On of my favorite things to think about is that there are never any accidents.  And even the accidents that happen just aren’t.

Last week, I spoke to a Feminist Art graduate seminar.  I haven’t really done my full-fledged artist talk in a while.  Yup- I have one.  It has 164 slides in it.  I even have a script that I have rehearsed and rehearsed so that it sounds like I don’t have a script.  But since I haven’t done the talk in a while AND I feel like I never have been so at home with my work- I decided to not bring the script.  Anyone who really really knows me- knows that I am freaky when it comes to public speaking (like 95% the rest of the world).  And if you were in graduate school with me, you would know that I was literally green before I went on stage for my thesis talk.  (and I was slated to go first but there was someone missing from my committee so I had to go last…. which nearly killed me).  It’s also true that the first 5 years of teaching I often would throw up before classes.  It’s a little much but I digress……

Since it had been a while since I did my talk- I had a chance to revisit some things that have been a while.  Often times when you do a talk like this- you try to establish where you’ve been and how you got here.  It’s actually a pretty cool process and I recommend any artist to think about this- even if they aren’t giving one of these talks.  I was thinking of doing my next few blogs about this subject matter.  There are a number of strands that I connect to get me to the work I do today and while it has been an evolving process- when I looked back on my slides, I would not be making what I do now if I had not processed through some of these other themes.  Isn’t it incredible how the mind works?

So in the next coming days expect to see entries about: my family; formative literature and the paintings that have helped with the context; thoughts on hair & the body; and maybe even some wild card ramblings on Jung- animus/anima, archetypal identity.

I think it’s no accident that I did this talk while doing this spring cleaning in my studio (which by the way will be gorgeous at next first friday- so come, if only to greet my new, living plant!).  I have come across college sketchbooks, excerpts of 10 year old projects, and even my discharge papers from after my wrist surgery during my second year at grad school.  And if you were curious, I attribute my philosophy of working to be awakened by that accident- and I choose the word “awakened” because really, as you learn, the idea of resilience, adaptability, and strength has been around me my entire life- I only forgot about it for a while.

Stay tuned, my trusty readers!