The pill is my vast precaution to avoid immobility. Immobility in the physical sense but more so immobility of the mind. It is the ability to give up comfort and security in the light of a new truth. It is an effort to separate my own values from the values of those around me. It is the motivation for the constant questioning of the dogma of a modern society. It is my rejection of the Idea of a universal right and wrong and the symbol of all that falls under my concept of the two. In short, it is my ongoing attempt at self awareness. As an image in its original context it was the antithesis of the societal idea that there is a norm to be strived for and envied. In particular it mocked our affinity for the diagnosing and medicating of minor learning, physical, and social “disorders”, which in my mind are nothing more than slight deviations from the standard. This is how the idea gained its form but the form is not what is important. In another context the pill may be me myself. In another it may be nothing more than an image.


3/29/2010

Not a great photo, but this is the final product of my work over winter break. There were 30 portraits in all. Painted on drywall with sprayed casting slip, oxides, and brushed oil paint.

Today Kirsten and I shared a booth at the Art Show in the Park. The Show was a bust for the two of us, it was for most of our fellow artists too, But some conversations that were had between the two of us and the whole day in general have me thinking so I think I'll try to write.

In my ideal lifetime I would graduate Alfred with my BFA then take a few years off for apprenticeships. Next it would be back to school for an MFA and a job teaching at some university. Eventually getting to the point that I could just survive on a couple open house sales a year (ala Val). I want to make things out of clay and teach others to do the same for the rest of my life and expect to make a comfortable living doing so. I've been thinking a lot today about just how rediculous that sounds. I think I should be amazed by the fact that we live in a society so developed that someone can spend their entire life making non-fuctional works of clay and earn some modest wealth. I say non-functional in the sencse that even the functional work we make isn't function in the old sence of a local potter providing modestly priced wares for use in the everyday. I guess my point is we can go our entire lives creating and never make anything anyone needs, and still live comfortably. But while I think more and more about all of that I think that maybe I'm making this too easy. Don't get me wrong I give my art everything I can. It isn't that I dont take anything as seriously as possible or study what everyone else has done or is doing. But maybe it just takes more than all that? Maybe the reason it all seems so impracticable at first glace is because it is. But I guess I don't really want to get into all that. Leaving a little bit of dillusion can be a motivator.