I have enjoyed reading all of your introductions so much, and as we post and reflect over the coming weeks, I look forward to getting to know all of you much better.
Our upcoming readings . . . remember, you have until Friday, Sept. 11 to finish your four posts on these readings. Some of you have mentioned having a different edition than we use here. That is fine. Our page numbers will not match up for the weekly readings, but just do the best you can and post about what you are reading.
Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction (pp. 9-90)
Preface (pp. 9-13) Sabrina Chapadjiev
Long, Long Thoughts (pp. 15-25) Carol Queen
Lady Lazurus: Uncoupleting Suicide and Poetry (pp. 27-35) Daphne Gottlieb
Fighting Fire with Acid Rain: A Story of Coming Down (pp. 38-46) Cristy C. Road
A Little Hell Breaks Loose (pp. 47-64) Patricia Smith
Total Disaster: Sketching Sanity (pp. 66-78) Fly
Slash an' Burn (pp. 79-90) Inga M. Muscio
In Live Through This, we experience first-hand first-person testimonies: witnessing to life experiences. For many of these writers/artists, the distinctions between creativity and insanity or self-destruction blur or aren’t seen at times. These women experience what it means to discover power as artists, thinkers, teachers, and community members. These stories are not clean and they are not pretty to read—but you will find both sorrowful and empowering moments. I wonder if that is one remnant we give to students as teachers in the arts—the possibility of self-empowerment—however that occurs in schools.
One reason I chose this book is because it was created in reaction to life events or circumstances beyond the control of the authors. Since the sixties, feminist art has been especially interested in what makes women different, what makes them unique, and feminist theory in general is forced to consider the many roles of women—roles as mothers, caretakers, household managers, etc. Since these roles I just mentioned often involve elements of service and submissiveness, it is interesting how feminist art responds and reflects by investigating strength—strength on any level and in any role. We see in these stories the ways in which women find power and strength through art.
On a personal note, I struggle to read these stories. They are not easy stories, and am uncomfortable with some. However, as I reflect personally, as I hope you all will, I’ll admit that, as a television scholar, I grow tired of reading about the constant marginalization and devaluation of females, especially females in servile and/or caretaker roles, in television in particular. I see a great deal of strength in the service of these roles—strength that is often ignored in roles of service in general. In other words, to me, strength seems to be an inherent quality of service. Whereas these stories don’t necessarily reflect service, they do reflect the ways in which women are empowered in their circumstances—circumstances often beyond their control—by art and art-making practices.
I have reflected personally here, so what are your thoughts and reflections about these readings?
Since it is our first week to respond to readings, I will just remind you of a few things I posted in the “Welcome to our blog” section. If you have already read the following and feel comfortable with the workings of the blog, feel free to skip the following:
“Here is how things will work. Each week begins on a Wednesday and finishes the following Tuesday at midnight. But, you will always have until the following Friday to post for that week. That way, you will have nine days to post each week. But keep in mind that means we, as class members, must look at each week until Friday. I am asking that you post a minimum of four times per week--so we can develop a virtual dialogue between ourselves. That means blogging a few times per week. Not all at once in a row. I will go through each week and read all of the comments (as I require you to do) and note how many times you comment. That's just a technical thing on my part, so I can see who is participating.
Keep in mind that you will need to look at our blog more than one time per week. If you are an early blogger with your posts, wait a day or two to respond to other comments. It may take a while for people to respond. For those who respond later in the week on a Tuesday or Wednesday, I still expect everybody to read the entire week of posts—even if that means going back to read them. If you miss a week, do not post in the past week. Post your comments for the previous week in the current week. Just let us know you are doing that.
If you miss a week, just make up your blog postings in the current week. Always make them up. (Do not make them up in the past week.) Many of you are teachers and things happen. No need to apologize on here. Just get your posts in even if they are late. Never a penalty. Please do not fall more than two weeks behind. Even if two weeks worth, post in the current week.
Please always use "I" language. It will make your posts even more powerful. Feel free to ask questions in your posts. We may not have the answers. Feel free to recommend books or readings or films or exhibitions that relate to our talks/posts. And please read everybody's posts. That will mean you will probably have to catch-up on Wednesday morning/evening for a few later posts. And feel free to carry discussions forward from one week to the next. And, one last comment about posting on the blog: Starting our second week, post one or two initial comments about the readings. Then, wait a bit, read some of the other posts and post two more times. That way we get a better discussion. Try not to post four times in a row. I understand that means that you might have to go back in another day to see what people have posted. But that’s the nature of a non-synchronous course like this. Generally, people post toward the end of the weekend and Tuesday and Wednesday. We’ll get into a groove that hopefully will work for most of us in the class.
Also, keep in mind that I have made all of us authors, meaning that you can add video and pictures as I can. It’s much easier to do that as an author than a reader.”
Let me know if you have questions!
Well I got an early start on the reading and I thought it is a great book.
ReplyDeleteReading these testimonies, I found some of them hard to read and some that really touched a nerve and I could identify with their emotions but maybe not their method. Saying that, I’m not marginalizing their healing journey – but appreciating the fact that they are bold enough to write their testimony down because it does create a better awareness to share stories! It impressed me that their journaling or art became part of the process that helped them connect the dots in their own mind so they could embrace their “uniqueness”; That, too me, is where their strength lies. I remember a time I was struggling to blend into the community I currently live in and I had done a series of art quilts with sunflowers – trying to blend them in by using a technique of confetti to create the landscape. I think art is how I visually make sense of this world, helping me find my own voice.
.
Confetti of Community
5” x 9”, art quilt
I found the quote on page 16, by Sabrina Chap, “writing had given her ownership over her life” - questioning why hadn’t it worked for Sarah an interesting response. I also liked on page 13 the quote, “Art finds a connection with others”. I think it helps to make a stronger community. It helps or encourages people to connect past their comfort zones.
Yes, Gail, Chap's quote was really a catcher. I loved that of quote of hers you pointed out!!
DeleteI agree they are very bold to share their stories and maybe even some of the darkest moment in their life
Deletesometimes the soul cries out in very vivid terms and this is what I also felt from these writings.
Deletesometimes the soul cries out in very vivid terms and this is what I also felt from these writings.
DeleteGail -
DeleteYou pointed out the quote "art finds a connection with others" in terms of art helping us find community by finding our own voice and pushing ourselves past our comfort zones. I thought this was a great summation of what artistic expression has done for the artists of these articles, as well as for people who do not consider themselves artists. What I love about art in particular is that by creating these connections between the artist and the viewers, neither feel as alone in their anguish.
Sorry my picture of my Confetti of Community didn't post - not sure why?
ReplyDelete.
I think you have to log in as an author and then attach the image and I think it will end up at the top of the page.
DeleteThanks David!
DeleteSo I included both pictures in a different post if you want to check them out. Thanks for your patience! I'll get there!
DeleteI remember hearing once that, after Matisse died, Picasso expressed the sentiment that without Matisse, there were certain conversations Picasso would never be able to have again. There were some things that only he and Matisse really understood. There’s a theme in these stories of isolation. Almost every artist I have talked to feels that isolation in some way. I think it has something to do with how we are constantly critiquing everything, taking everything apart in our heads and imagining how they could be reassembled. That seems to foster a deeper perception.
ReplyDeleteThere is an electrical transformer on a pole just across from my back patio. Often, just before sunset, the orange light infiltrates the colors of the metal can, diffusing across to the greyish-silver finish on the other side. This color is amplified against the blue of the sky. It’s incredibly beautiful. After staring at it for years, I finally mentioned it to my wife. She hadn’t noticed there was even an electrical pole there. My wife is one of the few people I would even mention that to. Most of my non-artist friends would just furrow their brow and then change the subject. My wife is very much curious to understand. But in the end, there are certain conversations that I never get to have.
I wonder if that isolation is specific to artists, or is it just a different brand of the isolation that everyone feels? Maybe it’s part of the human condition, that because we are all so unique, we cannot completely connect with the population around us. But, most non-artists seem to be able to cope, or at least blend better. I wonder if I should prepare my students for this, or at least discuss it with them. They are going to leave this high school art setting, most of them to pursue some non-art career, where non-artists will surround them. They wont have a daily clubhouse of likeminded individuals. For a while, after I left art school, I felt empty in a way. I didn’t realize why. It wasn’t until I started spending more time with other artists that I realized how much I missed being able to express and discuss that side of myself with someone who understood it. What responsibility do I have to my students to prepare them for that?
Elaine Aron has a book called highly senstive people (hsp). She is a research psychologist. Her research along with others suggest that 15 to 20 % of the population has a highly sensitive neurological system. It's expression will vary from hsp to hsp, but she believes this impacts not only thier creativity but also the potential for feelings of isolation and difference. I have the audio book. Its great and it includes all the references to hunt down the various empiracl research studies that support her claim. Good book for art teachers to read. It also provides some tips and tricks for cooying with the inherent differences.
DeleteI will put it on my list. Thanks for the info.
DeleteJustin I still feel that way at times Im a graphic designer in a publishing group and at times I feel alone. I miss my art school buddies! Ironically I sit near another designer but she designs for QHN and I design for EQJ so their is still this kinda of your on that side and I am on this side also some ego involved I have felt too... yikes. As an artist it took me a while to learn that you have your own signature in what you do and you can't do what others do and they can't do what you do we all have our own strengths but i think she may have missed that part of growing as an artist.
DeleteWonderful thoughts about the common isolation artists feel--and if maybe everyone feels some branch of isolation. I think it is really important to include our students in these discussions and, if not help them cope with the isolated feelings, bring our common feelings of isolation and uniqueness into art conversations.
DeleteJustin, this is a superb point.I am reminded of the loneliness, via a Clement Greenberg interview in the 1970's ,of the New York school painters when they had first begun their visual trek.He said:Boy did they feel lonely!Living in the Brownwood,Texas area for the last 4 years with its cultural isolation (I teach and chair an art department) has produced ,in me,similar feelings.is rough on a person like me having grown up in a city,St.Louis with its cultural offerings and artistic community.As a painter,we can be naturally isolationists.Yet,as I have aged ,I find that I need to around other artists to reflect off of their ideas and work.One of my teachers had always spoken of deliberate expressive choices one makes in their work.We have much in common as it is all form at the end of the day.John Constable once expressed that he saw nothing under the sun which was ugly to him-it was all form!As to your students and their futures ,I say that you make an impact one them which,because of their youth,will not roll back to them for several years.We,of course,hope they won't stop at H.S. and enter college/university.I teach my students to observe the world from direct observation as this ultimately feeds the imagination.On a final not my undergrad.painting mentor once said:have at least 2 friends,but make one of them a poet.poet. Interestingly,one of sons happens to be one!
DeleteA poet? How has that helped you David, I'm interested in feedback. I've been reading Standing at Waters Edge...1/2 way thru but one of the later chapters deals with types of friends good for artists...
DeleteGreat point, Justin! As for preparing your students, I'd say teach them how to find those connections (artist friends) that get them through the isolation.
DeleteOn this topic, I do like to read my students a poem or two during the year. I often try to remind them that they should flaunt their uniqueness instead of attempt to hide it. Of course, they are teenagers, so they all try to blend in by being exactly the same. I find the following poem to be a great one to share.
DeleteCharles Bukowski
Bluebird
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?
I think that when we find "our person" when they are gone a part of us is gone too. Same with objects or creative outlets. When something so important to us is gone, lost, or broken we weaken. Justin mentioned PIcasso and Matisse... the same heart break occured with Gauguin left Van Gogh
DeleteInteresting poem! I find it True since a bluebird is a pretty aggressive bird in nature.
Delete@Justin, I love this poem and am saving it for future lesson plans--I cannot imagine the conversations this sparks. I NEED to incorporate more literature/poetry/writing in my teaching. I read, I write, I make poems... but I rarely asked this of my k-12 students.
DeleteJustin - that is a great point. I think the liberal arts degree or artist profession helps us to see the world differently! Something most of my non artist friends don't get (like you expressed). There was an article in the Wall Street Journal, "The Suicde of the Liberal Arts". In it they said how Homer and Shakespeare have much to tell us about living." WSJ, John Agresto, Aug 7 2015.
ReplyDeleteIt was so nice being in Junction for three weeks immersed in an artist community, sharing, collaborating and working on my craft! It definitely helps to find that "safe" artist community to talk about our art!
Oh Gail you bring up an intersting point. I'm always reminded of the Romantics and the tragic ways in which they died. Not just the artists but the poets and authors as well. Is their something inherently romantic about an artist's heart. Do they feel, swoon, heart more than another person? Or do their passions carry them away?
DeleteThe story that most impressed me is Slash an Burn by Inga Muscio. Her reaction and healing process of her brother’s untimely death struck an empathetic emotion in me. Growing up I was close to my brother, watching my brother become an alcoholic and realization of his own self-destruction was really hard to witness. He woke up from a level 4 coma brought on by alcohol poisoning. I witnessed my parents loving him back to life, a fallen branch from our family tree, not left for dead but helping him relive – was pretty awesome! Can’t say I didn’t resent at times, maybe stuck in a crossing of resentment towards him asking the question as a sibling – why he struggled with alcohol, why he choose this path yet witnessing grace at its best! The piece I created during this time was of a beagle (my neighbors) wanting to get out of the fenced area but it couldn’t. He just stuck his head underneath and stayed there while I unloaded my groceries. Watching wide eyed at me. I used a dark red for the fence hoping it would give the “weight of the fence” echoing my own resentment towards my brother but watching this beautiful recovery story of my brother (the beagle's wide open eyes).
ReplyDeleteI hope as I journey through this class, understanding the strength of my own art and journaling/writing, will help ground me. I sometimes feel like a weed wacker – spinning around trying to hit everything so I don’t miss out on anything! Lol!!!!
Thanks for being so open, Gail, and honest about the struggle to be hopeful for your brother yet resentful. It is probably when i deny a degree of resentfulness that i get knotted up and funky.
DeleteThank you for sharing... at times i worry about my sibilings and how my mother babies them but I feel as if they dont even try in this life. Perhaps she knows something I dont. I think at sibilings we all think it should equal but we arent always equal ourselves I am a lot different than they are because my grandparents raised me so I in a way came from a different enviroment than they do.
DeleteGail. I too resonated with Slash and Burn as I have a son who struggles, like your brother... with substance abuse and it is very sad.Art as therapy is something we are fortunate to be able to have access to as visual artists.
DeleteThus far I have found the reading to be very powerful, and yes, very dark. Yet, the reality that life is not always sunshine everyone happy 24/7 is what it is, real. I like the book because it is so personal it allows us to penetrate what is normally so quiet, so secretive, and bring it forth. Before I delve into the essays, however, I wanted to note that I have a used copy of the text and whoever had it before me firstly, had beautiful handwriting and secondly, wrote some insightful, and at times funny, questions in the margins. It was strangely wonderful to read the text then see her/his comments next to it, like we got to experience the reading together. It was a double layer of personal text; the essays themselves, then the previous owner’s text and reactions. Both appeared so forthright and personal that it made for a deeper reading on my part. Usually writing in the book, other than my own notes, annoys me, but this time it was really great.
ReplyDeleteAs for this week’s selection of readings I enjoyed them all, but I want to focus (at least in this first post) on Patricia Smith’s chapter, “A Little Hell Breaks Loose.” Her work/poetry was so intense and rhythmic, the use of repetition felt and read like tidal waves – a sudden remembrance of the feelings of loss and anger. Emotions are so hard to get right, describing them can come across as cheesy, too stoic, too feely, too anything, but Smith’s (and the other essays here) was art. The words, scattered and clustered together, were loaded, even when appearing at random. I am a visual reader (not sure if this is an accurate term but close enough), when I read something I typically see it in my mind, like a running film. Even the collection of words Smith uses were seen in my mind and it was a powerful collection. It was a need to release the words, to tame the emotions, to give them their due, and I think a lot of us (and the other contributors to this book) have to do that – it may come out in different forms, but art making (writing, creating, etc.) provides a unique space to do that.
I agree with the "A Little Hell Breaks Loose" it did feel like tidal waves it would get real calm then out of no where it slams you with these hard words.
DeleteOne of my sons is a poet so I also was interested in "A lIttle Hell Breaks loose."...my son's poetry is similar in the intensity of his work also in the visual aspects her words create..he was a painter first and his work is very visual also and when tragedy strikes and you become so lost in your own emotions it is important to have a means to express yourself without inhibitions.
DeleteThis chapter really resonated with me as well! I like your point of the need to release, tame and validate our emotions through art making.
DeleteKimberly - I get what your saying, there was a rhythm to the story. I thought it echoed her manic state as well. One of my favorite, movie scene inspirations, is from the King Speech. Birdie and the King are walking in the park - swaying back in forth in a nice together rhythm, in the camera shot - then when they break in their emotions - the rhythm suddenly stops - and their emotion is one of anger towards each other. I love how the director, Tom Hooper created that scene to mirror their friendship but also the controversy that surrounded them.
ReplyDeleteI've only started reading and so far I have found the stories to be powerful as well. It's as if they are being recounted to a friend or as if I am reading them right out of their personal journals. Something seems very safe about the familiarity of each life tale.
ReplyDeleteI did want to see though if KATHY caught that last few sentences in the Carol Queen story. She concludes that she "turned herself into a whole person through the little scratches of pen on paper..." etc. I instantly thought of you. Though you aren't interested in a little girls writing therapy I thought that it was interesting how this ritual of recounting the day or trauma or ideas saved her and her adolecence which, for all women, is tramatic and terrifying at its best.
Kathy, maybe your artists do the same....?
Oh yes. I thought of my dissertation direction all the way through these texts...that seminal visual artists over the last 10 0 years or so, also seem to have a writing practice (published or unpublished)
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteUmmm. prepare for what you will become accustom to as my usual long windedness. welcome to the noise in my head.
ReplyDeleteEscape out of self or into self (Chap)?
We make NOT to become known to the world, but to become known to the self (Palmer)
And with each word, with each stitch, with each weld, with each battle with gravity, I seem to chip away at the baggage that encrusts my identity (Chap)*
*(author reference) are not full quotes but quotes in which I have inserted myself into their statements—less of a paraphrase and more a putting on and altering to fit myself.
I was most influenced foremost by the texts preface by Chap and secondarily by the foreword by Palmer. I did pulled relevant snipes from a number of other artists while reading.
Here is my initial trying on of the texts for fit.
In the making I find voice to what I hide from even myself. I give voice to what I am cognitively ashamed of, afraid to approach, and cant access consciously. My hands open and unpack my inner hidden self and only later does my mind and language catch up to what my body knows inherently. At the same time my hands grope, fondle, reform and redeem my materials of choice, decaying debris/human cast offs, my words, in the writing, fondle and flow in and through my making. My words have to listen to what my hands unfold of my inner workings. It is only then that my emotional realities reveal themselves to me. Funny that I function this way since my childhood was not overly funky or bad nor abusive.
And though I have been introspective and rather transparent in the feelings and thoughts I do have conscious access to for as long as I can remember, there have still been huges gaps in my self knowing. My inner emotional experiences are much like a timid, skittish subset of myself. Interestingly, my end products of my making scream loudly via their scale, the tension and suspension and the innard qualities. As with my blog, the writing that wraps around and through my making is socially awkward for me.. This self revelation via art and writing is one area in which a walk that delicate balance between self destruction and creativity. Self destruction in terms of disclosing information about myself that may put me at emotional risk.
We make NOT to become known to the world, but to become known to the self (Palmer)
Yet Palmer also suggests “Art can help you find connections with others. Often that is what drives you to create in the first place.” I find this only to be true after an initial period of making and when I have actually become to find the voice that Chap mentions in her preface. I don’t think connections with others is the first impulse. As I found voice in the making and blogging, I did experience an overwhelming connection and the personal pleasure that I derive when a Facebook post crosses the 50+ like marker. Oh ego, how I shame facedly love Facebook likings! The connections of my work that occupies real space is more profound than all the Facebook likings for which I am a slut for. At almost every opening people I don’t know hug me, cry in front of me, hold my hand as they tell me how the work speaks to them. Socially awkward as they let me into their innerworld simply because I have connected with them through my making! As a secondary move this connection has become important to me because somehow it extends my work beyond meeting some self need. It makes the work feel more relevant to me.
Yet the risk of this kind of connection is like slutting for Facebook likings in which I loose something of myself. But in this case I loose that initial impulse of allowing my body to speak of that which I cannot get to otherwise. If I loose this, I loose the voice and energy which inhabits my work and makes it relevant. Of course this is why I have to turn down the Tate Modern! I simply can’t speak loudly enough in a space so large without loosing my ground (and destroying my hands). Ha. Picasso is quotes as making some statement about the greatest risk to the creative is in fact SUCCESS!
I have posted images of the manifestation of my body knowledge
Deletehttp://art5364fa2015.blogspot.com/2015/09/week-2-image-supplement-for-unpacking.html
I think sometimes our artwork is bigger than we are or our thoughts as we work it out on canvas - I'm always amazed at how the idea runs through me and affects someone else by opening their thought process! I so get you comments...
DeleteI agree that connections to the public need to come after the work has been created.But I also know that after a lecture i give or an exhibit of my work is hung and I begin answering questions and discussing my intent behind the work something changes in me whether it is ego driven or validation of the work itself well,not sure it matters but connections then do become important sometimes as to how i proceed next with the work...On another note,Is your work exhibited in the Tate?
Deletehttp://uploads2.wikiart.org/images/chaim-soutine/carcass-of-beef(1).jpg
ReplyDeleteWhen reading Patricia Smith's description of her father's dead body and open face Chaim Sutine's "Carcass", 1924 came to mind. The graphic description of a loose jaw and open mouth seemed rather ditached. As if she were looking at a slab of meat, an animal carcass at the slaughter house, or a gutted fish on the back patio.
I found her words particularly moving as moved from poetic prose, to enraged rants, back to first person descriptions and accounts of her relationships with her family, he beatutifully painted her pepective.
So many of you commented on how you felt that these stories were particularly graphic and unsettling, even Dr H warned us of the nature of these readings. However, I didn't find them particularly disturbing. Some how, as Smith objectively described her dead father's body, I was easily detached from the darkness. Perhaps it is like when one views Warhol's Disaster Series, 1960s. A descerning eye scans the design, use of color, and balance in the composition. The dead bodies strung across the mangled cars are analyzed just as objects, not actual dead sons, daughters, fathers, and mothers.
I found each account to be a work of art, abstract, realistic, colorful, literal, symbolic. I considered them all with an artistic eye and, I suppose to negotiate their pain myself, looked at their words as objects. It makes me wonder what is wrong or different about me. Do I handle my own personal tragedies with the same compartmentalization and coolness?
katharine, you perhaps are the good kind of wrong :) most these women participate in writing as an art form. maybe you just like art. ha. plus you just had a magnificent baby, so at this moment it may be very difficult to see darkness. not that you need my two cents, but there they are anyway
DeleteKatharine, I am inclined to agree with you. These stories, although not pleasant, seem like a manageable amount of suffering. I think that is reinforced by the fact that these authors are telling us about situations that they have already moved beyond. We know they will survive. It's sort of like an action movie. It's compelling, but in the end, we know the main character is going to live to do battle again. I feel sympathetic, but because I know they have survived well enough to discuss their hardship, I find myself slightly emotionally detached.
DeleteLast year, I read the collected stories in I Live Here, which was a much different experience. In those stories, the people felt alive, but that they wouldn't be much longer. In those stories, I found it hard to turn the page. There were some that I just couldn't finish reading.
I found our current stories were more a poetic explanation of something we've all dealt with, a beautiful description of the dark parts of our collective experience. It seemed less like tragedy, and more like the honest reality that we rarely try to describe to others. It almost made me feel nostalgic in some strange way for those dark times that I'm glad have past, but respect that they have helped shape me.
I agree with y'all. What struck me most about these works was their ability to flow back and forth from the edge of insanity towards sanity. From my own personal experiences, those times have been unyielding teachers. The ability of these women to reflect on those times and create something from it is beautiful, as is your ability to appreciate the beauty of their work.
DeleteI agree too. Like I said, the stories are more about real life even if some is fiction - we can't be 100% joy filled, happy-go-lucky all the time. The reality of life is a mix of good, bad, sad, and everything in between. In some ways compartmentalizing them is a means of interpreting them, finding order, and your place within the emotional context of an event or experience. I have definitely analyzed and compartmentalized some of my own experiences, and in a way we sometimes do this (but the manifestation of this may be different). Maybe this helped me to just organize my own emotions in retrospect, and in a similar way, the creating of art and the stories in the book are a manner of organizing and representing the process of that chaos of the mind and emotion. I guess it just depends, sometimes we throw ourselves directly into the pain of event and other times we have to step back and separate...
DeleteThank you Justin! You perfectly explained to ME MY feelings. Managable suffering is absolutely correct. Sometimes you go to bed feeling everything fro the day... all the stresses and complete isolation and dread but then you wake up the next morning feeling so much better. These women woke up after their tragedies...
DeleteI'm glad they did becuase who would help us learn these lessons in a safer way. I always tell my sisters my stories and warn them... Don't make my mistake.
2.2
ReplyDeleteThat Chap finds a correlation between the impulse of creativity and self-destruction is an uncomfortable notion for it strikes far to close to home. Her definition of self destruction—the active diminishing of oneself or one’s power—rings in my ears as a conscious echo of things I witness ongoingly in myself and regularly ponder to what degree can I actual reduce the diminishing behavior, the self sabotage. I suggest reduction versus removal, because though I believe change is possible, I also happen to believe that we, I, can only divert our believing and behavior in subtle degrees. Or perhaps I ascribe to this in a way that allows me to remain stuck. Shot.
Yet much like Chap, I believe that the creative and self-destructive impulses do lie close together and that some balance, some fulcrum point must be located to be able to sustain my creative practice without loosing myself.
DESTRUCTION.
I am not a cutter, yet I push my body in my making beyond its capacities. I thrive in this spot until I finally reach a point of utter fatigue, exhaustion or bodily damage, ie my hands. Sometimes it isn’t that I intentionally push beyond my bodies capacity but I want to get stuff done and my hands just can’t keep up. When I began prepping for my most recent show, the past mid-May (since the gallery bumped me up a year) I overworked my hands and ended up taking almost three weeks off from my primary tasks. And since I am not totally suicidal by hand destruction. I began sewing only two to four hours a day and then taking one full day off and then repeating. I did this for the remainder of the summer until I began the install a month prior to this last weekend’s opening and putting the final piece in place. I then once again took my hands past what they could manage and recuperate from daily from. It is not just that I overwork my body, but that I don’t ask for help when I really should. For instance, I asked for no help in suspending my twenty foot+ table top 8.5 feet off the ground. The installation took four days, two come-alongs, two ladders, scaffolding, two large ratchet straps and a plethora of undisclosed curse words. If I had asked my friend Jared for help, it could have been done in one, maybe two days and never and F-bomb would have fallen from my lips. Instead I wasted money (on come along), time and words. Of course then again, if a woman is crabby while alone in a studio, is she still a bitch?
Besides having internal shame about burdening another, I like doing it myself, I like doing physically tough things, I like doing things that are beyond my gendered norms. I like the shock when discovering my work as woman’s work! I do sew the damn stuff and the sewing is an intentional gender gesture as is the rescuing of discard materials. And the scale of my work and the industrial materiality (the urban waste) is masculinely engendered.
I definitely see my art and home renovation practice skirting the edge of literal self-destruction. Yet in certain ways I am careful. If hormonal, tired or moody, I do not use any powertools. When I do reach exhaustion, I typically stop climbing scaffolding and other things that might lead to death or severe maiming by stupidity. So like a cutter, I damage my body in ways that are not typically visible to others.
DIMINISHING MY OWN POWER
Oh god! This is a far larger problem for me. Sigh.
And so Chap’s discussion of self-destruction and diminishing via persistent patterns (habitual behaviors and beliefs), periods of anomalous ungrounding (grief, depression isolation, and outside pestilence (cancer, disease, culture, etc.), is useful but uncomfortable. Perhaps it helps that she suggests that these things, these three Ps, are not who we are though they shape us.
Perhaps at some point I will unpack all the ways I diminish my own power and what I could actually contribute in my field(s).
DeleteI like that word unpack. I have heard you use it before... why do you think you chose that term instead of deconstruct, onload, or empty I wonder?
Delete2.3
ReplyDeleteI resonated with Igna Muscio's and a plethora of her statements.
Sometimes, unfortunate words happen in the sentences of your life and keeping the pain they bring trapped inside your body is just an incredibly bad idea.
This harkens back to my first post for this week in regards to the relationship of my body and art practice to my conscious knowing. In Inga's language I might suggest that my making is the releasing of the unfortunate words of lived experience stored in my body and that their release initial occurs in my making practice.
Ha. But I am still debating whether
writing [making] had a proven track recorded of saving my ass
I think perhaps it has, I mean I am here working on my PhD which is one form of me pursuing ass saving that manifested specifically out of my art making. Yet, the costs of finding voice, having my making uncover my unknowing knowing, has been pretty great in terms of the familial. The uncovering and strengthening of who I am wired to be ended up being very threatening within my marriage. There was both a need for gender neutrality and a small female power footprint for the former to maintain low anxiety (he was abused by females within the family system as a child). This is not a claim to suggest he put gender neutrality and power diminishment on me, I came into the marriage with these loosely in place. The long term marriage simply reinforced these. The move from designer to artist, which I experienced like stepping into my own skin at 42, was empowering. The act of making, the act of learning to listen to my own body, hmmm, perhaps was ass saving and needed to happen, but the cost was profound.
So her notion that
Goodbyes are mostly lies, shut up and say goodbye...The end is a lie. It hardly ever happens.
resonated.
2.4
ReplyDeleteTotal disaster: sketching sanity...there is a fine line between what you want people to see and what you need to keep to yourself.
Fortunately I only connect with Fly in terms of my work and blog functioning like a sketchbook to "house my brain" and that I fill up my making and writing with the equivalents of self-portraiture. All my work, research and writing is ultimately a selfie, perhaps abstracted but still a self. And it is into this mirror I gaze, to situate and know myself and others (as suggested by Chap and Palmer).
Fly's imperative to balance and cultivate an environment, community, to be "healthy, supportive, and inspirational" in which the creative/self-destructive artist looks toward a larger picture in which they are embedded is useful. I am working on that in terms of trying to push past what Justin brought up on aloneness. So I am doing my best to cultivate the relationships I do in fact enjoy with my cohorts (thank you Katharine, plus Jared who won't be reading this) and to not hermit, which is my comfortable place.
Ooops I began with a quote because I do struggle with finding the balance between revealing to much and self preservation much like the struggle with the impulse of creativity and self destruction.
Deletei totally understand i used to be a very social person maybe to a fault and now as i am older i seem to be more of a hermit and not to trusting of "new" people or even people i just havent really been around in years. i have however been trying to do more with family because i can see how happy that makes my daughter she loves to be around family which reminds me a lot of me when i was younger i always wanted to be surrounded by people but now not so much :o) i do wish i had more time for art and due to Fly's story it inspires me to start journaling again like i did as a young girl i journaled off and on from a jr high age till i was 23 then just stopped
DeleteCandice, I can agree, but I don't necessarily feel it's a bad thing. Most of the social/emotional roles I have needed to fill are currently filled. Until there's a vacancy, I see no need to look for new social relationships. Also, life gets full after a while. Before I had hours of time to do nothing. Today, I am writing these posts in between a trip to the Aquarium and heading to the in-laws house. I only have the time it takes for my child to eat her lunch.
DeleteI can relate to that Candice. As a kid I was really an open book, but since high school I became more and more closed or rather more cautious (though if I am in a class where talking is encouraged I will, anyone who has had class with me will know). Kathy, I too have hermit like tendencies, sometimes I have to just disconnect for awhile and recharge. Whenever it is time for me to write a long paper I really turn inward, surround myself with books, and not people... but it is just part of the process it come back when it's time.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIn the preface Sabrina states "We have been taught that self-destruction is an awful thing. "It is bad," we've been told by therapists, psychologist, and those who do not understand its seduction. I would like to edit that. Instead of "It is bad," I would like for it to read, "It is." It is what we do naturally. ..... They are not who we are, they are simply the things that form us." I agree with this so much. In fact is it something I live by. In like we all go through our downs and sometimes they are not our most gracious moments in this life. I know their are things and situations I have been in that I am not most proud of, but I do not let those moments in life keep me down or let anyone hold those against me. Actually I am very open about my experiences and have even shared my stories with some hoping either they learn by them and don't make the same mistakes or that it helps them not feel alone.
ReplyDeleteAll these stories these woman share are heart breaking you can feel the loneliness they felt the pain the hurt etc. However how empowering is it at the end of each story to read what they accomplish and how they help others.
I took notes on all these stories just things that stood out or that I could even relate to:
Carol Queen: the small town girl wanting to live in the real world with open-minded people. Her story hit home a little for me since I too was a small farm town girl dreaming to be a graphic designer and move to a city. Her story though I think a lot of females could relate to about losing your virginity and the "pregnancy worry" she feared the "what ifs" but in the long run what caused her fear she studied and now teaches about. Sex.
Daphne Gottlieb: a writer in pain worried if pills would stop her from ever writing again. This one kind of threw me at first I thought her pain came from some sort of physical pain (I do want to make sure I do not come off as insesitive because i do realize depression is a phyical pain to some). It wasnt till later in the story I realized how depressed she was and how alone she felt. From the school and parents being upset with her for her "dark" writing but I am glad she found a way to continue by entering contest. College for her I could tell have her a louder voice she could really express herself but that depression was still there.
Cristy C. Road: a cocaine user who just wanted to forget reality and be numb all the time but I am glad in the end art "got in the way" of that.
Patricia Smith: This one was the tough one for me to read some of her expressions for me as a mother was sad to see a person write who was speaking as a child in some parts of her story. The tug of war between the parents at first was difficult too her mother trying to keep her closed but her father showing her much more than she did need to know beyond her age. Her story you could really feel her anger and pain of losing her dad.
Fly: I liked Fly the most. In a way I have kept diaries some I didn't mind people reading but did have a few pages I would prefer to keep private. Her story inspires me to keep an art journal like I used to it doesn't always have to be when your down it would probably be nice if I drew and wrote the better moments in life :o) something she writes I agree with "People also change at different stages of life" i think we have all seen this in ourselves and others. Ive had people in relationships say "I will always be here for you" and have been offended when I say "we will see" and I dont mean it to offend. I mean to be realistic and to let them know I would not get upset if something changed along the way because things happen in life people and our environments change.
DeleteInga M. Muscio: Her story at first kinda had me wrinkle my forehead "Funerals and memorial services are big lies for the people who are not destroyed by a death so they can feel like they have closure and said goodbye." Well my mother owns a funeral home and I have been around death since I was 12 so funerals and memorial services mean something totally different to me. It is a for family and friends to give that person a last respect on this earth to show a support to other family and friends. However I could relate to her lose not with the sibling but with parents. I was a different person for about 2 years I mean I don't feel you are ever really the same after a lose of people who have been a HUGE part of your life, but you just continue to live the best you can.
Agreed - The Carol Queen is very relatable for, I would assume, most women. The virginity lost (married or not), pregnancy worries, and what ifs. But initially I scoulded her for her what ifs. She proclaimed the loss of her virginity as a propulsion into adulthood, but that is far from the truth. Sex doesn't equal adulthood. I kept thinking you wouldn't be freaking out if you had just waited a little longer 16-year-old! You don't know about feelings or who you are. tsk tsk on me...
DeleteBut, as I reflected on this point after a few days I began to look at my own freak outs. I'm 30 and I still have what ifs all the time, when I found out that I was pregnant (married for seven years and having wanted a baby for all seven) I freaked out and asked ALL of the what ifs. In theory I am an adult - I guess. SO even though she probably wasn't ready maybe we are never ready. I came through it becuase I have a loving and supportive partner... as Queen described it, she most certainly did not have the confidence of her mother and father and made no mention of friends. Her journal seemed to be all the support that she had, and as Justin pointed out, she came through it. Through dialogue and the art of writing she "worked" it out.
I am loving this book. Some stories hit so close to home, while others challenge my perceptions. The best line that I couldn't underline hard enough was by inga m muscio: "sometimes, unfortunate words happen in the sentences of your life and keeping te pain they bring trapped inside your body is just an incredibly bad idea." These stories are all about that trapped pain and finding a way to let it leak out and escape our puny human bodies and minds. Although I'm not sure on the methods if how, I think I need to invite my students to "lean on" their creative practices more; to let the pain escape.
ReplyDeleteI feel like these students ya'll have are so lucky for you all to share these lessons we learn here with them. I am grateful that I was able to figure a few things out in my life and not let certain things get me as a young artist but to ask questions. It makes me happy to see when teachers on here say they cant wait to share with their students. I know personally I always mental notes of things I learn in the corporate field that i wish i was told and with these classes same thing I cant wait to be able to teach and share with these students.
DeleteI too loved that quote. We all go through some pain in life, and while we may hold on to the past we also have to live in the present. Art can be healing, and so can learning. Learning can be about more than a new skill, learning can be a means of expanding who we are - and ultimately help us identify things in ourselves that maybe we already knew and needed to be reminded of as well as the new. I love the idea of creating a safe space for students to express through art. For me growing up I used art to rid myself of fear and anxiety (about growing up, society, etc.) because I had teachers who wanted us to express and to use the technical and emotional skill sets we had to create.
DeleteI absolutely agree. I hear more and more of the teachers in this program talking about incorporating themes that go beyond technical skills and teach students a different way of looking at the world and themselves. I am excited to put this into my own teaching one day!
Delete@Candice, thank you. Although, sometimes it makes me sad that I am still not teaching the same kids I taught three years ago--I want to re-do a few ways I approached things.
DeleteI think as I read these stories and think about them I’m in awe of their vulnerability and their transformation. Divorcing their “self” to reveal and write their stories. These stories have nurtured me to understand life from a different perspective and how I can use this transformation in my art work. Their self-destruction, utilized for good, brings a beautiful embrace from those who receive their work and their courage. Art can be used to nurture people – what a relief that its not just this superficial glance or moment but is an intellectual, emotional and visual exchange of ideas – our ideas on canvas (visual ethno graphs). I like the quote on p 39 by Daphne Gottleib, “ A notebook is an amazing confessional, a breeding ground, a nonjudgmental wailing wall, a home to build with your brain for every gorgeous, glimmering thing that can slip into words. As a working visual artist – I can see this coming out in my work. These stories used their self-destruction as research for their writing – so beautiful and a great accomplishment!
ReplyDeleteI find the artist’s journaling as part of their process. Daphne Gottlieb on pg 40 says, “ art demands control and perspective, and it’s only possible to make consistently transcendent art when our brains are working right.”
ReplyDeleteJournaling gives them insight, and a way to collect their thoughts giving light to their purpose in their art – I believe we have this privilege of seeing the world differently – and a responsibility of sharing with the world those sensitivities (maybe this puts too much pressure on an artist?). I love nurturing people, my kids, my husband and I sometimes wonder how I can use this in my art – giving visuals to my stories helping people grow in their own journey or using my compositions to help people feel a sense of peace or is it different for each one…
I have suffered from depression in the past like the artists in this book. It is a crushing feeling, wanting release but not wanting a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I also wrote in journals, but unlike these women I do not have the courage to EVER show those pages to anyone. I was impressed with not only their courage but also their ability to describe their dark feelings, both towards themselves and towards others, in ways that would resonate with others.
ReplyDeleteIn this first post, I'll be talking about Gottlieb's ongoing struggle between her dark creativity and the side of her that seeks an escape from the side effects of being a tortured poet in "Lady Lazurus".
"There was a pill, she said, and the pill could help. I might not want to die every second. I would not feel boiled in my own skin every moment."
This was where Gottlieb first got my attention, and did not let go until the last sentence. Her use of imagery with "boiling inside my skin" drew me into her experience and I wanted to know more about her condition. As she traversed back and forth between a detached storyteller and a inconsolable self-saboteur, Gottlieb reveals to the reader that this is something she continues to struggle with, but offers herself and the reader consolation in the fact that her writing has helped her ride the breaking wave ("The trick is to not look down").
I wanted to end on the following quote because I love how Gottlieb delicately wove together hope and despair in a sentiment that left me with a lingering feeling of peace and resolution.
"We can make better worlds, word by word. I have written from depths of depressions, long signal flares I throw up in the air, hoping they will light the terrain around me, show me the way out."
Holly - don't you find that having overcome depression Or dealing with it that you became more compassionate in your photographs of the effects of war giving both sides. The artist's experience dealt with the emotional, personally and used it in their writing to help define their "uniqueness". Much like that bluebird in Justin's poem!
DeleteHolly -
Thank you for sharing and
David - thanks for sharing!
I too was captivated by those first few lines in Gottlieb's story. And I too have struggled with that beast. This past week I was in Seattle, where I grew up, with my Dad and sister. I have not spent that much time with them, together, since I was 13. It brought back many memories--the good and the bad, the separation, the depression, the pills and isolation. And I found myself wondering those same thoughts from when I first took those pills: if all of it was worth it. If the pills and the road towards my healing and the things I left behind were worth my mind.
DeleteBack in Texas, holding my baby boy and looking at the mounds of paintings I have created (with a "happy" mind, I might add) I say yes of course it was. But there, reading this chapter in the foggy woods of the pacific northwest, I wondered and reminisced about the pull of that emptiness.
On page 66"I have been keeping a sketchbook ever since I can remember.I think I 'm a born documentarian...My sketchbook was like a house for my brain.Drawing allowed me to visualize and deal with the extremes of my mood swings."As a young painter, my sketchbooks waxed poetic and included written thoughts in a stream-of-consciousness manner,very free-form.These youthful drawings were quite surrealistic and even Picasso like at times.I had read that he had kept 275 sketchbooks over his life time.In grad school my work shifted back to direct observational drawing and my paintings were similar.My motif was my mentally challenged brother Tom.I needed to record his visage in numerous ways.My drawings of him began a quest for self understanding,especially as siblings we had both been raised in the same,old world household.For several years afterward, I had only drawn from direct observation,mainly landscape themes with an occasional portrait.In 2006 I went back to my free form days of made up figuration and pure abstraction-mark making.In the end,the sketchbook ,no matter what the artist is drawing is always autobiographical.it is a visceral and visual recording of self.On page 68, "doing self-portraits,sitting down and just looking at myself,helps me situate myself within my perception of the world.It gives me a little bit of an anchor,and is very grounding".For some people,this is not going to work ,because for some people,looking in the mirror is frightening".This quote resonates with me as I am aging and my visage has changed.This past summer ,I did a self portrait painting from memory and I went back in time.Occasionally I have done what the author has she has done, and that is the portrait which appears convoluted and quite abstract.I try to draw and analyze later.On page 74, " It's taken me awhile to figure out what works for me.I used to be very much against authority and enforced medication.I believed that crazy people are actually brilliant and shouldn't be drugged,because it will take away their creativity...Much later , there was a point where I was trying a lot of medications and feeling a little bit like an experiment.Meds were supposed to make me happy.but with every medication came all these warning stickers".Without getting too personal,I had a hard time with one of my sons who, in spite of a very stable childhood,went rebellious on our family and tried every drug imaginable,especially opiates.At a young age my schizophrenic brother had to be on meds (Thorazine and Mellaril).I had done a number of paintings which recorded physical aberrations caused by these prescriptions such as dark circles under eyes and nervous hand twitching.My mother who had to show up for annual medical reviews with psychiatrists, was frustrated in attempting to to understand the clinical terms which were used to document my brother's condition.I had and still do have a problem in understanding why my son who is a painter and has a superior intellect has chosen to use opiates.It seems like a waste of artistic energy which could be refocused on one's work.Over time acceptance has given sway over frustration.This doesn't mean that I like it.I really hate it.My brother did not have a choice.
ReplyDelete@David, thank you for sharing about your brother and son. I too feel similarly when artists choose self-harm rather than refocusing on their work. Reading this book, thus far, has opened my mind to the spectrum of struggle, living, and creating.
Deletepost marker
ReplyDelete