distance and pools of possibility

I wrote most of this back in May…

During my adolescence, I grew up with my brother, who is non-speaking. Though he is unable to form words, his communication of emotions - the joyous and uneasy - is often readable where there is care. Without words and other privileged abilities, he is left for others to speak and decide for him. It’s disturbing to think about what he has endured while in spaces without care. Without words and a fully abled body, he is assumed to be unemotional and unvaluable.

I often think about this and sometimes wonder what skills I acquired from him as a child.

While I see and respect the power of “the word”, it is still sometimes difficult to come to grips that communicating through words often feels futile. I find drawing as a primary medium to circumvent expectations and still connect in an honest way to the world. How many of us carried our black books everywhere? Yes - definitely for the love, partly as a social buffer, and partly as a translation technology in the spirit of “the word”.

What I learned from my brother was how to be present with and share experiences beyond privileged ways of communicating. I used to feel that telepathy could bridge the gaps (yea right) and offer more understanding to stitch up distance because the structure and wordpool of english seemed…ehh. (Is it really about what was not said?)

But the poets and writers seem to be so adept at manipulating the language to their benefit and the collective that desperately needs it. It’s always been a respectful attraction to me.  And, the visual artists are great at it too…

TRANSLATION TECH

Although I’ve been led to make larger scale work over the past several years, my heart is always with small drawings. Weaving through micro worlds between bark fissures. Leaf skeletons and moist fungi. Coyote brush tunnels and pistils. Drawing (wordless writing?) translations speak well when they are intimate. Granted, all those conversations and dances aren’t going to be readable to everyone all the time. Especially when there’s a lot all at once. 

I think some of what disgruntles artists is the lack of care when approaching seeing. Flaccid sight (not necessarily eyesight) and large heads don’t make for good conversation, critique, or kin.

Yet, it is also a crossroads to exercise letting go.

CONDENSING AND EXPRESSING

Alongside the macro, I’m also into stepping wayyyy back. Creating the needed distance physically and mentally from a thing - plus some for insurance - to allow deep space between projects and life. Condensing and expanding scales like Rachelle Farrell’s range.

Perhaps the gaps and distances and silences that don’t appear to reach others are echoes still reverberating back to me at their own time. And perhaps that reverb is spirit exchanging for that offering. Receiving that exchange is heard in presence where apparent spaces and times collapse. Most work is born like the berries that aren’t eaten and the seeds that don’t sprout. They get to exist within their time, and that is good enough.

While in the motions of working on this upcoming solo show (The Forest is the Water), I found myself too close for too long. So, I took a week off to not even look at any work. To remember my audacity to make wtfiw had me into some woodworking and outside with a macro lens.

The macro lens said that it wasn’t about being too close or far, but about intimacy. Tuning into that ever-present reverb. What has the connection between me and this work been like? Myself and the world, and the world and everyone? Perhaps this quest with translation and communication is really about that - the networks we’re all connected to in joy and pain. To feel them deeply, sometimes overwhelmingly, can shift one into a life of love or towards what isn’t naturally aligned in our being (or just mines?): disconnection from ourselves… in order to be a functioning being in this society.

My work is calling me to be more open in a new way (again!). I’m really excited for it.  

When I sense myself too far away, I feel magnetism(s) calling out. Or maybe I’m unconsciously calling out, and a work/ an idea/ play is responding. In circular motions, that magnetism feels like vibrating chromatic aberrations and mycelium bass tones.

I feel that calling also when standing too far away from an artwork until it says “come closer”. Consider the intimate space between the hand and the surface. The visions, the emotions… Do you know how detail-obsessed artists are?  Don’t be scared. Put your face in it!

From a distance, to be solo is to be unaccompanied. Yet, one is still (a) whole ecosystem of various organisms and lineages, thus challenging the idea of soloness altogether (consider Becoming Human by Zakiyyah Iman Jackson).

Therefore, I’m sharing these images.

The solo is not just black compositions on white walls. It’s just one residual of a collective making….a note from a long song scaled up.

Macro says to slow down and be curious. To not abandon beauty. To ask questions rather than make ill-informed judgements.

To rock back and forth with closeness and space.