I’ve decided not to title this issue. I honestly don’t feel comfortable with newsletter titles, so I’ve decided to just date the issues, like a journal, or even like—a blog? Frankly I think this newsletter is very much like a blog, but with some differences—namely, it’s much easier to use and gets a few more readers. Maybe not a lot, but that’s OK. I appreciate my readers and viewers of art, and those who are willing to put up with my incessant experimenting.
It’s difficult to write about art or writing without getting personal to some degree, because art comes from a very personal place. After my divorce, back in 2004, and then the death of my mother (and later the death of my ex), I felt like I had emerged from a state of mystification or hypnosis that I’d been in for decades; however, as I get older I realize that the process of demystification continues—the need to see anew, and to reimagine the world. Arundhati Roy said, in a widely quoted article, that the pandemic is a “portal,” and over the last year, I’ve felt that has been the case for me. I’m sure I’m not alone in this.
So, while writing, and especially art, come out of a place of playfulness and experimentation for me, I try my best to pay attention to that process, because I feel that a sense of clarity is crucial in this period of change—and believe me, “clarity” has not often been my strongest suit.
It’s so damned easy (especially when one is constantly worried about where one will get that next paycheck) to get pulled into the art-market agenda, or the publishing agenda, linked to larger, global and parasitic systems (a source of that “mystification”). So I wonder, for the umpteenth time, why I’m doing this—why I’m writing this newsletter. And I think it’s because it helps me think about the art I’m making, and this act of writing about it online creates a certain kind of pressure that is useful to me.
Do you feel compelled to write about your particular form of art online? Why?
The need to be able to set my own rules, to “game” the system, comes to the forefront, which is what I’m doing with the rule-based Geomancy series, and with what I’m tentatively naming the Lexicon (or possibly “Keyword”) series – with a nod to Raymond Williams.
In a world where social media (i.e., Instagram, exposes you to every possible visual influence, it’s a way for me to create a process structure that hacks or mediates that influence, to some extent, while giving me the freedom to explore visual language.
But I also give myself time to do more improvisational pieces like these below (prompted by my purchase of some new mixed media paper):
ART
FIVE GOOD THINGS
Ajay Kurian, interviewed by Shiv Kotecha in BOMB: https://bombmagazine.org/articles/ajay-kurian/
Women’s audio mission: https://womensaudiomission.org/
Back to this idea of “walking” as art. But also in this case art that addresses colonial legacies: Christine Howard Sandoval, interviewed by Louis Bury.
Why painting is prayer to India’s Bhil People: An animated myth retells why painting is prayer to India’s Bhil people.
Hum chitra banate hai (We make images) | Psyche Films
An article on Bhil art, in Expressions (Artisera) by Amoret Lingwa.
More next week! I hope you are having a peaceful Memorial Day weekend.
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