dayton is not in ohio

The crit was on April 30 which seems like a lifetime ago… I had a major breakdown of some sort leading up to it, causing me to irrationally decide that everything I’d made this year was worthless. I was worn out and can be highly critical of my work anyway, so it created the perfect storm of an art crisis. It had something to do with wanting to do something cathartic and emotional and ‘authentic’… It’s interesting how “personal expression” is so often spoken of by bad artists and non-artists. I once had a friend say during a lecture to some Christian students “No one cares how you feel.” What he meant was that you can’t presume that anyone cares how you feel, and make art like you’re the center of the universe. Can’t tell you why I got in this mood… but my idea was to take everything I’d made this year (a lot of stuff), assemble it into a large pile, like a pyre in the middle of the gallery, then run my paper shredder over the top like a symbolic bonfire.

I told a number of fellow MFA students about my idea and they all liked it (of course), and those I mentioned it to in my family didn’t object (wouldn’t know what to say, probably, though I expect they thought it was dumb), but I have a host of artist friends in Philly that would have all listened to me and then told me not to be an idiot and just show my work. That’s what the one I told said, thankfully. My work can be a bit calculating and cerebral, and I do need an emotional outlet, but trying to deconstruct my entire year in some kind of melodramatic conflagration is just plain stupid.

The work I showed was: Infinite Bridge (circular bridge), Chopstick Junction (the chopstick bridge), Internals (SillyPutty photographs), Rapunzel, Rapunzel (paper shredder), 23f (airplane crash video), and Bread Bird. I didn’t get any photos of the entire gallery, but it ended up looking really good in the space. The hardest part of this was getting the 16.5 foot chopstick bridge out of the studio, but I did it in two pieces and reassembled it in the gallery and it worked just fine. I had planned on building a wall so that the piece could be properly installed spanning the gallery, but my crit time got all messed up and instead of having until Thursday, I had to do it on a Monday, fouling that all up.

My panel was pretty benevolent, but not uselessly so. The most interesting thing was when we began to talk about “risk-taking” and what that constitutes for an artist that is up to most technical problems. One of the harshest critiques that I have gotten is that all I’ve done in school is what I was already able to do when I arrived. That’s only true if you don’t take into account the fact that I’d never done anything like what I did when I arrived at school. Just because I did some things well the first time doesn’t make them invalid. The most interesting thing that I took away from the crit was an encouragement to try to flesh out some of my ideas on a grander scale. That’s easier said than done, but the point was that perhaps that’s what constitutes risk for me.

That’s where my thoughts were left in preparation for next year, and leaving me to consider doing at least one really large or ambitious project for my thesis show. I’ll be writing to all of my rich friends for funding.