I’m so glad this note introduced you to the Process Artist. It has a great feminist history branching out of conceptual art. It’s funny, I think somewhere around 2013-2015 I went to an artists conference that focused on Socially Engaged practice. One of the main topics of the conference was our collective effort in determining the name of our practice or discipline. We could identify markers and subtypes within our collective and there was clearly lineage but no umbrella name that everyone could agree too. There is something powerful about a name—it creates belonging. But it also creates exclusion. I’ve been observing the amazing movement of trans people and have been witnessing the wrangling with language as we collectively try to better understand one another. It’s interesting because once we understand something through language we start to fit into it. But before we have the words the being and doing still exist we just don’t know how to communicate the nuance and so on one hand there is freedom without a label and on the other hand there is belonging with a label. I love you trying on Process Artist cuz I think that’s what we do—we try on labels like hermit crab shells. Does this feel right? Can I wiggle around more now? Maybe specific language helps us to direct our attention to detail? Anyways—I love the sound of your work and you know I’m a big fan of painting with toes, tongues, whatever…cuz I’m more interested in what it feels like then what the painting looks like—I am interested in connecting with possibility and that is what I’m interested in quantifying. Now that you’ve painted with your tongue can you imagine more possibilities exist? More possible possibilities=more ways….
I am…a process…artist…too? I never heard this term before (I’m embarrassed to admit). Maybe I already told this story here? Forgive me if so- I don’t have other outlets for this conversation you/we are having…Last year after speaking with an artist whose works we were seeing in a gallery, my daughter asked me, “When she asked you if you were an artist, why didn’t you just say, ‘Yes’?” I will say I see things as an artist, I process information like an artist (not that we’re doing it the same way, but there is some common quality maybe? Or perhaps among groups of us?) I designed scenery and painted sets throughout college and a year of grad school and my primary nostalgia for that time is the physicality of that…well, I want to say “practice.” It was a practice of making paintings/environments that were bigger than you, that created a world within a world. One of my favorite memories is falling through the floor of a stage set because there was a drop cloth laid over a hole in the floor (not an accidental hole, but one that would be used to reveal/conceal a character). I got a big angry scrape across my abdomen as I fell through. It’s still a favorite memory- painting one moment, falling the next. For the past decade I have worked as an OT, primarily with children in schools. All of that is process, at least in the way I do it (but not necessarily how schools view it). Part of OT is creating goals and working towards them. It wasn’t until I found a methodology called DIR (Development, Individual-Differences, Relationship-Based) that I felt at home in my work. DIR explains how connection is the goal (not “get this student to pay attention in my classroom”). If the child is connected with you, attention follows, growth follows, motivation follows. I am not doing this work now, largely because of the element of time that you talked about here. Days as a full time therapist are chunked into 30 min sessions, back to back, nine or so in a row. As a process based artist (now I’m just trying it on for fun…) this was at first exhausting and in the end, impossible. I felt my brain’s gears locking up. I felt weightless and joyful when being present with a child who was making something (didn’t matter what) and especially when they allowed me to collaborate. Then time would be up and our bubble would burst and on to the next child. (How long can comments be? Is this rude to do what I am doing? I’m sorry!…) These days I am creating a protocol for an art-based group for children and parents who reside in a domestic violence shelter. I am learning that most ppl don’t know what I mean when I said, “it doesn’t matter what the picture looks like. Close your eyes and draw it that way. Put the crayon between your toes and draw it that way.” When I say people don’t get it I do not mean children. I mean the adults, the OT’s, the professors, the people in charge. They are wondering what the outcome is. They are wondering if this is worth anything. And that is a legitimate question in this weird system we exist in. Now there is “neuroaesthetics,” which is interested in the process of making/viewing art in the brain…Do you ever feel like because you are making something invisible/ephemeral it’s hard to talk about and explain? Do you feel need to explain it (to sell it)? Do you sometimes realize you are in it in the middle of the day, making a sandwich or standing in line at the store- like if you just put a little music over the whole thing and slowed time down, you’d catch the dust drifting in the light and every eye blink would be a little time to dream?
I’m so glad this note introduced you to the Process Artist. It has a great feminist history branching out of conceptual art. It’s funny, I think somewhere around 2013-2015 I went to an artists conference that focused on Socially Engaged practice. One of the main topics of the conference was our collective effort in determining the name of our practice or discipline. We could identify markers and subtypes within our collective and there was clearly lineage but no umbrella name that everyone could agree too. There is something powerful about a name—it creates belonging. But it also creates exclusion. I’ve been observing the amazing movement of trans people and have been witnessing the wrangling with language as we collectively try to better understand one another. It’s interesting because once we understand something through language we start to fit into it. But before we have the words the being and doing still exist we just don’t know how to communicate the nuance and so on one hand there is freedom without a label and on the other hand there is belonging with a label. I love you trying on Process Artist cuz I think that’s what we do—we try on labels like hermit crab shells. Does this feel right? Can I wiggle around more now? Maybe specific language helps us to direct our attention to detail? Anyways—I love the sound of your work and you know I’m a big fan of painting with toes, tongues, whatever…cuz I’m more interested in what it feels like then what the painting looks like—I am interested in connecting with possibility and that is what I’m interested in quantifying. Now that you’ve painted with your tongue can you imagine more possibilities exist? More possible possibilities=more ways….
https://open.substack.com/pub/alexlewis/p/i-lost-my-queen-too?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1twbac
Of interest on notions of Home.
Thank you for sharing:)
PS thank you for posting “daydream”- so many things happening and not happening there that I am thinking about now…
I am…a process…artist…too? I never heard this term before (I’m embarrassed to admit). Maybe I already told this story here? Forgive me if so- I don’t have other outlets for this conversation you/we are having…Last year after speaking with an artist whose works we were seeing in a gallery, my daughter asked me, “When she asked you if you were an artist, why didn’t you just say, ‘Yes’?” I will say I see things as an artist, I process information like an artist (not that we’re doing it the same way, but there is some common quality maybe? Or perhaps among groups of us?) I designed scenery and painted sets throughout college and a year of grad school and my primary nostalgia for that time is the physicality of that…well, I want to say “practice.” It was a practice of making paintings/environments that were bigger than you, that created a world within a world. One of my favorite memories is falling through the floor of a stage set because there was a drop cloth laid over a hole in the floor (not an accidental hole, but one that would be used to reveal/conceal a character). I got a big angry scrape across my abdomen as I fell through. It’s still a favorite memory- painting one moment, falling the next. For the past decade I have worked as an OT, primarily with children in schools. All of that is process, at least in the way I do it (but not necessarily how schools view it). Part of OT is creating goals and working towards them. It wasn’t until I found a methodology called DIR (Development, Individual-Differences, Relationship-Based) that I felt at home in my work. DIR explains how connection is the goal (not “get this student to pay attention in my classroom”). If the child is connected with you, attention follows, growth follows, motivation follows. I am not doing this work now, largely because of the element of time that you talked about here. Days as a full time therapist are chunked into 30 min sessions, back to back, nine or so in a row. As a process based artist (now I’m just trying it on for fun…) this was at first exhausting and in the end, impossible. I felt my brain’s gears locking up. I felt weightless and joyful when being present with a child who was making something (didn’t matter what) and especially when they allowed me to collaborate. Then time would be up and our bubble would burst and on to the next child. (How long can comments be? Is this rude to do what I am doing? I’m sorry!…) These days I am creating a protocol for an art-based group for children and parents who reside in a domestic violence shelter. I am learning that most ppl don’t know what I mean when I said, “it doesn’t matter what the picture looks like. Close your eyes and draw it that way. Put the crayon between your toes and draw it that way.” When I say people don’t get it I do not mean children. I mean the adults, the OT’s, the professors, the people in charge. They are wondering what the outcome is. They are wondering if this is worth anything. And that is a legitimate question in this weird system we exist in. Now there is “neuroaesthetics,” which is interested in the process of making/viewing art in the brain…Do you ever feel like because you are making something invisible/ephemeral it’s hard to talk about and explain? Do you feel need to explain it (to sell it)? Do you sometimes realize you are in it in the middle of the day, making a sandwich or standing in line at the store- like if you just put a little music over the whole thing and slowed time down, you’d catch the dust drifting in the light and every eye blink would be a little time to dream?