Monthly Archive for February, 2009

Photo and Salts courtesy of Justin Sirois.

I  spent part of my weekend force-snuggling this little lady.

There is an awful, multi-faceted anxiety that comes with completing your MFA. I am approaching the 2-year anniversary of my MFA thesis exhibition and sometimes I think I’ve got a lot to show for it, and sometimes I think I’ve got nothin.

I had a brief reunion with my old studiomate over the weekend, and over flights of local (Rowhouse Red, hi!) and Belgian brews , we reminisced over the crippling anxiety that is grad school, the crippling anxiety that is graduating from grad school, the crippling anxiety of locating yourself amongst other young contemporary artists also out of grad school, the crippling anxiety of running into someone who asks, “So! What are you working on right now?”

We’ve spent so much time defending what it is we do to scientists, accountants, our parents, really, anyone in a more “lucrative” (seems so relative these days) field, and now that we’re out there and, apparently, making it, we pause and have to wonder what we do anymore. I can’t speak for graduates from other MFA programs or for other creative people, but I get a common vibe from a few of my colleagues and close friends: what ever happened to Making for the sake of Making? Isn’t it funny that we initiated all of this debt and fury and pain in order to do what we love, to get an MFA of all things, and we feel suddenly stifled afterward? Maybe it’s because the crippling anxiety of the total experience of grad school inevitably pressures us into always thinking of the end product (in our case, thesis-thesis-thesis), and making work for something Ultimate has just been fused to our brains.

I say: that’s dumb and I want no more of it! This last year or so has been telling and has really helped me become more aware of my work and my process. I still can’t escape this need to have something Finished, something ready for a deadline or an opening, but as I am (slowly) digging in my heels here and there, trying out many (sometimes too many) pies, it’s all starting to makes sense.

My studio at home is coming together. I’m collaboratin’ and doing pretty well at not allowing sights of a future show to influence my work. I understand and appreciate that I can’t force the creative time into a schedule. Keep your eyes en guard, friends; things are happening, whatever they will be (or won’t be).