starting is the hardest
i've been ruminating on a piece i want to make about my personal family history that incorporates knitting, systems of expression and the process of connecting with my family that i will go through in order to complete this piece. the piece i am making will be a family tree constructed from the names of my family members translated from roman characters to ascii numbers to binary to knit & purl stitches. my interest in identity has moved beyond the physical to more specific cultural and personal experiences.
i made the first steps this weekend as i sat with my mother and my uncle and later my grandmother to begin to piece together the names of my ancestors. i've realized that there is more information than just names, including gender, simple facts such as deceased or not, and complex relationships such as that my grandmother's brother married my grandfather's sister. i'll need to figure out how far back i want to go, and how much i want to include or not include. i'm very excited to begin this.
...in other beginnings, i have moved into the next phase of the large led piece of my father by soldering resistors. the nature of the process makes this part go much more slowly than the led soldering. there was also a pause and procrastination, typical of when i start something new or move onto a new phase of a project as i am cautious.
the uncertainty and conservatism makes me feel nothing like an artist. there's this view that artists are daring and bold, and that the mark of creativity is venturing where others do not. i think it is partly misinformed by a perception that someone is born an artist with talent and not realizing that a body of work is a thing cultivated over time. there are moments when i feel a certain confidence and clarity in what i am doing, but there are also times i feel doubt. so starting is hard, but once i'm in it, the momentum carries me.
...of note, i found a company that will break down and analyze a person's dna for $1000. what does this mean? nothing yet--aside from that it is prohibitively expensive, i'm not sure what i would do with the information. i am extremely curious to see the genomic breakdown of my dna compared to my mother's and my grandmother's.
i made the first steps this weekend as i sat with my mother and my uncle and later my grandmother to begin to piece together the names of my ancestors. i've realized that there is more information than just names, including gender, simple facts such as deceased or not, and complex relationships such as that my grandmother's brother married my grandfather's sister. i'll need to figure out how far back i want to go, and how much i want to include or not include. i'm very excited to begin this.
...in other beginnings, i have moved into the next phase of the large led piece of my father by soldering resistors. the nature of the process makes this part go much more slowly than the led soldering. there was also a pause and procrastination, typical of when i start something new or move onto a new phase of a project as i am cautious.
the uncertainty and conservatism makes me feel nothing like an artist. there's this view that artists are daring and bold, and that the mark of creativity is venturing where others do not. i think it is partly misinformed by a perception that someone is born an artist with talent and not realizing that a body of work is a thing cultivated over time. there are moments when i feel a certain confidence and clarity in what i am doing, but there are also times i feel doubt. so starting is hard, but once i'm in it, the momentum carries me.
...of note, i found a company that will break down and analyze a person's dna for $1000. what does this mean? nothing yet--aside from that it is prohibitively expensive, i'm not sure what i would do with the information. i am extremely curious to see the genomic breakdown of my dna compared to my mother's and my grandmother's.
Labels: art
posted by bluepupae at 11:16 PM
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