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Enough.

4/1/2015

It has been a while since I last made an entry and it's because sometimes I am lazy about logging in and jotting down my thoughts.

But I've been reading my (one of many) cousin's blog and it reminded me of my own space that I had carved out to use as a soap box. This one titled 'but i AM a real women' was originally set up as a place to discuss my role and relationship in/to society as a woman artist and what that means to me. But now I realize that my 'femaleness' extends beyond my artistic practices.

Of course in the great (and mangled here) words of Mierle Ukeles, she says that she is a woman, a wife, a mother and an artist. And due to constraints in time and life, and the demands that every single sector place on her, that she could not maintain her art and career while maintaining her family. So to satisfy her need to create and her duties to her family, she found that she must combine art and family practices so that she might be fulfilled and fulfilling.

Clever girl. Giving her self permission to LIVE. AND to be a real WOMAN all the while. Because real women know that you can only do what you can, and that there should not be shame, guilt, or expectations that lace those decisions with derision from society because we have not done enough. Enough is always enough. Or, what we can each manage individually should be enough for those around us.

And anyone who thinks raising a family does not require the same (if not more) endurance, creativity, patience, and self-love as in making art, well then their opinions are not ones I find worth entertaining.

And as many of the greatest and most successful female (and feminist) artists have been pointing out, especially in recent years- we CAN'T have it all. But we can all have what we need and more. We can all have more than enough.

And that should be enough for the rest of you.

(originally posted 6/10/10)

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Private or for everyone else...

4/1/2015

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My intermittent, but consistent, contemplation of the elephant in the room continues. As I keep searching for ideas about where the elephants reside, I thought that maybe they are personal demons. But now I am wondering if they are the things we don't acknowledge publicly, but that others will gladly acknowledge behind our backs.

I spent the weekend doing various neighborly activities, such as participating in a multi-home yard sale and watching football. Throughout encountering various familiar faces and quasi-acquaintances, I also began to learn incredibly intimate details about their lives, and not from them.

I stumbled into the murky political waters of social positioning, which grows more complicated because it exists on either side of our house, across the street and down the road. It is a realm of who knows whom, who has what, and how many iterations and generations live on the block. I can only imagine what they are saying about me. And in fact, where is this information leak coming from?

Among tid-bits and pieces learned, I heard about various crimes, substance abuses, and other degrees of personal judgement. All stuff I did not need to know, and things I am certain would be considered hurtful to the owners of said gossip, but stuff that was gleefully passed to me, a new-comer who has only resided here for three years.
So what I am wondering is, is it safe to say that the elephant might be things that we won't acknowledge within our personal environs, but things which become owned and discussed inappropriately in the public realm? Posted by HC Park

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I can't remember who...

4/1/2015

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Someone told me not too long ago that blogging was a good idea. I am dubious, but now that I have more time on my hands, I figure it can't do too much harm. Herein lays the challenge in relying on conventional representations to express ideas. We must all agree on what that initial information must be. So my challenge becomes how do I make succinct little expressions that are accurate and read conclusively to the ideas I want to express?

Sketchbooks are usually visual diaries. Journals for brainstorming, experimenting and developing our thoughts and methods with the end goal being some other project or final piece. I had an art teacher in high school (I cannot remember which one but probably Mrs. Freger) who cautioned us from becoming too attached to the pages of our sketch books. I used to draw very precisely and carefully, always only on one side of each page, rendering still lives and the human figure meticulously. I was so proud of this hard bound book, but when I showed my teacher, she criticized the scores of blank pages and the overly rendered objects within. The ego blows came early, and never seem to cease but I can usually look back to find the lesson inherent in each ache.

In this case, it was a caution to not take myself, or my sketchbook, too seriously. The danger in this being that potential trap of getting stuck between two pages with no room to move. Not to mention, if I can't get off the pages of a book and into a larger space, I will not have the space to grow.

Now I tend not to keep sketchbooks as a general practice any more. Depending on what medium I am working in, I will sketch directly onto the canvas, make a sequence of images until it is right or work in multiple layers. This is a form of journaling I suppose, but I might benefit from rediscovering the practice of keeping a bound space to jot down ideas without being forced to commit to the project before I know what it is, or else covering all the tracks of my process.

(originally posted 9/6/09)

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Enough.

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I can't remember who...

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