To Make Our Way

Today's optional assignment/work seeding exercise: working from image. Agnes Martin, the painter who I've mentioned and recommended previously, waited for the images of her works to "come to her" in "inspirations." These inspirations often came to her in her dreams. She did not paint until she had a mental image and then she worked feverishly to do the math to translate the image she had in her brain (almost always a pattern of stripes or a grid) to the six foot (or, later five foot) square canvases she used. For her the image was all. It was the object of her work. Her brushstrokes and her pencil work were not pre-dreamed...the process of her work remained an improvisation. But she had a shape that she was making: there was a form that she sought to realize. Martin experienced this work as sublimely peaceful. Antonin Artaud's cruelty can be described as the human desire to realize form. To consecrate oneself  to making the messy system of the bod...

Feel free to ignore this post/assignment, particularly if you are excited to make things and especially if you are excited to make things in a context that takes you AWAY from the digital world and into the world of the senses. But if the grayness of the day has you in a reflective mood, think about starting a commonplace book...or building into your JOURNAL a section for commonplace book-style entries. What's a commonplace book? RILKE:  “A commonplace book is what a provident poet cannot subsist without, for this proverbial reason, that ‘great wits have short memories:’ and whereas, on the other hand, poets, being liars by profession, ought to have good memories; to reconcile these, a book of this sort, is in the nature of a supplemental memory, or a record of what occurs remarkable in every day’s reading or conversation. There you enter not only your own original thoughts, (which, a hundred to one, are few and insignificant) but such of other men as you think fit to make yo...

In a work of time-based art, something happens . The work takes place in time  because time is one of its parts. (Even those works which, for conceptual or other reasons, just keep going on without change  are using time because our experience of the event changes over time. And so the something happening  is happening in us. Think about time today. Make a time based unit of art in which something happens . SOME QUESTIONS: What does it take to make something happen? What's the tiniest thing that can happen and still have it be perceivable that something happens? What's the most that can happen in the smallest amount of time? What happens to the way we experience something happening if you distort the way time works? Think about your own project as you work, if you can. RESOURCES: 1. The 4 (or 5) frames exercise we used in Deathbed Edition. Divide an event up into 4 or 5 frames. Draw it like a comic strip. There are 4-5 "moments" and, if we experience them ...

Select 8 of something. Paperclips, coins, cards, whatever. Let each item represent 15 minutes of time. Put all 8 items in a START STACK and also identify a place for a DONE stack. (You can give these spaces better names.) I'd like you to spend 2 hours (120 minutes) of focused time on your project today. Not on your journal (maybe that at the end or tomorrow but not in the 2 hours. You may spend that time on any activity, experiment, exercise, diagramming, writing you like...but--if you can--let the emphasis fall on doing, on iterating, on making versions of things . Maybe you'll work in a two hour stretch. In which case, when you're done...move ALL the Items from the START stack to the DONE stack. And you're finished. If you want to take a break at any point, for a meal or because you're distracted or stuck, GO AHEAD! Move as many items to the DONE stack as you've spent focused time. And when you come back to work, note the time that you begin to work...

This song was taken off from the internet in China because of too people sharing and reposting this on their social media during the beginning of the pandemic. However, when we are tweeting, do we still see? When we are singing out of fear and angry, do we see?

Keep singing. Jonas Mekas, who died last year, is a crucial figure in the American avant-garde and the world of downtown New York. You should read about him here and  here . You could look at his films, too, but even if you don't like them (you might not), you should read on. At the end of his life, he would tell people "Keep Singing!" And when he died, some of his friends made this tribute to him. It's a five minute film , but it gives you a little sense of the perspective that age brings (he was over 95 when he died) and what it feels like for a young artist to have lived through hard times. In particular, I'm struck by his hunger  for culture and by his willingness to look at how work was being made in his field, film, and issue a call to  blow it all up, because he and his friends felt as if they could make film that was more lively, more vital. So, today the assignment is: Keep singing. What does that mean to you? (It might mean actually singing. I...

me chris and andrew cuomo conversation with self/chris and andrew

We went to Bryn Mawr yesterday to watch flowers in their best bloom at the worst time thinking of the wind and rain today we pitied these beautiful little things and picked some branches to make Ikebana But today I thought they were not to be watched  so nor to be pitied for the fall In their best bloom at the best time, they were not to be saved by us nonetheless decorate our home as they do

There's a line that I was told is in the writing of the poet Adrienne Rich (but now I can't find it): "I am thinking how we can take what we have to make what we need." Adrienne Rich is a great poet and thinker, even if this line is not hers--or was said in person to the person who quoted it to me and is not therefore enshrined on the internet. In any case, I may have quoted this to you before in class or in meetings because I think this sentiment pretty well communicates what we need to do as artists. To know what we have. All the resources. All the abundance. The skills the time the stuff the strategies the others the alternatives the space the rhythms the relationships the changing. To know or to discover: what we need . What we actually need may surprise us. It may not be the Big Glorious Monument. It might be the moment we notice the sun glint off a wet stone. We need to be open to discovery, to permit ourselves to be persuaded by our intuitions, our dream...

According to the Dadaist Tristan Tzara, who was one of my boyhood idols, "everyone marches to their own personal BOOM-BOOM." So: march. (movement. monologue. stopaction. flipbook. sew. rap. make. cook. act. music.) March in a time of elevated care and awareness. March in daily activity. March at rest. Resources: Tzara . Agnes Martin . on inspiration. Warren Rohrer (Philadelphia painter, brushstroke rhythms // rhythms of farming.) Charlie Parker (jazz) Sun Ra Arkestra (recent) Sun Ra (himself) Where the Wild Things Are .

A Pencil When a pencil dies it writes its own gravestone, uses its own petals of sawdust lays wreath for itself

Inspired by Tina's doodle of me: Consider the Portrait. Make versions of selves. (draw. sculpt. write. perform. flipbook. embroider. make installation/shrine.) SOURCES: This FREE FOR THE MOMENT Portrait of Object Artist Stuart Sherman. Gertrude Stein, Portrait of Matisse Gertrude Stein, Sugar Gertrude Stein, Completed portrait of Picasso James Ijames, Haiku Plays

here’s some notes on being an artist from painter Helen Frankenthaler. 

1. Find music.  (Record. Make. Define or Re-define. Dance. Write. Other.) 2. What it is to fall. (Dance. Flip-book. Zine. Monologue.) 3. Seek out elements of nature. Disassemble and reassemble. (Sculpture. Performance. Installation. Stop motion film. Resources to consider: Andy Goldsworthy, Rivers and Tides . (here is part 1.) RadioLab, "Falling"

I wanted to get this up as soon as possible so that we can get to it as soon as we like. I am happy to have feedback on the assignments I place here. And I will be delighted with whatever you all decide to share here, in whatever form you choose to share it. There is no need to try to please me or to think about your work in relation to what I might like or appreciate. This is just working and it's to be used only to the extent that it's helpful. If it turns out that you want feedback from me or the group, you're welcome to ask for it. But no one is requited to do that (either to ask for or to offer feedback). I will try to offer up at least one assignment every day. For a while, until we find out what this is, I may offer a little cluster, just so you aren't committed to one thing. I'll try to mix the open-ended with the specific. What you make of the assignment is whatever it takes to get you to work. There is no wrong  way to interpret an assignment. I promise....