Summer ends with a Blue Moon

While the summer flew by it left good memories and lessons about the value of exploring, friends, fishing, free time, leopard frogs, crickets, snakes and countless other examples of the magic of the north woods. It has been six months since graduation. My MFA work was included in three shows this summer, and I will participate in three auctions this fall to support the photographic arts. The work of scouting for exhibition calls and writing proposals is as much work [if not more because I find writing a chore] as producing new work. I continue to explore questions of identity relating to hospitality, land use and domestic life. I am been reading Moyra Davey's Mother Reader, Mothering and rereading Moyra Davey's The Long Life Cool White because the work resonates with my interests and practice.  Domestic space and mothering naturally came into focus as a research subject because childcare fills my days.
An equally important question I toss about regularly is how relationships to one's artistic work, monetary labor, family obligations and sense of self form plurality that we try to define in a normative form. In this calculus of valuing plurality I spend much of my time these days directing my child's care and development. Children need constant attend and direction even when my objective is to provide free space for her to explore and learn through her own experiences. I set up activities in the school house and around the clearing. She migrates between them playing and entertaining herself learning all the while. This strategy allows me pockets of time in her shadow to read, reflect and explore the ideas that will become my next work. The simplicity of my life in its routines provides mindfulness of how present our actions are in making the space we occupy. I am still very active and following a few dozen interests, but I resolve to occupy my mind with useful play and see the contagious nature of gratitude and humanity [fully aware of the evils of power relations especially in the present political currents]. Staying away from crazy makers helps too [ha-ha].
My practice of questioning used to deconstruct and devalue but now I use questions to build. My projects are built around the desire to explore human agency, social relationships, taboos and the meaning of the photographic. Yes, I am still interested in lots of tangents. The taboo of access has me photographing barriers—gates, signs, rocks and other forms of obstruction. Free stuff also intrigues me. The stuff people are willing to part with but still assign value fascinates me in our commodity rich culture. I will keep you posted. Cheers from the woods, m.

Vacation land

I look at this phrase and Alex Trebek appears before my eyes with fifty questions that all led to Vacation Land. My attention has been on domesticity but this phrase- Vacation Land -keeps tugging at me. I am almost a month off the high of my MFA graduation exhibition, Intimate Space: Domesticity, Hospitality and Land Use. I have been rereading Long Life Cool White by Moyra Davie, Mothering edited by Moyra Davie and Maternal Metaphors by Moyra Davey et al. I am indulging in time with my daughter and watching the new season bring back life to the woods and yard.
Being mud season the camps are closed. Time feels like it is stretching this time of year between the lack of people and the days getting longer. These lone times are a bit more intimate and cool. Today I cooked my birthday cake, did laundry and read a bit for fun, Annette Lemieux's The Strange Life of Things. I want to get ride of twenty years of clothes and I am processing how I want to do it. Index, random mailings, reconnecting, connecting, goodwill with notes to see if I get reply. All these things bring me satisfying memories, but stuff is a burden. The memories do not need them and no one else knows the connections. Too much relational aesthetics makes me want to be a Buddhist monk. For now, I need to set a plan. Action is the best motivator.
I continue to make my daily postcards to my daughter. I think about the cameras place in our intimate relationship. I write conversationally. I take images from our regular normal daily life. I post them to engage the mechanics of the process. You do not see changes when you are in them, but in retrospect it is intriguing. She herself loves to make images. This week we had a laugh because she likes to say cheese and I explained I am not one for fancy smiles and prefer deadpan. She now laughs and yells deadpan. She is three, so this is funny to her. 

Graduated MFA program. Taking the work onward...

It has been two weeks since I graduated. The final show was bitter sweet. Seeing it was satisfying and rewarding, but I have grown close to my cohort and find it strange that we will not see each other in another five and half months with another exhibition and research to present. I am preparing proposals and reviewing calls. Getting the work out and sharing are another job.

week for final residency

On friday I will leave for Vermont for my final residency, show and graduation. This past six months has been daunting writing the process paper and developing a final show. I have not written regualrly because all of my attention has been on those two fronts. I am very pleased with the final results. I will post from images of the installation next week. Today I am in awe of how fast time flew by and grateful for the amazing people in my cohert, the Vermont College of Fine Arts faulty and artist teachers, and the community of artists in the Northeast. Thank you!

week eight—fourth Studio project and process paper

The process paper has consumed me. I have not been attentive to the weekly blog check ins on my process. I have retreated to my studio and spent less time online. The Process Paper is a critical component of the pedagogy at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. This reflection on one’s artistic and intellectual trajectory explains how process and practice locate the artist in terms of their actions and place, in their community, in contemporary art and the world of scholarly pursuit. This convergence speaks to the multi-centered and interdisciplinary discourse of knowledge, understanding and making conceptual work. My process paper will use proceeding visual culture topics as developmental signposts. Learning the contemporary theories and vernacular of Place, The Everyday and Affect reframed my work in identity and the human construction of space to engage the inter-subjectivity of meaning.
For my studio project I am, well, all over the place. This is not a new development. I usually have at three three projects working through my ideas. I am making postcards to my daughter daily on our relationships and the production of space. I am photographing studies of dinner plates and pillows examining hospitality and the place as commodity, and I am do a study of the water. I love the smell of pond water. Maine's abundance of water is a blessing. I want to convey the affective presence of movement water has on the sensory system. 
I hate writing [that is my rant in a nutshell], so this is a painful time. I love questions and relationships, but I have had to approach writing in a new way to get this project done.
Questioning became an equally supportive and productive process in my practice. It opened the in-between spaces and broadened my consciousness of differences, textuality, plurality and optimistic skepticism. Herein writing became an integral discourse in itself. I found the quieting of my mind and body painful, but the solitary practice of writing organized my thoughts and provided needed exercise on focusing my questions and staying on task. Effective communication is not a formula but an art of questioning, tweaking and working to develop and expand one’s own knowledge to clarify an understanding. The process is not linear and requires discipline and commitment to achieve results not necessarily apparent or tangible as a product. The satisfaction and achievement is the process of personal and shared engagement with ideas, situations, possibilities and opportunities. I now see the relationships that cross disciplines, interrogate motivations and suspend labels as key spaces to inspire and value human expression and experience. The questioning is a practice of plurality. It is learning the process of seeing beyond what you are looking at and knowing the texture will reveal additional value.

Back to the paper I go. This is a beautiful process however I feel like mincemeat!

August 13th Looking forward to Final studio term

Reviewing the notes from my visual culture workshops and my critiques to set my plan for the process paper and final exhibit. This is a time of reflection, but it is also the anticipation of the day after school and my conversation with the world at large.

August 13th Reflections

The residency was a whirl wind of little sleep, group, individual and candidacy review critiques, and many lectures and exhibitions to spark new interests and ponder many topics from new perspectives. I presented my book, Unorganized Territory—Moosehead Triangle and an exhibit of sixteen images. Thank you to my classmates, the faculty and the staff who make this residency possible and together we pull each other through the beauty and pain. Cheers.