In Transition: An Exploratory Art Project

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

As I hinted about on my blog a while ago, I will not be entirely ineffective this winter break. Rather, I will be "doing it big," as we once would say at my high school - I am going to embark on a multi-level creative project that involves joining the very disparate elements of my creative life and synthesizing them to the best of my ability. Which begs the question: what does that look like? Below is a preliminary recording of me trying to figure that out.



Transitions. The broadest theme imaginable, but one that has fascinated me more and more as I have looked through my old work and started new projects as well. I hope that this art project will summarize a lot of the transitions I've been making personally and that others have gone through in their lives as well because, often, we don't know what a transition is until we've passed through it! Why not highlight them in medias res*?


I have audio recorded my answers to the interview questions I will be asking other people (because what good is it to make other people uncomfortable when you yourself are sitting pretty in your comfort zone?) and will presently be layering on visual, written, and craft-based artistic projects based on the answers that I have given. Expect updates throughout this month on how that section of the work has been going and whether it has ended up as profitably as I hope it will!

The next level of this project is to make other people answer these same questions and take their answers to the visual/written/craftastic level as well. I am setting a high bar for myself of interviewing 6 people on 1 question of their choice from the list that I've made and translating their answers into art before the winter break is through. Once their pieces have been made, they will be added to the ones that I have made for my own answers and the project will continue.

As of now, the work seems infinite. There are so many stories and so many potential avenues to embark on. I hope that it will get me working with excitement and fervor once again as we settle in to a dark, cold, NYC winter. Let's light it up with the power of our words and experiences.

*In the middle of things.