8 questions

1. View: Transformation

● What is the big picture? 

How to create transformational devices

Transcendent, multi-sensory communication

● What are the main values it is in opposition to?

Art practice as an isolated, egocentric activity that may not have the capacity for transformation 

● What model of action are you using?

Dovetailing earning a living as an educator with making art in forms that are systematic and have finite time in their production method. The time factor is important for me because I have very little free time. Both practices are transformative and feed each other

research, reading, information gathering, printing, drawing from observation (which helps me understand things) small paintings, making mindfulness manifest in personal actions, re-purposing day to day events so that they can be used for expression. 

2. Intention:

● What is the practice’s concrete intentions? 

Communicating with an audience overtly in an artwork, creating a mental space that allows cognitive associations to develop a sense of transcendency, self and environmental awareness through participating in the artwork.

● What are the practice’s implicit intentions?

To make works that give people a means of becoming something else, of transformational processes, of unawareness crossing a threshold into awareness through interaction with the artwork. To uncover knowledge, to name it, bring about a state of becoming liminal from subliminal

● How do you differ from the intentions of a single piece and the whole of the practice?

Sometimes a single piece is an exploration of a technique, or preparation for a larger body of work. It is part of a general direction of a practice, or it can be a pivot point, a process where a new direction is taken.

3. Speech

● What do you need to communicate to allow the work to have a context?

I see each work as a teaching and learning juxtaposition. This is not to say I am doing the teaching. I am creating circumstances for transformation by presenting an artwork that is directed at particular understandings. The audience is teaching itself and brings its own set of experiences and filters to bear on the work and learns new ways to change awareness of them as they experience the work.  I don’t expect people to always understand the paradigm within which I work, but by scaffolding ideas on what is already known, I can perhaps help shift understandings. 

To provide context is therefore to explain the paradigm of the work and help make it accessible for consideration. Either the paradigm has to be so simple it can be immediately accessed by an audience experiencing the artwork, or it needs an explanation, especially if symbolic imagery is used. 

To communicate with an audience requires a coherent body of work to consider.

● What terms and concepts do you have to develop?

I need to articulate my practice better, and not just to remind myself that it exists and needs frequent re-assessment. To be able to describe it in a persuasive and concise way to people who might wish to participate in it would be helpful. If I am to collaborate, or locate helpful people, then common language must be found, or a personal dictionary written for translation.

● What spaces of dialog is your work involved in?

The space of consciousness of each viewer of the artwork, and a physical space in which the ideas are located. 

My practice is a system of spaces, each filled with a stock of knowledge, emotions, practical skills, life experiences, interests, livelihood, histories, and evidence.

4. Action:

● What are the practices associated with the work? (The practices of engagement,

i.e. “Viewing” the work). 

Work is seen as a a way of showing aspects of the human condition, of becoming transformed, transcendent. This is not a religious process for me, but making ineffable things effable, if not in words then by other sensory means.

● What are the key actions involved in making the work?

Printmaking, painting, photography, 3D forms, perhaps making an installation to put them in to create an environment of sensory and intellectual discovery, film, writing

5. Livelihood:

● What are the actual life practices associated with your question?

I make art in ways that mesh with earning a living by other means. While this takes away necessity of selling work, and allows freedom from economic worry, it might take away the urgency and depth of intent that a person earning their livelihood from art might have. I feel that things are off balance in this regard and have to work very hard to correct this i.e. find more time. On the other hand, it gives me daily work that I value very much, and which often gives inspiration to art practice.

I have always been mindful of living in an ethical way: Raising our own food (not any more), living without electricity (we have it now), home schooling kids and having them born at home, helping to start a school, taking care of both parents with dementia and cancer, etc. This has left little time to be an epic art maker, but has given me a huge incentive to make up for lost time.

● How do you make a livelihood? see #7

● Where do you need to work?

To earn money, see #7. For food, in the garden, for anything else, in my studio, my computer, kitchen table, in my classroom, local woods

● What does this consist of?

● Who are you working with?

Alone right now, but have been making mental lists of all the people I know who can help me do stuff

6. Effort:

● Perfection: What does perfection look like in regards to this work?

Several pieces of work that are coherent, aligned and transformative. Large silver blobs that reflect the people looking at them, mazes, a rack and thumb screws.

● What are you actually striving for? (For the art and in your own life).

Communication, acceptance, balance, community. Producing work, enough work that I feel I have something to show someone. 

Simple, elegant solutions to making art and earning a living that offer every day things for closer inspection, and hint at transformation, Utopia, the sublime.

7. Mindfulness:

● How do you make sure all the parts of this practice are part of the same general logic? (It is

important to imagine that your thoughts and your actions link up so to speak). 

I am very fortunate to have a job in which for the most part I have a great time helping kids to study their favorite topics of the moment, make art, ask questions, and share love of learning about things. It can be exhausting keeping up with students’ energy, but also inspirational. As their teacher, and role model, I am always conscious of living up to the high standards of ethics that I expect of them and try to help them develop. A flaw in this is that my job eats up a lot of time that could be spent making artworks for a wider audience. 

8. Concentration:

● Where should you locate your effort? (It is easy to shape your practice into existing

methodologies but given your problem in a pure state where should you locate your

activities -- imagine that it is not in art as we know it

Illustrating interactions of things; I think I am a systems thinker (re: Danella Meadows), and this concept is a huge attraction for me. To be systematic and see a an artwork as not just a whimsical creative process, but a collection of activities that work in concert to make it effective makes the task of actually making the work seem more feasible.

Heath Robinson mechanisms, self-perpetuating environments such as hives, bureaucracies with intriguing new rules, networks of transparent hoses filled with colored dyes, algae etc flowing into one another, compost heaps, model houses with strange interiors and strange structures and perhaps aliens living in them, miniature theater installations, smooth sculptural surfaces, re-purposing every day events.