individual v. community

Where have I been?

Making a bunch of studies, most of which I'm not happy with, and generally feeling discouraged about what I'm doing. The last month of my studio practice can be summarized by unrealized goals.

But.

Already this week I'm feeling more encouraged about what is going on. I'm still plugging away on a few paintings. Patterns have taken over my life. But I'm also exploring other mediums--I have started working on an installation with thousands of wax hexagons, began research for an audio (maybe video?) piece, and am continuing to refine my ideas.

I feel constantly inspired. I feels like everything relates to my ideas about connection and ancestry; the weightiness of being connected to humanity through a family.

I'm taking a contemporary literature class. After two days I already love it. In fact, when I left class today I was sad that I had to wait until Monday to attend again. It's that good. Seriously. Our professor is inspiring and brilliant. A girl turned to me the first day and said she had her class last semester and now wants to be our professor she grows up. Now I feel the same way.

We read an essay about universalism, how post-moderns view the ideal of universality or absolute truth as hard to swallow. I'm right there with them to some degree. Aside from beliefs that are directly tied to my religion, I find very few things that have a sense of universal truth. Regardless, this is a tangent...

The essay talked about how we as American's can't fully understand African literature even if we speak the language, know the history etc (and vice versa). It mentioned a story about a girl who was born into a family that worked as servants/slaves/maids to the French (imperialists, but that's my word). The family she worked for moved to France, so logically, she went with them as their hired help. She found herself disenfranchised by two cultures, she wasn't African, she wasn't French. Eventually she committed suicide to release herself from the slavery her family helped to perpetuate by essentially enslaving themselves.

The American sees this as a tragedy because she ended her life. Yes. True. But this is only part of the problem. To the culture in which the story was written, she has only temporarily released herself. She has trapped her ancestors, broken the cycle of life, and, if she is an only child, she has ended the family lineage. She has, in short, committed a terrible abomination, and the African reading is horrified by what she has done. the religious overtone relating to ancestral worship is completely missed by the Western reader.

After reading this essay I realized that my work is in part about this. We are connected in a community. The modern American society so much emphasizes the individual, the freedom of choice. But what it overlooks is the consequences on family, on community, on ancestry and lineage. We are connected deeply. Our choices affect those before and after us.

There are ideas about individual verses community at play in my head.

pound it

after a few critiques and a meeting with a professor i think that what i need most of all is just to create. i need to make stuff, whatever stuff comes to mind. i think this will help me in a variety of ways. the problem that i face is that i'm often driven by a "vision" of what i want a piece to look like before i begin. this gives me direction as i work. but i feel a little bit like i'll be creating in a vacuum without this sort of foreknowledge of what my piece will look like.

i think collaging was good for me for that reason. it's hard to conceptualize what it will look like, but it gradually takes shape as you continue to piece it together.

i don't think i'm going to give up chairs completely. and i've started really focusing on patterns as a way to describe "the stuff between." i think they do bring a form to ordinances, sacred connections, connections that are so significant that they tie into our personal salvation.

today at the university forum the president of the united states catholic cardinals spoke, francis cardinal george. before he spoke a faculty member lead the congregation in a prayer--catholic style. before praying she explained why they feel it is important to pray together and how it ties into their theology about salvation. she said something to the effect that, "although we believe we are all loved and known individually, we believe that we will be saved as a community." i liked that idea of connection, of one affecting another in an indirect yet direct way. though i don't know my ancestors directly or personally, their salvation affects mine.

there is something interconnected with saving ordinances. i thought much about this as i was sealed to my husband and pondered how i am now sealed to him and his family, as well as my family. i visualized a complicated web of connections that bound all of us together. it's as if everyone will be bound and together, humanity will be saved through the connections that we have to eachother.

so i'm going to make. i'm going to spend one month (until the end of march) just creating whatever comes to mind (while i think about my ideas and ponder on the universe). i'm excited to do this and see what will come of it.

maybe nothing.

and if so, i'll pick up at the end of march and keep making until i make a break through. but i'm going to back off of my ideas, try to not contrive my work, but let it come out of more organic processes. i've been pounding my head too hard.

it needs a rest.

the stuff between

i've been pondering for days about what i'm talking about in my art. a long discussion with my husband a few nights ago has got my head spinning.

at a glance it's about ancestors. surely the piece i'm doing for the Education in Zion is about individuals, a way to sort of honor their legacy left on my family, a way to learn about them, feel a connection to them. the purpose that the stories serve in my process is helping me to feel a connection. but the art itself isn't meant to be about them. i don't want to do "chair portraits" per se, i want to talk about the stuff between.

what is between? what is between me and my fourth-great grandmother ellen? spirit, tradition, honor (thank you byu cougars), ordinances, strength, connection, legacy . . . intangible stuff.

so that is my challenge is just that. paint intangible forms. or, create a form that describes the stuff between. do i leave chairs completely? are chairs and i at an impasse? i haven't decided yet, but i do know that i need to figure out a way to give a form to these ideas that, right now, seem completely formless.

chair concepts--a launching point

This was my brain dump from a few months ago. It acts as a launch point for my ideas.

What is my art about? What drives my chair series? What questions am I getting at? It seems to me that the answers to these questions have become rather unclear over the course of the semester. My pieces lack definition conceptually. But the concept is still there; it just needs a bit of unburying.

The concept for this body of work has been curing in my brain for years. It all began with a comment made by my German teacher in high school while we were in Germany on an exchange with students from another school. I was invited to go with he and my mom to Prague for the afternoon and of course I jumped at the chance. On the way back I was reading Lectures On Faith and somehow we got into a conversation about temple work and ancestry. Stefan made a comment that has stuck with me since. He said that he thinks there is a lot more significance to ancestors than we even realize; they play a more vital role in our lives and the Plan of Salvation than we realize…something to that effect at least. I remember how true his comments felt. It closed my eyes and was overwhelmed by how vast it all seemed, but how powerful the numberless people could be. I pictured all of these links, and then I thought of the scripture in D&C 128:18 that says:

. . . It is sufficient to know, in this case, that the earth will be smitten with a curse unless there is a welding link of some kind or other between the fathers and the children, upon some subject or other—and behold what is that subject? It is the ebaptism• for the dead. For we without them cannot be made perfect; neither can they without us be made perfect. Neither can they nor we be made perfect without those who have died in the gospel also; for it is necessary in the ushering in of the dispensation of the fulness of times, which dispensation is now beginning to usher in, that a whole and complete and perfect union, and welding together of dispensations, and keys, and powers, and glories should take place, and be revealed from the days of Adam even to the present time. And not only this, but those things which never have been revealed from the foundation of the world, but have been kept hid from the wise and prudent, shall be revealed unto babes and sucklings in this, the dispensation of the fulness of times.

I felt like in that moment I caught a glimpse of how important temple work is. We say that it’s important and obviously we believe it or else we wouldn’t do it, but I feel like there is so much beyond the why’s and how’s it important that is too big for us to comprehend. There is something more.

_______

Last summer I started a project where I interviewed my grandparents about their lives. We started at their birth and talked about them growing up, their parents, their interests, dating, meeting their spouse etc. It was an incredible experience and I’ve never felt closer to them (which is saying something because I have lived in the same city as both sets of my grandparents for my entire life). I felt a connection to them that I had never felt before. What was amazing were all of the parallels in my life and their life, or the lives of their parents. I was also stunned at the same sort of emotional problems or characteristics that I shared with my grandparents and great-grandparents. I was impressed by their strength and courage and entertained by the stories of their lives.

For the past year or so I have had many reinforcing experiences that tell me the importance of our connection to each other. Especially our connection to our families.

And it all sounds so cheesy. But nevertheless, I feel like it’s been in my head for so long, I just needed to spend some time getting it all out, and the experience has been good so far.

At first I drew solely on stories from my grandparents to make paintings for this series. My mom’s mom told me about her mother who was so much of a neat freak she would put newspaper over her newly polished floors for days so they wouldn’t get dirty (grandpa asked why she didn’t just save herself some time and put down newspaper instead of bothering with waxing it since they never got to see it shine). She had the straightest drawers. Grandma said that her mother was always after her for not having straight drawers herself. As she was telling me this all I could think of was my own compulsion to tidy drawers, straight lines, neat stacks and rows . . . I felt this connection to my great grandmother that I never had before. My grandfather’s mother was a singer and she wrote songs. I’ve done a bit of songwriting and took one of her lyrics that I found in a dusty box in the basement and wrote a tune to it. I felt a connection to her.

So I made a painting about straight drawers, but it felt too contrived and forced and just not very good. Maybe it’s because this was the first painting of the series this semester. But either way I didn’t like it. I searched for another story and became fascinated by the one my grandpa told me about his mother, grandmother and great-grandmother who, as he said, “constituted my universe.” They lived under the same roof nearly all of their lives. My grandpa only says things of utmost praise and admiration for these women. What a strength they were to him.

That painting was better, but still didn’t convey what I want it to. But what do I want it to convey?