Personal Statement:
My
body of work, artistically and otherwise, exists as an expression of the
present condition of my mind, and its reactions to environmental stimuli. My
thoughts, are undoubtedly unable to escape where I have been, and are
thoroughly preoccupied with where I will be, or where I wish to be, but in the
end, due to the fluid nature of life and thought itself, it is where I am now, my
current situation and beliefs, that most heavily influence my acts of creation.
So where am I now?
I
am pushing a once-gleaming, silver cart down a brightly lit hospital corridor,
as two silent guardians walk towards, and then pass me, ferrying a stretcher
topped with a black leather box. I keep my head down, and though I can’t verify
this with my eyes, I know they do the same. Eye contact is taboo and all human
contact stings. No one is ignorant of what lays under that black leather, as
the slow procession creeps down the corridor of the pediatric unit. Moments
later, they are gone, the box and its two keepers, and slowly color returns to
the faces in the hall, and finally laughter makes its gentle return. As I turn
the corner it’s as if nothing ever happened, and gradually, I too forget, until
a lonely moment some nights later. I sit in my empty room strumming at a
guitar, drifting in and out of a semi-aware, half-assed moment of creation. And
as I search for a melody I begin to hum rolling lines over a mournful
progression, slowly adding random words and rhymes at the ends of lines, not
attempting to craft lyrics, but simply wanting to experience the sounds and
rhythms of voice alongside the steady expression of the guitar. It is as this
pattern cycles on that I begin to actually observe what I’m working with. It’s
that moment of excitement as the spark of creation boils up, when distraction
is cast away, and every bit of my attention is drawn inward. In that moment I
understand what I’m writing about, it’s that bright hospital corridor that
lives in the notes of my guitar, that black leather box that haunts my humming
voice.
The
more I dissect my body of work, the more I realize, at this point in my life at
least, that my creations are used less in the role of teaching, but far more
effective as tools of learning. It’s almost scary when you consider the vast
measure of life that exists at the subconscious level, as we wander oblivious
to our most intense feelings, beliefs, and desires. For me, this is the value
of my body of work. To look back over what I’ve thought, to consider the words,
sounds, and images that have battled to escape the confines of my mind, and to
decipher what they truly mean to me. I am often struck by the fact that I do
not know myself as well as once thought I did, and it is through the slowly
released hints of my subconscious that I try to correct this lack of self
awareness. As I sit, my body of work is most importantly a project of
self-discovery, and while that is bound to change as time ticks by, that’s just
where I am now.
