automatism


I had a great converstation in my studio yesterday with our Critic in Residence, Lane Relyea. He was really good at deducing and understanding my work as a whole (not sculpture vs. drawing vs. photography). He pointed out surrealist tendencies that I have. Almost everything is based on real experience, but it is shifted in a way that you experience it like a memory or a “dream” for a second. I read some recommended articles by Rosalind Krauss following meeting including one about surrealist photography where she connects repetition and psychoanalysis. I was also able to see my process in a clearer way as we talked about discovery and how I enjoy the disconnection between analytical thinking and making. In the magazine photo’s it is the reveal of a singular object not often viewed as one transformed by the camera, in the drawings it is the workings of the hand–a revelation of the natural tendencies, and in the sculptures it’s the motion that I create, but then let run (spin, ungulate or deflate…etc.) I like to surprise myself in the making process kind of like making a drawing by candlelight and then flipping on the lights and having your own work revealed to you or doing a blind contour. This may account for my frustration with mechanical construction. It is so precise and needs the proper pieces to work that I lose part of this immediacy and I am forced to be analytical. I’m not saying it’s not good for me to go through this, it just helps me understand my frustration.

I have a lot to think about. That’s good!


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