I felt really unsure of myself all semester. Not just in school but in life, my relationships. I doubted every move I made. I had no idea what I was doing but felt so much pressure to do so many things and do them well. It’s not that I don’t know what I want to do or say. I just need the space and time to learn the best way to do so for myself. This semester, I didn’t feel like I had enough of either.
This semester I wanted to focus more on reflection. I didn’t want to make new things or think new thoughts as much as I wanted to examine the things and thoughts I already had around me. Anything new would be created from what already existed. This is because, in my mind, I stumbled upon a thousand piece puzzle I felt compelled to put together. From the pieces, I had to build a comprehensive picture, but that takes time. It takes learning through observation, then doing, then reflection and the cycle restarts.
I felt the motivation of my practice shift away from expressing a message to be interpreted by others. Instead of worrying about how good the outcome would be I focused on what felt right for the work. I found that for me and my work, meaning develops really slowly. Because I had opened my practice up so broadly, not only in terms of potential themes but also the mediums in which I worked, there was a lot to sort through and make sense of. I wanted to do it properly. I couldn’t force meaning out of things prematurely just so that they were legible in time for school deadlines. It didn’t benefit the work and definitely didn’t benefit me.
This is where the disconnect happened between me and school. As I worked slowly and intuitively through this process, deadlines came up and my work was still in more of a formative stage. The puzzle wasn’t put together in my head or in my art. My work didn’t make sense to me and it was so personal, so it didn’t make sense to anyone else, and I couldn’t explain or defend it verbally. Critiques often felt so pointless. All I had to present were sketches and fragments of a bigger picture no one could see yet. I knew it was there, but what’s there to talk about? Of course, they all went horribly.
My final crit for seminar made me angry. I don’t think it went any worse than any other review of my work that I had this year but by that point, I had a clearer understanding of my works value to me. The problem was that I still couldn’t express it outwardly and the picture still wasn’t complete. During the critique, I was so excited about all these fragments of the puzzle that I had discovered fit together and everyone else was busy looking around for the rest. My face got hot and I got sweaty and I wanted to fight and cry. I didn’t disagree with anything that was said, but it was all besides the point to me. The point had been completely overlooked and I didn’t know what to do about it in the moment. I knew my grade would suffer, so my GPA would suffer, which would hurt my chances of getting into a school with a curriculum better suited to the way I work naturally. I’m so tired of having to work within institutions that weren’t established with people like me in ample consideration. I’m so tired of trying so hard to be heard and seen. All it does is make me feel trapped and all that critique did was solidify that feeling. What fun. I got over it (a lie) and went back to doing what I wanted.
I kept making mind maps. I kept drawing. I kept doing work for other classes. I kept designing for t-shirts. I kept writing in my journals. I kept reflecting on my actions, my words, my experiences, my perspectives etc. I kept doing everything that felt right and came naturally. For my final review, I had been planning to put together a scene I had sketched out a couple of months ago. The houses would be set and upturned in plaster rubble I collected in the fall. The explosion tree painting from my first studio project would be like the seamless backdrops they have in photo studios. A metal plane I made earlier in the semester would hang from above and two plaster feet I made last semester would be walking away from it all. I was struggling to figure out how to make my painting into the proper backdrop I wanted. I needed it longer and I needed a blue sky but I couldn’t repaint it. I had no materials. I photographed it and put it in photoshop where I elongated it and painted over it in more vibrant colors. I printed the final product out on the plotter. It wasn’t everything I wanted. But the picture was coming together now.
My reviewers didn’t understand completely but they appreciated everything I did. The devastation, the humor, the catharsis, the poetry, the exploration, the playing, the space I was struggling to find, the vastness, the world being presented to them. It was a world by the time final reviews came. Not just pieces. They felt it the way I did. It was reassuring to know that I wasn’t bullshitting all year. That I really was working towards something meaningful, even though I had no idea what I was doing, or exactly what that meaningful something was, or what that meaningful something meant. It had an impact that someone other than I could feel. Finally. I wasn’t creating for approval, but it’s still nice to get it. It’s nice to not feel so alone and in the dark. I still don’t know what I’m doing, but now I know for sure that all I have to do is keep going and I’ll get to where I want to go eventually. Very validating final review. I loved it. I’m ready to have a great summer full of making. Too bad about that shitty studio project grade though. :/
