In the field of my brain, there is a vast garden of plants waiting to be watered. These plants take many bizarre forms: some are tall, others short, some striped, others ripped, and a few with tiny multicolored flowers. This is the place where my creative process begins, where I cultivate and fertilize my thoughts. My artwork begins as a tiny seed of an idea, planted somewhere in the deep dirt of my cortex. Soon this seed sprouts, and a couple of twisted spores erupt out of the seed's surface.
Before I choose my materials, I must first have a concrete idea of what I want to address in a piece. This may range from a number of feelings I have (these usually revolve around some sense of loss) to personal experiences of mine: in that sense, all of my work is extremely intimate and makes me vulnerable. The resulting sincerity, I believe, allows me to create my sincerest work.
Once I have a concrete concept, I begin thinking about what possible materials, and, perhaps more significantly, what process I can use to communicate said concept. Indeed, I generally believe the creative process to be the most important part of the work: I consider all of my work to be performative, and for the resulting piece (the painting, for instance) to be the result of my performance. The art itself lays in my own doing. For that reason, I view my materials as a means to get to some pre-desired destination (i.e. concept-land).
I am most easily recognized as a painter as that is the area in which I have the most "organized" experience, but I would never primarily identify myself as that. As I feel about most labels, I believe the term to be reductive and borderline pejorative. Though I frequently use paint in my work, I am no stranger to other media. Paint is just as much a mark-making tool to me as any other than I may employ, like a paintbrush. That said, I've been known to use a number of materials such as plastic bags, sticks, tubes, glass, and spray bottles to apply paint in different ways. This in turn allows me to add different textures and effects to my painted pieces.
When making non-representation art, I prefer to use paint as I feel it is amongst the most easily manipulated mediums. I try to follow in the footsteps of the great abstract expressionists before me -- Joan Mitchell, Jane Frank, and Clyfford Still to name a few of my favorites -- who sought to capture a particular moment rather than a specific image. As referenced above, such paintings become a form of documentation of my movement, and in that way, preserve and deify my act.
Still, only a portion of my work follows the nonrepresentational theme. I am also extremely interested in incorporating sound in my work, both lyrical (involving discernable spoken word, that is) and abstract. This brings an element of installation to my work, which inevitably leads me to more materials. In the last two years, I have been pick up and collect things obsessively -- small things; stupid things; things like my toenail clippings that I keep in a mason jar and humble pile of letter buttons from broken BlackBerry phones. I consider no substance to be off-limits, and I imagine that I will eventually have a use for any collected material.
photo above: Moose by Lauren Schleider, acrylic on canvas, 2007
photo courtesy of the artist
I am often puzzled when people exercise ownership over their bodies. My psyche and physical being, for one, are entirely separate entities bizarrely set alongside each other. Too often I find that my bodily actions do not match up with my thoughts and intentions. I am awkward and uncomfortable, clumsy and misshapen, and far from in control of my body.
Much of my work focuses on the body as a foreign and abstract entity outside of individual control. I look at the body as a series of machines, each little organ mechanically working together to maintain homeostasis. in that way, a single body can be viewed as an independent social system consisting of a series of collaborating internal parts and function outside of the conscious desire. We do not will our hearts to beat, nor do we wake up thinking, "Hey, I think I'll breathe today. That'll be fun;" nonetheless, we beat, breathe, pump, and slosh around incessantly. This is how the body functions for us. But what happens when these parts stop working together and bodily equilibrium is lost?
The body is simultaneously hospitable and hostile, and I have had my fair share of experiences with the latter. I have watched the body flourish, wilt, and crumble, with bated breath, waiting desperately for some rejuvenation that never seems to come. In return, I learned to internalize what becomes the burden of the body, to adopt the sickness, pain, obsession, and grief of my peers, imagining their shriveling, tainted bits assimilated into my own healthy ones. If you won't take me instead of them, Disease, take me down with them.
My own creative process acts as a therapeutic means to understand the lack of control over the body. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Sometimes they get sick: sometimes they get better: the body itself is grotesque and raw in its simplest form. The thought is totally encompassing, terribly compelling, and all too much for me to handle. Making art is a way for me to discuss and confront my own experiences and twisted thoughts on the subject without forcing words which all-too-easily become contrived and hollow. Through the process, I am able to both grieve and triumph. The physical act of creation (the dance, if you will) is my root of the root (via E.E. Cummings's I carry your heart with me), my big sha-bang, my Hokey-Pokey; hey! That's what it's all about!
I am one person who is made up of a million tiny lives. (These are my machines, see.) There is a fine line that separates my art-life from the others, one that I cannot bother myself with trying to track down, hold on to, or define. My art is who I am; it is what I did and what I will do. It is, alongside a plethora or other livelihoods, my balanced breakfast, running shoes, flashlight, and warm milk before bed. I take pride in the satisfaction I feel from my own creation, the work of my very own hands, and the way in which art creates a map of my movements. The thought of not creating is nothing short of terrifying; I maintain that my brain would simply implode, or I would melt, or I'd become a drone made of ill-fitting bolts, of croutons, or dust, or something else useless.
I believe that the crux of art is performative and experimental, defined by the act of creative as a means of communication and sharing between participants (that is, artist, viewer, man who waxes gallery floor, child who is only interested because he thinks the painting looks like an exploding head, security guard, etc.). This collective effervescence (via Emile Durkheim) forms a palpable energy, an inaudible conversation, an ongoing, invisible history that passes through and links all following individuals. There is a beginning, and then another, and then another, and somewhere it turns into a middle, but there is no end in sight. This is the nitty gritty, the soft, oozing marrow in the hard skeleton of art.
My mother enjoys sucking the marrow out of steak bones at the dinner table. She lifts a specimen to her greedy, parted lips, chomps her eager teeth down, eyes bulging with excited delight, and sucks. It makes a sickening sluuuuuurp, and no matter how much I cringe, she sucks until the bone is dry. This is my dearest ambition with art: I am going to suck to my heart's content until nothing remains.
And look out, world. I'm sucking with a vengeance.
