articulating

a request for a bio/artist statement for the 2007 National Open upcoming show at Long Beach Arts, where one of my pieces is installed, led to a long overdue revisit of my writing. since my portfolio review in san francisco, i have been mulling over in my head what my work is about, how i talk about it, what i want my work to be about or what direction i want it to go. it's really been a big soupy mess that i've come back to here and there, but mostly avoided--my usual response to problems--sitting down to sort out.

the revisit this morning helped to somewhat clarify or at least better articulate certain things. others are yet to be decided. i hate to make any decisions about the specific direction of my work as i feel they might be limiting, but at the same time, it's what i need--parameters that is--somewhat arbitrary rules to coral my wandering interests du jour.

mike's advice to me has been to not overload individual projects with too many overblown ideas, but to keep them simple and direct. it is definitely challenging balancing the desire to layer one's work so it is intriguing with not creating a confusing muck and losing the message.

i whittled my artist statement to one very general paragraph and the project statement to be less physically & technically descriptive and more about the work. writing about one's work is tough. i used to think that one of the reasons i make art has to do with my inability to articulate in words the mess in my head, but now i think it's an exercise in organizing, reorganizing and revisualizing it. the writing seems to help it not be a literal brain dump.