It's been one of those months when things never seem to let up and I've been reading (on the train, before I go to sleep...) and working in the studio and when I sit down to write, I'm suddenly out of things to say. Somehow, what seemed effortless to do a while ago seems really complicated lately...
In December, I was asked to do an a short intro for a book of photos and sat down to do it. I have been carrying around this notebook of quotes for years and in it was a passage from 1989 article Washington Post about how photography was different from all other art because it implied being there. I thought this would be a good intro, so I write the whole essay around it and when I was done, I thought - geez, I'm a college professor now, I ought to cite this quote properly. So I went back into the Post archives and it wasn't there...at all. I had transcribed it wrong or something and carrying it around for 19 years waiting to use this thing that had suddenly lost its usefulness.
Of course this is a small thing, but it's sort of indicative of how what I had been using as fuel for work is now of questionable value and I'm starting to get antsy about it. In the studio, I've always had a sense of how anything could be a painting, but how it got made is what will decide if it's any good or not.
Maybe that's what these sign projects are getting at. The one above is called Inarticulate Object and it's one of a few I've been working on without really knowing or caring where the idea goes. It might be as useless is as the Post quote. With writing, I always know or care where it's going. But I think that's getting in the way right now. So I'll be writing a little more, though I can't promise it will be worth reading. if you're interested, you can follow it here, or or in an even more cruddy state on my own website, which will be back up in the next week.
