Joe Strummer of The Clash said it best: “All we’re doing is trying to communicate something. Sometimes we don't know what it is, sometimes we do."
In the summer of 2021, I decided that I had spent long enough making art with pre-ordained meaning. I wanted to see what art-making was like free from that obligation. I wanted to see what would happen if I let the process speak back to me. So I culled through my extensive arsenal of the stuff I make collage and sculpture with, and made a stack of paper about a foot tall. With this as my raw material, I cast aside the idea of outward expression with a specific agenda, and embraced inward exploration with unassigned curiosity.
Subsequently, each collage became its own independent narrative. I was speaking in an intuitive language that perhaps I didn’t have total agency over. It was scary, and it was freeing.
I knew that even if I didn’t fully understand what I was making, there would be two people who would: my kids. To be clear, I don’t mean ‘understand’ in the way one processes a distinct language: I’m not a semaphore; they are not at sea. What I mean is that these pieces might just have a poetic resonance with the two people who know me better than I know myself.
Maybe by admitting that I don’t have all the answers—not by a long shot— in a communication authored for the people who ostensibly look to me for answers, I can become as cool as Joe Strummer. At least to my kids.
In the summer of 2021, I decided that I had spent long enough making art with pre-ordained meaning. I wanted to see what art-making was like free from that obligation. I wanted to see what would happen if I let the process speak back to me. So I culled through my extensive arsenal of the stuff I make collage and sculpture with, and made a stack of paper about a foot tall. With this as my raw material, I cast aside the idea of outward expression with a specific agenda, and embraced inward exploration with unassigned curiosity.
Subsequently, each collage became its own independent narrative. I was speaking in an intuitive language that perhaps I didn’t have total agency over. It was scary, and it was freeing.
I knew that even if I didn’t fully understand what I was making, there would be two people who would: my kids. To be clear, I don’t mean ‘understand’ in the way one processes a distinct language: I’m not a semaphore; they are not at sea. What I mean is that these pieces might just have a poetic resonance with the two people who know me better than I know myself.
Maybe by admitting that I don’t have all the answers—not by a long shot— in a communication authored for the people who ostensibly look to me for answers, I can become as cool as Joe Strummer. At least to my kids.
