at the Chazen. The image quality isn’t great, but I had to sneak them out of the grading box for documentation…..