Digital Approaches

It is ironic that in a digital approaches class that most of my practice is involved with a decidedly analog mindset.

My routines for my practice include rising early, exercise, coffee.  These procedures are periods of time when I synthesize ideas for my work.  Often during exercise, I find that my mind will work over projects.  Typically, my art practice now begins with concept.  This could be a vague idea of form or a subject.  The notion is something I will mull over and decide upon a form from which I will begin to work. 

My day after this typically involves a detailed rundown of my schedule to make sure I am on time and have my work complete.  Then I will begin “detailed work”.  Detailed work involves the actual haptic making of a piece.  Most of the time I consider the work that comes out of these sessions to be studies, such as drawings, photographs, or sculptures that are rough in shape and idea.  These sessions are usually 4-5 hours long, with a break for lunch.  After this I return home, or If home I take a break to make dinner.  After dinner is done, I may have a hour or two of research which would involve reading or learning about theory, artists, or criticism, and then bed. 

I think I developed these habits due to my previous work schedule before coming back to school.  I would often not have time to get to a studio, per se, but during working hours or at lunch could make time to think about what it was I wanted to accomplish.

I am not convinced that this is the best way for me to make work.  I would prefer a more stade, and serious schedule.  I think that as a transition into such a schedule my current project is accomplishing just that.

For instance, one of my current projects is typewritten paper scrolls, that form a kind of poetic diary of automatic writing.  I began by thinking about how we as a culture ceaselessly document and retain large swarths of our daily lives, through our mobile devices especially.  The information we retain with these tools is not so much what interests me but more the engagement with the tools.  By writing on these mulberry scrolls I am creating a visual art work that is familiar in form vis a vis the aspect ratio of texting formats, but denies the infinite sameness by using a substrate that retains a uniqueness.  The works also change from a purely communicative medium into a visual one.  The ink bleeds in unusual ways, capturing interest in the random.  This work is incomplete, and I think that an incorporation of installation that engages the viewer farther is necessary to convey the idea, or prompt more interest.

By adapting my schedule to involve a type of recording I think that this work will eventually change my schedule to a writerlier process oriented scheme.

I also work on more than one project at a time.  I have been making cartoonish drawings that feature eyeless floating heads that connect and contort one another, as well as a series of photographs that continue a body of work about looking at art in museums, and how the art looks back.    With multiple irons, I can always try to find something that drives my interest, in that I have a somewhat mercurial or scattered attention.