collecting

in the past 10 years i have lived in 11 different apartments. when i first moved to nyc i had one small suitcase that held all my belongings and i kept that same mode of living for about the first 4 years i was there. i lived on peoples living room floors, in cutained off kitchens and once even in a large closet. these small living quarters did not afford me the luxery of accumulating objects. because of this i always thought that i was above collecting the trinkets and decorative objects that most people like to fill their houses with. i even remember helping a very good friend of mine move several times and every time scolding him for having too many trinkets. why accumulate all that stuff if you know you'll have to move it again in a year? now that i am in a place where i know i will be for the next 2 years i have definitely gotten the trinket bug. i imagine what my apartment would look like full of wooden boxes and flowers and pier one accessories. and i wish i had bought more trinkets from my various travels. because if i don't have the objects, how will anyone ever know i was there? when i think about my future 10 years down the line or so, it does always include a vision of a house filled with objects i have accumulated over the years. up until last september i had never owned a bed, couch or any furniture beyond a thin futon cushion. but now that i have aquired furniture i find that it is having a psychological effect on me. i feel encumbered, tied down. what if i need to move tomorrow??? i can't seem to shake my nomadic tendancies even though i am probably the most stable i have been in my entire life in terms of a living situation. for me the gesture of collecting has so many more implications than just status, fetishism and historical relevance. to me it is a commitment. a commitment to the objects- that i will take care of them and protect them from being damaged during an inevitable move. and while i love to fatasize about a house full of trinkets and souveniers, it's probably never going to happen. a good example of this is a spencer tunick print i acquired for free after being in a shoot in manhattan a while back. i had the print in an envelope squished between some old screenprints and other artwork from my undergrad days. i forgot i had it for 4 years until i moved all my supplies here and rediscovered it. i pulled it out and without even hesitating i slapped some masking tape on the back and stuck it to my studio wall. and there it stayed for a couple months until i was broke and decided to sell it on e-bay. even though i obviously have the knowledge of what tape will do to a print and that the print was probably valuable, i just don't have the mindset that it requires to obsess over objects. i guess it's ironic since i'm an artist and hope for people to obsess over mine someday. but a leopard can't change it's spots.

marx

as you could all probably tell from our little skit we decided to have fun with the marx reading. there is not enough fun in this program in my opinion and any time there is an opportunity for laughs, i'm gonna take it. of course it was not a serious interpretation on our parts of his (limited) theories on art, but more an example of how theories are often misused. mao zedong was marxist and he used marx's theories to defend and uphold everything he deemed to be appropriate (be it actually related to marxist theory or not), in much the same way certain religious zealots use broad interpretations of the bible to substantiate their views. ideas are fluid and open to interpretation and people often bend and contort them for their own purposes. our purpose was comedy!

warhol at gagosian

i am such a ding-bat i forgot that i went to the warhol retrospective at gagosian over the break. i don't have too much to say other than it was freakin' huge! the space, the work, the foot traffic. anyway, here's some pics i took...

warhol

for me warhol is not only an icon for pop culture but also an icon for the excess of american capitalism through the unbelievable value that his work has been assigned through the auction market in recent years. conversations abound about how awesome and/or disgusting he was and that his work is nothing but rehashed memoirs of a shifting economy and/or genius. i am rather ambivalent about his work, but i really enjoy his writing. the way he talks about money so unabashedly always makes my stomach turn a bit, but then i realize that perhaps i have been taught to have an aversion to money by the rather seperatist art education that i have had up to this point. i don't crave money, but like warhol, when it is in my pocket i spend it. so in that sense maybe i do like it a little bit more than i am willing to admit. and maybe i am a big fat capitalist pig in sheeps clothing. when i think about being able to "get by" it does include certain luxury items that might not be considered neccessities. i want to eat organic food, drink belgian beer and feed my cat special food so her bladder doesn't get infected. these things require money- more money than i have access to. so i guess the idea of working pretty much any job available is for me not all about art and the struggle it entails, but also about the luxury items that i desire. my students had a raging debate in our last class about "aura" and when does art become art (they had read part of art in the age of mechanical reproduction) and a resounding majority of them ascribed to the opinion that art is not art until validated by a source outside the artist. henry darger be damned, these kids want their 15 minutes of fame. and i am slowly starting to realize that maybe that is ok. most people who enter a given profession aspire to some sort of recognition for their efforts and why should art be any different? the recognition could be fame or money or someone simply telling you that your work had an effect on them. i doubt the latter would be any less profound than the first two, but it would perhaps be more elusive given the investment status that art now has in our culture as opposed to the carefree days when people bought things becasue they "liked" them.

6 year plan

I just wanted to say to Arthur that his candid response to the 6-year plan query was really refreshing. It woke me up out of my grad school coma. When I sit alone and really give it some thought my plans are not much different. I'd like to own a house, have a yard, animals and maybe some foster kids. But when you put a bunch of artists together in a room things become a bit diluted, at least they do for me. I start thinking about my own experiences and those of my friends and the next thing I know I am alternately praising and defaming the "art world" depending upon which memory I conjure up. I agree with Anne in that I am not in this for fame and fortune and that I would be happy to pay my bills as a retoucher, teacher, graphic designer, wedding photographer, etc. I am not above any job and would gladly return to bartending in a heartbeat if it would afford me the time to make my work. i just want a little bit of autonomy and the freedom to continue living my life pretty much the same way i have been up to this point. I'm happy. I don't feel that i am suffuring, I feel that i am damn lucky to have a room to go into to make things every day and people around me to talk to about it. The degree is a step towards teaching and I guess some sort of legitimization of my choices, but really i just wanted the time and the space to work and people to share that with. there are lots of ways to make money and i don't neccessarily see art as the best way, but i do see it as a possibility. as much of a possibility as any other choice i suppose. i think the main problem with the group discussions is that we all already know the choices that lie ahead in our futures and are trying to enjoy this suspended reality period before we have to confront them. beyond that i know that most of us are just looking for grant money, residencies, and other cash and opportunities. maybe the class should focus more on finding resources rather than theorizing on how we define ourselves as artists?

MFA's

i just happened to come accross the post below on gawker.com today randomly, so i thought i'd share it for a few laughs....

Creative Writing MFA programs have always struck us as a bit of a scam. We mean, we respect that they provide workshop-leading jobs for writers who are qualified for little else, and we admire the work they do in the 'keeping entitled assholes who consider themselves artistes far away in Iowa where they can't annoy us' department. But seriously, we don't think that having a bunch of jealous, bitter, insecure writerly types sitting in a room sniping at each other shapes anyone into a better novelist (except maybe Curtis Sittenfeld. Uh, and George Saunders. Well, so there are some exceptions, but it makes us feel better to think that MFAs are pointless so just let us, okay?). Anyway, it was with relief and a bit of awe that we read this letter to Salon's 'Since You Asked' column, from an MFA student who seems to have seen the light:

"Since I started being serious about fiction writing, say about four or five years ago, I realized there was only one thing that I wanted. I wanted a shot at being a writer, and the way I defined that (knowing there were many ways I could have defined it) was to be accepted to a certain rather prestigious MFA program."

The writer goes on to say that she has since fallen in love, realized that love is the most important thing, and lost a lot of faith in her abilities.

"I'm not sure that I deserve to be here. I can't see that my work is getting any better. I feel like my classmates are all better writers than I am and it doesn't help that most of them have odious personalities. I have continued to write, which in my mind is better than giving up, but I find myself constantly thinking I'm crap and wondering if I should give up this ghost . . . So what am I doing here? I'm going to stay and finish my degree, but I've been thinking a lot lately about never writing a word afterward. Does that make me a terrible person?"

MFA lady, we applaud you! If only everyone else in your program would come to a similar realization! The world would be a better place! Entire forests would be saved from pulping! Singing and dancing in the streets! And that must be the advice that Salon's Cary Tennis is about to dole out, right?

"I am glad you are going to finish the program. No matter what you decide to do later, it is good to finish the program and get your degree."

Oh. Sigh.