concur

"Try and hang on to some people. It'll get lonely out there."

it might look very different but do hold on. I would very much like and want that.

tired.

unsureness and second guessing each turn I take. quite tired. but writing again. that is good.

sure, i know. i know. i'll work on my bootstraps, there is no other way.

i act like i know what i am doing. i think most people have this same bluff. clearly i've no idea. sure i have areas of expertise. i am pretty intuitive at some things. i get startled at what others more distant think i do well. i've only just learned in recent years that i've a tendency toward enabling. i probably saw it some over the past twenty five years, but near recent work history made it plain, plain, plain as i twisted my words to cover a coworker much like a wife may cover for a drunk. it made no sense to cover for and in a manner that only hurt me professionally. i was appalled as i watch me do it, say it, and realized at that moment i'd been covering (sans a few reality blurts) for two and one half years. crap. definitely i've made some changes since. the closer things are the harder to see. there is a trail of my no-ideas-what-i-am-doing behind me, each breaks my heart. i act like nothing hurts me, but i pretty much live there. in fact, i take almost everything in perhaps that explains my retreat to the wood (well and it is dropdead beautiful out here, peaceful, i can afford this for a time, and i've a pretty large artistic footprint). i am a pattern seer for as long as i can remember. i see patterns all around me replicating. it scares the shit out of me. it terrifies me that it may be who i am. it bends my mind and breaks my heart. i've been afraid a long time. i am tired of being afraid. i've seen what being afraid does to my life and those near. it would be nice if i knew what i was doing. i simply don't, i am too close to it all. i'll work on refining my bootstraps and all i've been told is wrong with them, then tug, tug, and start my journey again.

this all sounds quite pathetic to me. i would love to have a clear direction for my tug, tugging. each vocational change has built on the one before, but never replicated (amen), each has been a pretty definite shift yet built upon what i had already gained. my aptitudes, education and experiences are culturally valued, unfortunately this is not mimicked fiscally (oh those dang maslow hierarchy of needs). so honestly i need a total mid century plus one reboot.

here is what i do know -- i love making but it is not enough, i thrive on writing but it is not enough, i am fascinated with the creative and contemplative process and thresholds, i am endlessly curious about how we operate as humans and herds, and i am compelled to feel like whatever i do has some cultural/people relevance...a purpose larger than myself. men muddle this for me. well all of two, not like there is a long string except temporaly, or i am well versed in the intrecracies. the muddling is my own because i've a tendency to slip underwing and hover there, it feels safe. alas it really isn't in either case for me. for now i need to figure a path to blend these less touchy feely things that hold me -- making, writing, process, thresholds, agency and operants, research and purpose benefiting other. and so that is the task at hand.

perhaps what has been good might be honored

 stories twisted and gnarled, exaggerated and not, are told both to ourself and others to hold our own identities and sense of goodness and rightness intact. when the hurt and stress is enough, whatever coping mechanism is already in place will be used in the stories tell. for most, me and others, the mechanism isn't really that functional and it tends to wreck havoc and make things worse. then we each are typically compelled to  generate more staunchly the twists of stories and their lines to justify the flailing of hurt. the question I would have is can these habits of defense be laid aside and what has been good be honored and what has hurt be handled gently. 

I haven't witnessed this possibility but would find it refreshingly good while I try not to generate another story to tell of my own.

happy accidents and dirty wombs (now i've got your attention. ha)

I like happy accidents. I've always tended to follow their lead. it is the same way i approach a text or concept in art, in life. i do my homework, a tad of research, but usually i follow the tangent that arrives through accident or random synchronicity between things not expected to synch. i inwardly laughed this even as a sat in a lecture, the content approach described / presented as novel. me, i just thought everyone arrived and explored that way. i realized through the evening that no everyone does not and a guide may be necessary. typically i attend lectures because they feed sideways thinking. they help me explore more intuitively entering a topic or idea in a nonhead on way. art openings and socials really do almost nothing for my interior world, tethering or what may come of that, on the other hand, a lecture helps me find sideways links as my current thinking and the lecture mentally play back and forth. in reality this lecture i attended, or initially scheduled to attend, was almost purely for the social contact (I do love my woods but frankly I live in a de-people microforest). so just sitting between two souls that i've known for maybe twenty years, tethers me. i don't even really need to speak to them, just snuggle down in the space of knownness and let my mind flit about the lecturer's topics. the other thing that struck me as funny was that his approach to breach the threshold of knowingly unknowing in things of the spirit mirror the same threshold i advance in the process of accessing and manifesting some art object, space or event. the parallels between the mystical and the creative are so amazingly aligned. anyhow, i listened, smiled, snuggled down and enjoyed the happy accident of the verbal linking, dirty womb (now that could manifest in some typicsl kathy art)...not that he tied those two words together directly, they just jumped there on their own within my mind. ha. and actually the two words played well into the lecturer's lesson. 

i arrived at the studio afterwards and noted the instantly happy accident of the loss of a spherical orb with its remnant re-membered. it speaks to me, much in the same way the arrival of the pup has done. I'll trust these leadings and learnings. ha, the vacated space even spoke of the dirty womb--isn't that the source of so many of our ideas. they manifest in our dirty wombs (don't go literal on this comment).

things tend to arrive when they should, when they are needed. not necessarily on my timeline, but it would seem when the need is right and the niche or womb is ready.

she is not easily or immaturely moved by me. some editing is seriously due, but it is not in me

"...isn't that to say aren't each of us alone in our inner worlds..." -- Ken Gergen

i am never alone in my thoughts. of course in the above quote in full context the author (meaning is really goes on to say the opposite) goes there, for like me there is a dance, wail, fret, interact with the language of stories, the reinactments, the words, the dis-membered remembers. the stories, recollected words, reconstructed histories, push and ply me. I am not alone in my inner world, even there, you, you and you, still shape me. how i mold and remold these lingering voices and flatten polyedited memories effect each lived instance. i am never alone in my inner world. i've glimpses of solitude when i experience the most present of moments in the stillness of the singing woods, yet i am never alone in my de-peopled space because i am never alone in my inner histories and futures. 

i've a good bit of constructivist thinking in my make up. it renders the world quite gray. at the same time i've a clear inkling that our disposition, that mine, is somewhat fixed, genetically defined. but i seriously lean into constructivist relational thinking about identity, dynamics with events, spaces, things and people, and our herd behavior. i believe it sets the course for how we'ved documented and lived our histories. it shapes and can reshape each moment. I am not in fact a discrete bounded isolated object or being. 

that other, that community, generates and largely sets and resets a reflective identity, functioning as a constant self echo locating mechanism, is clear. i've watched it playout this way for as long as i can remember, even as a kid, I noted these processes. some artists speak of knowing they were an artist since they were a kid, me the one thing that's always caught my mind is human interaction. a personal area of interest, because i am a watcher, a pattern seer, even of my own behavior, is observing the effects of living in this de-peopled wood were i may go several consecutive days each week, week in and week out over the course of years without bumping or brushing another human, stranger, friend or fo. there is no water cooler or public facility in which to even pass a human entity. i can think myself one way, but until i interact with another i will not know if it is really so. just the other day, i was shocked to watch myself brush off a person who showed interest. it was not a gentle brushing. it was a clear go away. well actually, with two this occurred, one with body, indirectly, one with words, directly. the body one did not unsettle me for it was appropriate for the box that the person had chosen to put the relationship into. i simple don't fit in the specified box they outlined for me. so i cant and wont get in. so the body brush off was simply a no. the other, the worded brush off, felt cruel. i've always like the person, but they were showing a new kind of interest, the kind of interest i wanted to shut down as nonoptional. i did. i see myself as generally kind, yet my worded brush off, was bluntly unkind. even as it came out of my mouth i felt its wrongness. am i becoming less inhibited or more fragile? fragile is a serious concern. yet without regular interaction it is hard for me to read what is being altered by the de-peopled woods.

i also laugh at the disconnect of so many texts i read, they all approach change and growth relationally. so the bahahaaas comes when i think well how in the hell does one test that in my de-peopled forest or walking my mini meadow.  is pondering the growth option or behavioral options enough to make it so. it leaves little room for practice, little room for banter or discussion that the good idea may not in fact be so good. it leaves no room for test, trial, error, or adaption.

people love the idea of how and where i live. i love where i live and a big part of the how and why. i am comfortable alone with myself, yet i've discovered that extended ongoing alone, well, removes the relational dynamics for which we were designed, dynamics that ground us in the communal real.. we simply are social beings. our understanding, purpose, living is meant to be communally based at some level. a time a part and regular aloneness is healthy and needed, i like that very much. i am introverted. a temporary retreat is to be cherished. at some point though depending on personality, disposition, introvertedness, living in a de-people woods, there is untethering, an unmoaring. I don't know how the untethered unmoaring will play out in real human space long or short term. I am uninterested in fragility of being. 

ha. i've reentered the church purely to explore the social tethering that comes with human reflection from people I've brushed up against at various times for twenty years. i am unworried about offending the powers that be for she is not easily or immaturely moved by me. 

fully + ready + exact = perhaps

"Reading makes a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.” -Francis Bacon 

I love when my students mock, I mean, express their read of my work

and affection since they send me responsive pics. I also like that their facial expressions and gestures peg the work dead on. I've always been fortunate in getting the best and most interesting students. did mention they are also funny. 

Kailey

Kaitlyn and Aubrey

too metaphorical for the Sistine chapel

there is a metaphor somewhere in this. 

clearly some scatological ones could be bantered about but it doesn't seem to resonate as even a small truth more just a silly banter. 

eventual if I put pen to page, it will come to me. 

ha. though of course I could not help but laugh as I acquired more of these spherical orbs to stitch into my work for a series that will temporarily reside within a ____(wait and see). it is an unexpected venue for my work, but if michaelangel could why not me and my nonfigurative ephemeral non-archival spheres stitched up into urban refuse, ragged like...perhaps. 

The Artist Way Creative Cluster [time to register]

Join me. Register now

The Artist Way Creative Cluster 
Facilitator: Kathryn Kelley
Thursdays, 6:00 - 9:00 pm
Begins Sept 12 (12 weeks)
Houston, TX

In this course, we will form a creative cluster in which to begin stepping past the internal and external habits that have kept our creative impulse on the back burner. Joining this cluster will be to fulfill a yearning to bring our creative impulse to the front burner. We will read and use techniques and exercises from Julia Cameron's book, The Artist Way, to excavate habits and thinking that may have kept us blocked and cultivate new ones that support our impulse to create, to express. We will move from thinking about our own creative impulse to begin acting upon it. You will be challenged to test run weekly methods from the text -- artist pages, an artist date, and other exercises. This course is based on the premise that each of us is creative by nature and that in a supportive community we can more easily begin moving from thinking about to actually doing. Whether your urge has been to write, paint, build, sculpt, cook, arrange, or plant, this group is for you and is genre independent.

The Artist Way Creative Cluster 
Facilitator: Kathryn Kelley
For all levels and genres [adults]
Thursdays, 6:00 - 9:00 pm
Begins Sept 12 (12 weeks) 
$345 plus book
Chapelwood UMC, 11140 Greenbay 77024
Williams Building 103
Group size max 12
Register with Kathy @ kk.creativehabit@gmail.com 

Over the twelve weeks we'll cover

Week One: Recovering a Sense of Safety
Key concepts: Shadow Artists, Core Negative Beliefs, Affirmations

Week Two: Recovering a Sense of Identity
Key concepts: Poisonous Playmates, Crazymakers, the Inner Critic and the Act of Attention

Week Three: Recovering a Sense of Power
Key concepts: Synchronicity, Shame and Criticism

Week Four: Recovering a Sense of Integrity
Key concepts: Writing Prayers and Media Deprivation

Week Five: Recovering a Sense of Possibility
Key concepts: Limits, Wishing and The Virtue Trap Week Six: Recovering a Sense of Abundance Key concepts: Money, Luxury, Counting and Will

Week Seven: Recovering a Sense of Connection
Key concepts: Perfectionism and Thinking ideas up vs. Getting ideas down

Week Eight: Recovering a Sense of Strength
Key concepts: Age, Time, Creative Loss and the Ivory Power

Week Nine: Recovering a Sense of Compassion
Key concepts: Enthusiasm, Creative U-turns and Blasting Through Blocks

Week Ten: Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection
Key concepts: Competition, Work, and Finding Balance

Week Eleven: Recovering a Sense of Autonomy
Key concepts: Movement and Defining Success

Week Twelve: Recovering a Sense of Faith
Key concepts: Escape Velocity and a Final Prayer

The Artist Way Creative Cluster
facilitator: Kathryn Kelley
For all levels and genres [adults]
Thursdays, 6:00 - 9:00 pm
Begins Sept 12 (12 weeks)
$345 plus book
Chapelwood UMC, 11140 Greenbay 77024
Williams Building 103
Group size max 12
Register with Kathy @ kk.creativehabit@gmail.com

piebald elephant head

The Trojan Box, Box 13 artists at The Art League...a review :)

...being egocentrical my excerpt is....

The third piece in the "freaky animal trilogy" is Kathy Kelley's i am drowning in the silent stillness of unwritten posts, which may remind you of a piebald elephant head. Or an alien space suit. It has a palpable presence that makes you think it is athing, not an abstract three-dimensional form. It uses her favorite material--reclaimed rubber from old innertubes--but adds what is to me a new element--the white top. It was made with plaster and polished with wax, giving it a bone or ivory-like quality. I won't say i am drowning in the silent stillness of unwritten posts is beautiful, but it is compelling. I have to look at it--it really dominates the room. (An amazing achievement considering that the room is full of very interesting artworks.) And at the risk of sounding like Charles Kinbote, the title of this piece describes something I personally experience on a regular basis. -- Robert Boyd

http://www.thegreatgodpanisdead.com/2013/08/a-certain-voluntary-association-of.html

chainsaw that!!! oops.

in a swaggering moment, as I document my you-rock-with-the-chainsaw-kathy for dropping that puppy exactly where foreordained by this she artist, dead centered between the pine posts, I suddenly note that slim shocking horizontal line stretched tight at the trees tip! omg. don't tell my dad that the trees path to the ground included a power line obstruction within inches!

did better on second try (tree)

Join me this fall for The Artist Way Creative Cluster

The Artist Way Creative Cluster

WHO     Kathy Kelley; adults all levels

WHEN   Thursdays, 6-9 pm

               Beginning Sept 12 (12 weeks)

COST     $345 plus book

WHERE Chapelwood UMC,
               11140 Greenbay, Houston, 77024

               Williams Building Rm 103

SIZE       Group size max 12
REG       via email kk.creativehabit@gmail.com [include name, contact info]
               Credit card payments made will send link when registered via email.
               Fifty dollars non-refundable.

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

In this course, we will form a creative cluster in which to begin stepping past the internal and external habits that have kept our creative impulse on the back burner. Joining this cluster will be to fulfill a yearning to bring our creative impulse to the front burner. We will read and use techniques and exercises from Julia Cameron's book, The Artist Way, to excavate habits and thinking that may have kept us blocked and cultivate new ones that support our impulse to create, to express. We will move from thinking about our own creative impulse to begin acting upon it. You will be challenged to test run weekly methods from the text -- artist pages, an artist date, and other exercises. This course is based on the premise that each of us is creative by nature and that in a supportive community we can more easily begin moving from thinking about to actually doing. Whether your urge has been to write, paint, build, sculpt, cook, arrange, or plant, this group is for you and is genre independent.

QUESTIONS email me @ kk.creativehabit@gmail.com

Kathryn Kelley 

Artist + Designer + Writer + Mentor

www.KathrynKelley.blogspot.com 

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Teaching Practice

projects + systems

teaching portfolio 

foundation program site [fall 2013]

foundation program website [spring 2013]

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ArtSpace 

www.box13artspace.com
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Teaching Philosophy
Mania of making, mania of the mind, that excessive compulsion to question, push, make, and create, is worth harvesting, expanding, directing and releasing. As artist educator within foundations, my role in this process is to cultivate a sensitivity to listening. I see this listening as rather all encompassing and enabling of an awareness of self, others, materialities, processes and practice, traditions, physical, social and historical contexts, passions, subject matter, methodologies, and so on. This kind of perceptiveness requires me to equip students with a capacity to dwell inside and alongside of things and thinking so that making becomes a reflection of their listening. Access to the rhythms that come from deep listening allows what might otherwise remain submerged and unseen to manifest in ways that become meaningful. I have taught in the sciences, faith and the arts—each a creative endeavor and fundamentally parallel in the need for this sensitivity to listening, connecting, and acting upon.

Deep listening, connecting and making actually requires a high degree of risk taking, openness to critical feedback and dialog, as well as, exposure to failure. This artistic risky behavior, openness, and exposure are cultivated through a series of communal and curricular factors.

Beginning in the very first studio, it is critical to build in forms of interaction that emotionally tether the students to one another and to their sense of belonging within the program. A resiliency that allows the studio experience of experimentation, tight timelines, heavy workloads and critical dialogue to be pushed further than when students’ function as isolated agents is foster by the development of strong studio peer attachments. Attachments are initially accelerated when classroom norms are disrupted through a series of non-graded tasks that bring the students into opinionated mini monologues about the arts, extremely close physical proximity via a small team task, team performance of task, and laughter, followed with a larger group critical dialogue exploring the discrepancies between team intent and viewer perception. These forms of connections, teams, tasks, and dialogues set the stage to implement an intense curriculum and work practice that peaks curiosity, promotes artistic risk taking, critical dialogue, and physical engagement.

Built into the scope and sequence of the curriculum are the practices of successful artistic deep listening, connecting and making—research, idea development, capacity to harvest from personal passions, critical reflection and discourse, collaborative unpacking of discrepancies between intent and outcome, deconstruction and adaption of working processes, work ethic, time management, opportunities for multiple iterations of a single concept or materiality, attention to craftsmanship, and professional presentation of work. Traditional attention to design elements and principles and craft are attended to but in ways that supports and emphasizes the habits of perceptiveness and process.

These deep listening, connecting, and making habits are not only the key to successful art careers but they are highly portable and will transfer to other potential job/life activities that the artist may embrace to support their artistic practice. 

1. Teaching Curriculum [project sheets, crit guides, etc] Portfolio
2. Teaching Student [eye candy] Portfolio
3. Current Courses [blog]

[just to clarify when I speak of mania in no way am I referring to what the DSM would refer to as a personalitiy disorder, such as bipolar type two, OCD, etc. I use it in lay terms and as Webster defines it that excessive compulsion to ...]

pretty sure I am midwife equivalent to an elephant

as I attempt to turn combine tractor tubes inside out. 

and then there was the unexpected yucky slobber reward. 

omg. yucky!

an egg is not an egg

one made cake like, the other from a large block. one sits upon a shelf, the other is one with the shelf. 

one revealed what doesn't need shaped, the other, portions remain unshaped as unnecessary. 

so different. one doesn't merge with the wall, one will. one looks like an alien cone head, the other ad yet unknown. both will be draped with the same tubes. yet an egg is not an egg and this one will be different. 

am wishing for snow; just for a few moments. i would certainly be grateful.

making a new egg, since this one was tossed. well at least heave-hoed grunted into a vermont dumpster. kind of wish i'd found room for it and brought it home and polished it up. instead i am making a new egg. it will be different. i couldn't make the same thing twice if i wanted to...just can't.

it is pretty dang messy. i've spend more time cleaning than carving. it is what it is.

the goal is to get something like below but slicker, more refined. this image represents more a preliminary sketch. i've used a totally different method and it is much messier than the blue insulation foam i picked up in vermont. admittedly this was free. i've as yet to decide what the work means; perhaps i just don't want to know -- as it has been wowingly referred to umm its elephant like femininity. perhaps i could make up something profound, deep or meaningful. then again, it might be better just to come up with something really dumb. smart tends to smell fishy of trying to hard to be smart. kind of like how the harder one tries to be cool, the less cool they are... perhaps i ramble as a consequence of this heat; would me nice to get a light snow for a moment, this moment, here in houston.

it just has to be genetic; tha is my story and I am sticking to it!

not sure which way it is passed, mother to daughter, or daughter to mother. I am,  however going to claim a genetic disposition toward gooberhood. 

baring and benning [i prefer baring to bearing in the implications. too bad it isn't "correct"]

ben franklining it on an eight foot chalkboard...

phd tt [melding of making, writing and research]

mfa creative nonfiction [essayist]

ma art history with emphasis on writing and criticism

ma art therapy

local position at md anderson pediatric cancer center [?]

one, two, and three bare/bear (really..when stripped naked) little purpose. two might lend itself to some deeper practice if i could figure out how to tame its unruliness. i've always struggled with the idea that art for the sake of art is purposeful or has much value. i find it, yes to be a cultural barometer of some kind with historical significance, there is potential to for impact at the human micro and macro level, yet simultaneously in a trinket economy i also find it to be a meaningless gesture of feeding the consumption machine, the consumption habit cultivated in each of us. the bulk of art, surely not all, falls into this trinket category for me. i struggle in it and around it. perhaps it is why the scale of my work reduces it as a consumptive item. in the same way, this might even speak to why my works is so overtly human, gnarled, sensuous and non-archival. it lives; it is held; it dies.

as i have taught, it has always been to facilitate an opening, an internal access point into deeper things--whether i was teaching science, faith or art. but in the most recent arena, again not for the sake of art, but instead for the sake of the ravenous unruly depth of being human not just in the making but in the manner of living, i have found a closedness, dead spaces. in collegiate academia this faculty of helping students open to their own humanity is not enough, i have sought my habit and attempted to facilitate this opening, to teach access points and how to translate experience into real space, into narrative, into moment, in ways that can be felt by others. i have been quite successful at facilitating initiation into these practices with my students. in this collegiate academic setting however practices at a cohort level become much more about pecking order, gaming, winning, manipulation, taking. survival in this environment requires a closing, a hoarding, a pecking, a stepping, an aggression. this is counter to what i believe, to my nature, to what and how i teach. the specific world i witnessed from its underbelly is not for me. is it always like this? of course not. does everyone in that system function that way? of course not? though the female population leans this way; perhaps an adaption at entering this realm. I have worked my entire adult life and never run into an even remotely similar work space. perhaps i have been extremely fortunate. yet that environment  was reshaping me in ways against who i am. that was and is unacceptable. i seek a deeply human space were we help one another open to and explore the deeper spaces of meaning, reflecting, and being truly human and to becoming more than what we are at this very moment. not art for the sake of art; not craft for the sake of craft; not control for the sake of control. it is interesting that as i get further away from a space of supposed cohorting, the teeth that fill my lopsided smile have finally begun shifting back of their own accord, already now the line of my smile is less craggily. i find this to bare an amazing witness to the ramifications of a hostile work environment and the way a body bends under it. i've always believed our body holds worlds of knowledge that we often don't know how to access, or refuse to look at. we, i, can only read its shifting form. clearly the retraction has had a bodily impact that is positive. eventually my mind, feelings and social interaction will recover and catch back up to were i was heading before things got so peckish two and a half years ago.

so now in a nonrushing, nonfrenetic way, i ben franklin my way through my talents, gifts, and where they might take me in a meaningful way, in a way that i am the asset that i am. though a phd would sooth something in me and i love the thought of pursuing the role of writing in the process of those who visually manifest their lives work in real space (whose sketchbooks are filled with the scratching of language), and i will apply. unfortunately it would still put me back into systems dominated by pecking vs depth. but i might be willing to see what is on the other side. writing, nonfiction essay, still is on the table, art writing less so, and i am becoming a tad wary of my belly button gazing. still the risk of systems dominated by peck, peck. art therapy? it sounds a bit mambi-pambi, yet the ideas of opening and accessing inner things through vehicle of making, of art...isn't that what i sought and taught my college students. yes. it is. and my who life i've been a watcher, fascinated with what makes us tick, hunting the whys and hows of human behavior. so fascinating. and haven't i spent the bulk of my living reading bodies in their languages that ripple across our surfaces with a truer voice of their own. is this what art therapy practices? an exploration of our inner worlds as they surface and become manifested in real space through play of body, mind, and stored memory. and then the art teaching position at md anderson knocked on my emails door to announce itself so that i might apply? it would be a big shift...it would certainly link together my lived passages through the sciences, faith, and art. on paper, i am a fit. it would certainly give me a sense of truly being purposeful in the act of art. frankly i don't care about the larger culture as a whole, but instead have always cared about its sub units, people, individuals. so whether md anderson or not, my heart says leave ideas of art therapy on my soul table, leave writing on the table, and of course the Dopty will weigh in :)

i will knock on all these doors. a way that is right for who i am will open.

small truths are often hidden in the sideways

nothing of deep interest can be spoken of save by indirection -- robert motherwell

standing here again at a threshold between vitality and danger. teetering as has become habit.

The threshold is a place of transition; as such, it is a place of enormous vitality and activity as well as danger…poets are drawn to and write from their thresholds, either inner or outer. In order to write well, a poet needs to go to that place where energy and intensity concentrate, that place just beyond which chaos and randomness reign. 

-- Poetry As Survival, Greg Orr

casting an untethered line.

the translation of experience into space, experience into story. just snippets not trying to be whole, simply one frame, one moment, most probably even a single view point, how it feels, where it moves me or holds me still, and then on to the next. no attempt to be sequential, no attempt to translate your truth...oh that isn't right. i spend a huge portion of my head and heart time in trying to perceive from shoes not my own. it would be best if i really learned how to wear my own foot stink or focus on a good scrubbing of my own with a touch of pink applied. actually i am highly in tune with the finest of nuances of my own stink, where it emanates from, how it envelops and alters my small truth end realities, how it impedes, drives away. i get it. i also know the internal strength, competence and odd grace booted up in my gait and my crooked smile. i suck at arm candy, i am no trinket, i am a bit goober, and seek an uncovering. skimming the surface holds no allure. i need purpose and depth even if it is an illusion. I need to muck around in growing, in changing, an odd balance thresholded between being and becoming.

translating experience into space, experience into story, these seem to hold the depthy purposeful need i crave. i think relationships should have this too. i struggle with the surface of the friendlies. i have had a lot of friendlies. they come; they go with a click of an email. i realize i should hold the time with the friendlies in a way that might burgeon into something else. i tend to shut down in those initial phases. somehow friends are quite different than friendlies, a tethering not easily out grown.

two topics. one the need to translate my lived experience into real space, into written story and how it relates to purpose, to calling, to vocation; two, my struggle with the untethered slowness of the friendlies. all this boils down to direction. i am ok spinning my wheels but i'd like the resistance of traction and forward motion. i get to it, but it slips away. i am getting to it.

and then there is the idea of dream and future casting. how does one cast an untethered line? 

Judy Pfaff

I am pretty sure this is why she lives in the woods. work, work, sweat, bask under the trees, lay back and eeek, yuk! blog as the thunder rumbled and the mist begins. 

probably not what the bandsaw is designed for...based on the heated rubber stench, I wear a respirator. 

load, unload, cut, load, unload, stitch, stitch. 

sweat and girl jello arm break

kick back even more break....eeeeeeeek. 

concur

it is one thing to think and another to exist in what is thought. -- Søren Kierkegaard 

in the greatest painting, the painter communes with himeslf. painting is his thought's medium...painting i a medium in which the mind can actualize itself -- Robert Motherwell

'...stop worrying about big, deep things such as “to decide on a purpose and way of life"'

Dear Eva,

It will be almost a month since you wrote to me and you have possibly forgotten your state of mind (I doubt it though). You seem the same as always, and being you, hate every minute of it. Don’t! Learn to say “Fuck You” to the world once in a while. You have every right to. Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, grasping, confusing, itchin, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, numbling, rumbling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, horse-shitting, hair-splitting, nit-picking, piss-trickling, nose sticking, ass-gouging, eyeball-poking, finger-pointing, alleyway-sneaking, long waiting, small stepping, evil-eyeing, back-scratching, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding, grinding, grinding away at yourself. Stop it and just DO!

From your description, and from what I know of your previous work and you [sic] ability; the work you are doing sounds very good “Drawing-clean-clear but crazy like machines, larger and bolder… real nonsense.” That sounds fine, wonderful – real nonsense. Do more. More nonsensical, more crazy, more machines, more breasts, penises, cunts, whatever – make them abound with nonsense. Try and tickle something inside you, your “weird humor.” You belong in the most secret part of you. Don’t worry about cool, make your own uncool. Make your own, your own world. If you fear, make it work for you – draw and paint your fear and anxiety. And stop worrying about big, deep things such as “to decide on a purpose and way of life, a consistant [sic] approach to even some impossible end or even an imagined end” You must practice being stupid, dumb, unthinking, empty. Then you will be able to DO!

I have much confidence in you and even though you are tormenting yourself, the work you do is very good. Try to do some BAD work – the worst you can think of and see what happens but mainly relax and let everything go to hell – you are not responsible for the world – you are only responsible for your work – so DO IT. And don’t think that your work has to conform to any preconceived form, idea or flavor. It can be anything you want it to be. But if life would be easier for you if you stopped working – then stop. Don’t punish yourself. However, I think that it is so deeply engrained in you that it would be easier to DO!

It seems I do understand your attitude somewhat, anyway, because I go through a similar process every so often. I have an “Agonizing Reappraisal” of my work and change everything as much as possible = and hate everything I’ve done, and try to do something entirely different and better. Maybe that kind of process is necessary to me, pushing me on and on. The feeling that I can do better than that shit I just did. Maybe you need your agony to accomplish what you do. And maybe it goads you on to do better. But it is very painful I know. It would be better if you had the confidence just to do the stuff and not even think about it. Can’t you leave the “world” and “ART” alone and also quit fondling your ego. I know that you (or anyone) can only work so much and the rest of the time you are left with your thoughts. But when you work or before your work you have to empty you [sic] mind and concentrate on what you are doing. After you do something it is done and that’s that. After a while you can see some are better than others but also you can see what direction you are going. I’m sure you know all that. You also must know that you don’t have to justify your work – not even to yourself. Well, you know I admire your work greatly and can’t understand why you are so bothered by it. But you can see the next ones and I can’t. You also must believe in your ability. I think you do. So try the most outrageous things you can – shock yourself. You have at your power the ability to do anything.

I would like to see your work and will have to be content to wait until Aug or Sept. I have seen photos of some of Tom’s new things at Lucy’s. They are impressive – especially the ones with the more rigorous form: the simpler ones. I guess he’ll send some more later on. Let me know how the shows are going and that kind of stuff.

My work had changed since you left and it is much better. I will be having a show May 4 -9 at the Daniels Gallery 17 E 64yh St (where Emmerich was), I wish you could be there. Much love to you both.

Sol

home | even the chair because it is human because i would like to hold my small truths more loosely and love more deeply

Of course I do, I judge even the chair.

Every chair I might remotely consider dropping my fanny in will be judged and even those I do not intend to test. I judge on structural integrity, forecasting potential degrees of comfort, back and butt angles, distances to the floor. You can be certain I will appraise for cleanliness and the yuck factor. I will determine the aesthetic pleasure, uniqueness, cool factor, and evidence of age with its wear and tear or dated treatments. The evaluation, the judgmental calculations, run in the background with each pushing through the memory and sensory grid of my lived experiences that emanate from my gender, sensory aptitudes, personality disposition, affluent appetites, educational expertise, cultural enmeshment, pleasure seeking propensities, aesthetic potential for mind stimulation or remediation, chaotic capacities, family of origin systemic histories, etc. I will have done all this in less than the blink of an eye, zero prefrontal cortex activity. This screening will determine my potential staying power within the space housing the sitting device, the chair.

I laughed when telling someone this chair judgment ideation. As they indicate that they do not partake in this system, I mention a dining room we had just passed and they were like, "oh with the leather red chairs." Then we proceeded to discuss their hipness and the design would actually be great in a noisy room because the chairs would cradle the occupant, catching the tablemates voice easing the immediate conversation in a crowded room. Hmmm. Yup. A room simply passed by in a moment, no intent to enter or sit, yet we both had noted the color, design, surfaces, hipness and potential sound harvesting of the...chairs.

I am not an interior designer, fabric developer, furniture maker. I am simply a human user of these butt cradling, pampering, gravity, relieving devices. It is part of of my hardwiring. This sensory and social judgment system is sophisticated, useful and fast. It is what it is.

This same hardwiring judgment system routes my staying potential for entering and maintaining relationships in real space. I am a judging machine whether I am categorizing and pigeon holing a chair, person, thought, lived or archived experience, I cannot help it; it is my very nature, perhaps human nature. However, what I may do is hold these judged instances more loosely understanding the reality that this lens, this grid, these biases are affixed to my functioning, I cannot not see except through this lens, grid, judging system of hardwiring. The act of holding my judgment loosely as small truths and not absolute, allows me to emphasize, drop down into an understanding of another's lived experience, riding in that space with them, and coming out again, expanding my own grid system. The more I attempt to empathize beyond my own grid, to see beyond my instantaneous judgment system, the more I am exposed to the smallness of my own truths, to faulty assumptions and misinterpretations. So what? I'd like to believe the expansion of my grid, through empathy, through perspective checking, through holding my judgments loosely, could actually allow me to do some rewiring. I’ve no compulsion to be perfect, not even almost, but I’d like to expand my lived experience in a more whole way.

This expanding grid and empathy is also the source that pushes my work [object/image/language] peeling back small truths to uncover assumptive patterns that aren't useful for myself.

Hmmm. Then there is the way in which I judge and pigeon hole a chair without running it through my primary grid, but instead have my perspective shaped directly by another's judgment and the language they've wrap around their interpretations. There is much research that clearly examines and shows that the way another uses language to discuss an experience, a judgment, will shape my small truths, shape my memory. Even just simply altering a single word such as smashed to crashed in regard to a car accident will shape a direct witness's recall. For example in one study, the group in which the word smashed was used recalled broken glass at the scene, whereas, the group in which the word crashed was used predominantly remembered the incident with no broken windows, which was accurate. Ah. So if you speak to me of a chair, in general, I will bypass my own data collection and filtering and run with your perspective. If I can reduce my calculating requirements, I will. This is supported by research. Even if my own data collection and filtering is not bypassed, my interpretation will be skewed and recalculated by your language of interpretation and emotional slant. I will embed your small truth about a chair even if it is far from reality. This is human nature. It is mine.

So, chair or human, if someone speaks to me weekly even in small ways about the chair-human for two and a half years, I cannot actually see the chair human as is based solely on my filter but instead see what you have told me to see, I judge as you have judged. You have shaped my small truths about the chair-human; you have reformed any future data acquisition on this chair-human.

People are chairs. Coworkers are chairs. Neighbors are chairs. I will perceive them through my judgment system or I will shortcut that and reinterpret them through your judgments. It is human. I see it every day. Arrogance or denial might indicate to you that you do not partake that you are immune. Perhaps.

day 31 | with this one life this summer day

...

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver [The summer day]

tell me. please. WITH -- not an isolated independent event. what is it that i plan? i've thought about this a lot. it is not a new question i ask myself, though the acknowledgement that i've only got one and it is wild and precious, that it is of infinite value, is a new thought in the past five years. though it has gotten seriously clouded over the past two and a one half. but the clouds dissipate.

this will be a year of direct experimentation, not only will i be pushing my making and my writing to see where it wants to go, i will be pushing and plying who i am and what will and should [should?] come of that. i say i am going to push to see where it wants to go because i don't have a clear vision of "go this way" or "that." i have clues, cues. i know i must sense purpose in a portion of what i do--a purpose beyond self. i don't devine a significant purpose from the making. in fact, i struggle with art as being anything more than a kind of propagation of trinkets, as a form of entertainment. i need it to be something more if i am to run after it whole heartedly. i need the act of making. yes, but i lack a clear vision of it being purposeful. i do see a role necessary in society that a portion of the population be makers, rubbing up against current thinking and stretching it. so i struggle back and forth as to the function and purpose of art. i get an inkling that it is very important, but then in a trinket based economic system, it gets lost again. sometimes we make some art more than it is and negate other forms. i might be a bit junging in how i see the practice of art vs the product. making is critical but not key [or is it? i suppose that is part of this year's experimentation in terms of pushing it to see where it will take me]. in writing, i can see a more substantial purposefulness that resides beyond the self serving. yet my writing is unruly, not yet tamed or directed with accessible intent. teaching, definitely purposeful beyond my self and though a field i excel directly within and propel...it is off the table, no matter giftedness/aptitudes or purposefulness. i've never believed that pecking order systems are truly in our cultural benefit, they typically loose sight of what is really important and become artificially oppressive. peck for the sake of peck ranking. i need to unpack more deeply the elements of excel and propel so as to redirect it in an environment conducive to who i am. i will test that this fall. below the teaching i know lies an intuitive ability to bond groups in a way that intimately knits them. this doesn't mean i become a part of that group, but instead set groups on a course that keeps them interlinking for years, even decades. i have had an inherent ability to encourage and accelerate a group's bonding through transparency, authenticity, vulnerability and, actually, not having the answers, instead having facilitated them in finding their own way. i've done this successfully even within the clouded environment of the past two and a half years. i refined and used the same methods from previous unrelated systems in developing a program within the collegiate setting that instilled these patterns and habits among designated groups. the first semester or two it didn't catch hold, but then again i was in the midst of a messy divorce [perhaps all are like that], and could hardly focus. anyhow, i consider teaching definitely off the table at this point even if considered my primary gift. all this makes a specific direction less than clear and frankly i am too old to run after things in which i am a cog but not a specific asset. placeholding, cogging, is not a path that interests me. perhaps that is a spoiled mentality, yet everything i have read supports the idea of pursuing the dream based on the hardwiring. ha and my hardwiring has always moved me to work but never for money. much of what i do well is highly valued by culture yet highly underpaid. i am attempting to kick maslow's hierarchy to the wind in some kind of screw you-life is far better than a system inherently locked in an attitude of not enough.

so what is the dream? as i snap my wings open, what is the path upon which i will float before the too soon arrives? so tell me, what is it that i should do with this one wild and precious life i've been gifted? 

how do i weave the making, writing, mentoring into something new? something different? what do i refine to move me into that snapped wing float?

for now i shall wonder the hillside of my friend's and pick wild blackberries--that is prayer, it is a paying attention, a form of kneeling down, a way to get back to the task of what it is i do with this one wild and precious life.

day 27 | route of returning

but returning isn't an option. back, yes. return, no. life is nonreturnable, nonrefundable. there are simply zero redos. the route only moves in the now with a constant drifting forward no matter whether one's mind fixes at various points in the past or the future. the preference would be for mentality stabalizing 80% in the now, i'll save 10% for reflection so as to learn and not repeat and 10% projecting into the later so i can at least sketch out a rough pencil version of the future to move toward.

i've currently been reading Duhigg's The Power of Habit, Tharpe's Creative Habit and listening to Stuts and Michel's text, The Tools. They are highly interrelated yet come from entirely different paradigms. Duhigg's is a synthesis, an amalgamation, of research studies (with references) about habit, memory, etc, in conjunction with change, Tharpe's is her dance and coregraphical path and the role of habit/behavioral and mind patterns to bring her work to fruitition, and finally the tools are a therapeutic model for change now without the need to cull from and get stuck in histories. In many ways all three are saying the same things. Undergirding each process which mimic one another just labeled with a distinct language system is a processing and future setting via a practice of behavioral exercising and writing. Duhigg's text actually references studies that indicate a direct increased rate of recovery (change) for those who wrote daily--working through the mundane patterns, addressing work arounds or through of pain. the writing seems to entail not only a to do listing (agggghh small bites sized goals) but as in Stuts/Michael's text includes unpacking and almost essentially documenting ones self studies, experiments. all require work, but result in greater sense of energy. all three texts are extremely practical. everything i've read on creativity supports this same role for the written (handwritten) language. admittedly though Tharpe's procedures, her anal rigidity, work well for her practice, it is clearly aligns with her personal disposition. I concur with her procedures but will have to adapt them to my disposition which is not highly controlling or calculating in style and definitely not in terms of habit.

perhaps today's take away, which i think i would like to embrace for this year, is one William James latched onto for a one year experiment. i am a watcher and at a very base level as i watch others i long ago came to believe that change is not actually possible, that the free will we believe rarely emerges from the forces of systemic histories that propel us into our own futures. i find this core undergirding belief unproductive, true or not. it inhibits me. no, in fact, it paralyzes me into an Eeyore mind set--"oh bother." This translates into WHY BOTHER?

'"All our life," William Janes told us in the prologue, "so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits--practical, emotional, and intellectual--systematically organized for our weal or woe, and bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the later may be...

...James mad a decision...he would conduct a yearlong experiment. he would spend twelve months believing that he had control over himself and his destiny, that he could become better, that he had the free will to change. There was no proof that it was true. But he would free himself to believe, all evidence to the contrary, that change was possible. "i think that yesterday was a criss in my life," he wrote in his diary. Regarding his ability to change, "I will assume for the present--until next year--that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will."  Over the next year, he practiced everyday. In his diary, he wrote as if his control over himself and his choices was never in question...Later he would famously write that the will to believe is the most important ingredient in creating belief in change. And that one of the most important methods for creating that belief was habits. Habits are what allow us to "do a thing with difficulty the first time, but soon do it more and more easily, and finally with sufficient practice, do it semi-mchanically, or with hardly any consciousness at all." Once we choose who we want to be, people grow "to the way in which that have been exercised, ..If you believe you can change--if you make it a habit--the change becomes real. This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be. Once that choice occur--and becomes automatic--it is not only real, it starts to seem inevitable (ha so much for free will), the thing, as James wrote, that bears "us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the latter may be."

it may not be that simple, i wouldn't really even call it an attitude adjustment, but a test that i will run for one year, an experiment--acting on the belief (whether or not i believe) that i can change, direct my course, have free will, alter habits of mind and action. this does not negate the belief in a higher power, but falls under the concept that the best part of me that dreams, will do so in alignment with the way in which i was built. Anyhow, i will use writing to get there, to navigate, put into practice--work through the mundane unthinking daily rituals and invisible decisions of mind and body by unpacking them in real space [exercises] and through the space of the mind evidenced in writing, testing  habit cue/ritual/reward loops, believing i can alter them, making it so and writing as though i am in control of all this, that i am asserting my will into creating a specific destiny. as an experiment i will function with belief that i have purpose, that what i do matters.

pragmatically this means reviewing the three texts [studying] and putting into practice the tests, the data collection [documenting], the future casting based on what is.