words are wild animals sometimes

Tomorrow is the last day of classes in my college career, and it has left me feeling funny. Not funny in a ha-ha kind of way but a i-sort-of-want-to-vomit-and-cry-and-drink-beer kind of way. I have spent countless hours of the last four years waiting for this moment to come, when I can shout "Sayonara, bitches!" at my peers on the quad and ride off into the sunset. Oddly enough, I'm not feeling ready to mount my white horse and trot away.

Having my thesis exhibition show after i finish classes is sort of making me feel crazy. In a sense, I have devoted my entire college career to my final show. I have not always been doing work directly related to my show, but it's always been on my mind. I remember finishing my first semester at the U of R and talking with the then-seniors of the studio arts department. They all somehow seemed to know exactly what they wanted to make and how to do it. It was a little inspiring. Since that time, I've been looking forward to my own show, and I've felt a strong necessity to "get my shit together" as they say, to make sure that my show is just as strong as those of the students before me.

Because I haven't had my show yet, I have no real feeling of closure, even in finishing classes. I have officially completed all of the work for my three other classes, and I've already received top marks on some of my final projects. I should feel good, right? I mostly just feel busy anxiety, a burning need to just keep moving, keep making, and keep working to make my show as best as it can be. But then the jarring worry comes in, reminding me that I'm full of steam now mostly because I have a specific show to work towards; everything coming afterwards is an utter mystery.

So what does this all mean? I think it's a swift reminder to stay active and to be proactive. I can get these things done when I have projects and due dates. This is the artistic environment in which I must place myself. Maybe I have a stronger work ethic than I do personal drive. Do you think I should put that on my resume?

Alright, now find me a job.

silently, and back to me

Today I had a conversation with Jeremy about some of my older blog posts. He was most interested in the one I wrote about a conference I attended to discuss some art research. Wetalked a little about presenting art at a research conference. I of course presented all my work as a body of research, but I hadn't actually considered it that when doing the concerned pieces (doing as apposed to making because they were performance-based).

Jeremy was interested in what actual research I've done on my area of focus, the body. The conference serves as an opportunity to do real research, to immerse myself in real biology instead of imagined bodyscapes. Just because I like to make up my own organs doesn't mean I should know about the real ones, right? Right. That's why I'd now like to talk about some actual research I have done to prepare myself for

the work I make.

For starters, I have a copy of

a detailed walkthrough of the Bodies exhibit, which featured a plethora of human bodies that have been stripped, dismembered, and wonderfully preserved. The show clearly

shows each of the organs of the body, not to mention veins, layers of skin, sliced muscles, and fragmented bones. I use this this as my main reference point for the pictures that I draw. I am interested in how bodily structures appear in isolation, frozen in time, and decontextualized, like the nerves on the skull above. Indeed, this is the impression I'd like to give with my work.

I also am interested in textbook illustrations of body parts, especially old ones. I think back to the Brain and Cognitive Science classes I've taken throughout college and all of the ridiculous pictures that have accompanied the classes' lectures. I remember thinking one picture looked like an ice cream sandwich with fields of giant asparagus growing out of it. (I still have no idea what this was supposed to be.) Even if they are "real," these images are silly, oddly colored, and, unless you know better, just plain bizarre.

I find this interesting.

These drawings are respectable because they represent real life. So what happens if they start making things up? Are they any more or less valuable to viewers? I suppose that's something I'm looking at in my work. I find it helpful to browse through old textbooks for inspiration. In this way, I have learned to mimic the basic forms that reoccur in the real body landscape while simultaneously learning how to separate my drawings from that of real biology.

Science 0, Art 1.

photo credit:

left: photo courtesy http://sassywire.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/bodies600.jpg

bottom: photo courtesy http://www.cool-layouts.net/comments/cat/Urban/BooYah.gif

i'm your black magic and your two dollar

What is with this new trend of quirky adult cartoons? Here's what I don't want to be: another cartoonist making graphic drawings of sick animals.

There's been a strange popularization of the "grotesque/cute" genre in adult animation -- not that it's a new thing, it's just entered the mainstream with a bang. I'm sure this coincides with Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming, which has been airing hours of adult cartoons and anime every night for the last 5 years. Before that there was The Simpsons (namely the interactions between Itchy and Scratchy), Ren and Stimpy, and Rocko's Modern Life. Cartoons seem to have a strange affinity with the gratuitous grotesque including eyeball humor, explicit excretory references, and plenty of guts under the pretense of humor.

The phenomena has hit the internet too. If you haven't seen the successful Happy Tree Friends series before, you may want to heed the warnings on its website which used to sport the motto "Cartoon Violence: Not recommended for small children or big babies." The show revolved around a plucky group of animals who, in a brief 7 minutes, get themselves into ... brutal situations. They basically all end up being gruesome deaths. Wikipedia writes, "Despite its childish appearance, the show is extremely violent, with every episode featuring blood, pain, and gruesome deaths." Bloodshed and dismemberment are depicted in a vivid manner but a comical tone.

These shows are fine and dandy by me. Don't get me wrong; I enjoy a good dark comedy as much as the next idiot (more rusty screwdriver to the tongue, please!). I just don't want to be mixed into the same graphic category. I feel inevitably linked to these cartoons in that I make illustrative imagery depicting innards.

Back to "grotesque/cute." This can be understood as when a seemingly "cute" thing (a wide-eyed anthropomorphized woodland creature, for instance) doing a seemingly "gross" thing (like pulling out its small intestines and strangling himself with it). My issues with the cartoons is that I just don't think they don't warrant any serious attention. Even if you like the toons, they don't beg any further thought or analysis. Each short animation works as it's own existing piece, only important for the few moments that they are played.

I worry that my work might fall into that category, losing any sense of immediacy or importance. For me, the pieces are imbued with said components, but I can't really be sure if they are reading that way. Overall, i don't want my work to be reduced into the "ghettoized" cartoon world which is popularly dismissed. I don't think I'm at risk of that now, but i'll have to make sure to steer clear.

photo credit:

top center: Itchy and Scratchy courtesy of http://drnorth.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/vlcsnap-6359056.png

right: detail from Happy Tree Friends, http://www.freevideogamestuff.com/wp-content/uploads/happy_tree_friends.jpg

i can tell you something, too

I'm going to talk, for a moment, about the term "visceral." According to the Wiktionary:

Etymology

From Latin viscera, plural of viscus (“any internal organ of the body”).

Adjective

visceral (comparative more visceral, superlative most visceral)

1. (anatomy) Of or related to the viscera—internal organs of the body; splanchnic.
2. Having to do with the response of the body as opposed to the intellect, as in the distinction between feeling and thinking. Often described as intuition; compare gut feeling, gut reaction.

It's that second definition in which I am interested, specifically the idea of "visceral" as the opposite of intellect. It seems fitting to think of my work in the context of so-called gut feelings and gut reactions. Gut feelings are regarded as reflections of some divine intuition instead of rationality. They may thus represent what is inevitably recognized without due logic. These are implicit thoughts, ones that we cannot easily shake.

How wonderfully appropriate that these are called gut feelings. It appears that there is indeed an intimate connection between what is visceral and what is inescapable. This is how I'm trying to present my work: the imagery represents the landscape of the body as a foreign but (dare I say it) simple a fact of life. It can only be understood to a certain degree and its associations cannot be ignored.

filtered smut on the TV set

Things are becoming clear.

Upon talking to my lovely girlfriend about my work, I have come to realize some new things. She has always said two things about my artwork: 1) it often looks like spaghetti (she's given all of my shapes and forms different names ranging from "Baby Fungus" to "Noodle Guts") and 2) it's very uncomfortable. I always shook both of these statements off with a sweet "Yes, girlfriendo, they are supposed to be that way."

Today I had the brilliant idea to ask her why the images are uncomfortable. She paused for a moment, and explained that in a way, the work forces her to revert to childhood. When we are children, we are less afraid of and/or intimidated by aspects of life and death. Kids are fascinated by the dirty, nitty gritty of bodies without, generally speaking, internalizing their deeper implications. They play with worms, enjoy discussion of bodily excretion, and like things reminiscent of bodily organs (consider Scabs N Guts, the meducational board game(!), or Trolli's Brain Surge). Whether this is due to ignorance or true courage, she told me, is unimportant. Guts are something we're interested in until they become "real," until we've had one experience to shatter our innocent perceptions. When our childhood bubbles burst, organs become scary and grotesque.

The bodily imagery thus reminds her of what she called the "softest, scariest, most sensitive parts of our being." The work evokes pictures of visceral circuits that clearly go together and make patterns but seem separate and broken (extracted and exposed, perhaps) from the body. The pieces therefore conjure up memories of childhood and nostalgia but presents them as unsettling and grotesque. Even in reference to a pleasant childhood, the discomfort of the body-esque landscapes cannot be avoided.

I had never thought about how the idea of childhood and nostalgia might affect my work, but I think she makes some good points here. While I never have made that exact connection on my own, my own drawing is a process that reverts me back to my own childhood. As a kid, I desperately wanting to be a cartoonist for some Disney-like company. This pipe dream stuck along for about fifteen years. My childhood was full of drawing cartoon characters and making my own DIY animations. In high school, however, I began painting and left the cartoon idea behind. My work became less and less illustrative as time when on ... until very recently, when the illustrative nature of my work has reached a consistent all-time high. I have returned to a process that very much mimics that of my youth to address "grown-up" ideas.

This is interesting. I have much to ponder.

it's counting, and be sure it counts

I've done it!

What have I done, you ask? I have discovered to cure to all of my darkest needs. We just got keys to the Hungerford Building [where I'll be holding my senior thesis e

xhibition in just over three weeks], which means that it's high time I start figuring out how I'm installing my work. The basic blueprint is as follows: My gallery space contains one long, white, paneled wall along which I will hang one work on canvas per panel. These pieces will also have sound installed inside of them. Perpendicular to and across from this wall are two a smaller white walls which will also each contain one of my works on canvas. Perpendicular to this wall is a dirty, peeling, white

brick wall, on which I plan to hang a site-specific paper

installation. This will consist of a collage of semi-transparent paper figures that I am working on now.

This is all straightforward enough. The big issue I've had in planning is figuring out how I'll be able to hang said paper pieces. They are coated front and back with boiled linseed oil to make the paper sheer. This allows for great layering, but it makes it very difficult to hang. The saturated oil in the paper requires an oil-based adhesive. This is all fine and dandy, but it would show through and be distracting [and utterly lumpy/sickening/awful] which would just not fly with transparent materials. What to do, what to do?

After an hour of effective experimentation, I found my winning combination. Glue Dots and basic multi-purpose spray adhesive. I am not quite sure why the two work so well, but they are like a dream. I think Glue Dots uses the same sort of glu

e that is used to seal all those pamphlets you get in the mail. You know, the kind that stays gooey and you peel it off the catalogue and play with it...? Right. It looks like that.

The biggest challenge I now face [in terms of the paper, of course] is figuring out physically how to hang these pieces. Some of them are over eight feet long, in windy, fragile shapes. The installation will require at least one large ladder, some helping hands, and a lot of patience. I've definitely got my work cut out for me.

On that note:

and i am not magic yet.

a note on emotion, progression, and father time:

I have recently come back into into contact with a certain unnamed individual who was once very influential in my work. She was the largest contributor in my interest in the body, my reason to make work about it. This is not to say she was my muse: on the contrary, she was far from it. My obsession with the body was rooted deeply in her own decaying condition, struck by disease and depression. I felt myself flicker between outsider and insider positions during her body's dangerous journey, both witnessing her decline and internalizing it as my own. The resulting art was nothing short of cathartic, a response to my slow coming-to-terms with the cruelty of mortality.

This is all ancient history now though, buried by the hands of time and change. I found a focus for my work, personal connection, and good direction. Until recently, the specifics of origins concerning who or what or why have since gotten lost. The reemergence of said figure, however, has dug up these experiences and force me to reevaluate them in regards to my current work, their bastard lovechild, so to speak.

Distancing myself from direct, daily interaction with illness and internal suffering has in some ways intensified my relationship with them. It was all too close for comfort before: I needed artist activity, I needed to create, to do something with my restless self. Now the body is not just something with which I had to learn to cope. It once was sink or swim, but now it's all smooth sailing, baby.

I guess what I'm saying is that I think I've found a system that keeps my work just as relevant, immediate, and focused as before while making it less personal. In that way, I am able to [hopefully] make work that speaks to the general public. My work no longer chronicles my own bodily discomforts so much as a generalized experience. Maybe this too is a type of catharsis -- not for me, but for a public. My work now reflects something between homage to the body and fear of it.

Here's what I have to say about it all: it's funny how things change over time. It's funny how I feel little relation to the girl that helped spark it all. My memory of her has been reduced to a had-been burden. Maybe this is evolution. Maybe this is me growing up. I'm not sure, but it seems productive.

you owe me ti-i-ime

I've done some thinking regarding my last post and performance pieces. Now that I am two days older and wiser thanI was when writing it, I am ready to share my thoughts. Get comfortable, this is going to be good. And for your convenience, I've provided this image of a comfortable woman. It's a superb model to follow.

Alright. I mentioned before that the performance work I presented on at the NCUR has a pretty different focus than that ofmy current work. And, to be fair, that's mostly true. The focus is indeed different, but there are some pretty clear links between the two bodies.

My current work is about the internal body more than the external. I would group themes pertaining to gender and sexuality to be party of the external-- still very body related, but examined using a different lens. The internal requires a fine, focused look at what's inside of all of us. That is to say, it is not cultural, specific to certain individuals, or debatable. Inside of each of us lives the same beast. This is sort of like gatorade's Is It In You? campaign, except in real life, sugar water isn't healthy, we don't sweat neon liquid, and we're all sort of frail, grotesque people at risk of the same bodily hazards.

It's the human condition, really, that I'm talking about. We have health and sickness: we live, we lose, we grieve, and we get on with our lives.

That said, I'm still using the same sexualized language in my work. Though I'm not speaking about one specific gender or sex, nor am I drawing from a particular area of anatomy, I'm finding ways to incorporate the ideas of gender relations and imagery in my work. I've been told a number of times that my most recent project is very phallic. It's interesting how hesitant people are to say that. I've heard a lot of "That looks a lot like a... well... it's... it looks... phallic." Well, I'll just come out and say it. Why yes, thank you for noticing, it does look like a penis, doesn't it? And if you look closely, I've included a number of small almond shaped things all over the drawing. They're vaginas.

So what I'm finding is that I am sort of naturally applying subjects from my older performances into my newer work. Instead of focussing on just one gender, however, I'm looking at both. My work examines the body on a number of levels, as an abstract, overwhelming environment and as the loaded, sexualized entity that it has become. Notions of gender, sex, and sexuality are just as central to my focus in bodily control, identification, and distortion as any other topic I look at.

It feels good to draw relations between the two. I was beginning to think I was living a schizophrenic double-life.

Not really.

photo credit:

1. snuggie http://www.asseenontvguys.com/productimages/as_seen_on_tv_guys_1/snuggie-blanket-.JPG

2. gatorade via http://perryfair.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/picture-171.png%3Fw%3D426%26h%3D556

3. detail of my latest piece, courtesy of my cellphone.

i got hungry for the hungry seas

Last week I went to the National Conference of Undergraduate Research to present a bunch of performance-based work I've made. I didn't have high expectations for it. Going to a mostly science-oriented research conference to present feminist performance art? Doesn't sound like my idea of a good time. But it went better than I had expected. Lots of traffic and interest expressed in my work, and only a few assholes arguing against the relevance and general value of it. I'm going to give you the "quick and dirty" of my presentation, as one very nerdy boy requested in what I'm sure he imagined was a sexy, seductive manner.

The three performance pieces I presented were, generally speaking, about Social Control Theory applied to Gender Theory. It's slightly different from the work I'm making now, but I'm certainly still interested in these topics. It acts as a nice segue between my two majors though (art and anthropology). And it's always great to go back to my "roots," so to speak. Performance Art was an important class for me, one where I tested my own physical limitations and dedication to art. It's greatly influenced the way I go about creating now. Here's my revised abstract that was part of my presentation:

Social Control and Sanction: A Bodily Exploration

According to Social Control Theory, the beliefs and actions of individuals are imposed by societal and political norms. Though such conventions are not formal laws, they are strictly reinforced by the threat of sanction if individuals should deviate. As a result, these norms standardize the members of a society and make it difficult for individuals to stray from the roles laid o

ut for them. In terms of gender, such regulation locks males and females into strict categories defining successful masculinity and femininity. Even if only followed subconsciously, these values oblige us to question our own positi

ons in society as well as the concept of free will. My artwork explores the effects of Social Control on an individual, personal level. In three performance-based projects, I test my own mental and physical capabilities as constructed by socially enforced expectations of gender, femininity, and sexuality. These pieces examine my own struggle and desire to desperately belong in this masochistic system while questioning its efficiency. In Eat Up, I explore the limits of expression by forcing myself to eat an excessive amount of wasabi and chopping onions, an act that yielded tears as an emotional prosthetic use

d to communicate with viewers. In Submerge (The Tank), I gave an oral history of social control while immersing my head in a tank of water, ultimately revealing my own pai

nful shortcomings with fitting into a gendered society. In We've Received Orders Not To Move, a three-person performance art work by Sefira Bell-Masterson, I wore an apron covered with open safety pins, kneeled in the center of a higher public space, and remained motionless for hours at a time. All three pieces are designed to cause considerable discomfort for both the performers and the viewers, forcing both to reexamin

e their roles as participants in a destructive system.

And don't I look thrilled there! More on this later, perhaps.