Space and Place

Street Cartographies/Mapa Movil

2011-09-29T16:49:00.004-04:00

Hatuey Ramos Fermin and I recently finished a proposal for a new project called Street Cartographies/Mapa Movil. You can check out a little video we made for it, and visit it here:

Old Portfolio/New Beginnings

2011-08-08T08:19:00.001-04:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More portfolio

Neighborhood Explorers

2011-05-26T08:01:00.004-04:00

I coordinate an after school program at the Museum of the City of New York called Neighborhood Explorers. This program uses principles of architecture, urban planning and design to address neighborhood issues and propose innovative solutions. This year, Neighborhood Explorers partnered with the 116^th Street Block Association to create a community garden with the residents of the Colon Plaza Apartments. Students worked with Billie Cohen, Landscape Designer, to create a design for the garden.

I am so proud of these students and the excellent work the have done! Check us out on Facebook and stay tuned for more information!

Headline! Millennium Pearls

2011-05-12T11:26:00.000-04:00

I recently completed a teaching residency with the Millennium Pearl Initiative, a a collaborative 32-session service-learning project of El Museo del Barrio, Millennium Art Academy and Elders Share the Arts. The program integrates visual art, theatre and service learning to build a community of high school students and senior citizens. Students and their elders work together throughout the course of the program to build skills in active listening and communication, which serve as the foundation for a culminating interdisciplinary art project. This project, "Headlines!" is a performance and publication based on the stories shared by the elders. Students wrote articles and created illustrations that were published in a newspaper and interpreted through a multi-media performance.

Art Works all the Time

2011-05-04T15:34:00.001-04:00

I recently published an article on NYFA Current about my work as a Teaching Artist in the Drawing Connections Program at the Drawing Center.

Check it out here.

Passage (Wave and Particle)

2010-09-13T10:00:00.002-04:00

Passage (Wave and Particle) from Elizabeth Hamby on Vimeo.

This video documents an installation I have been working on at the Skybridge Gallery at Eugene Lang College. Using tape and pencil I created a map of the light traveling across the space over the course of the afternoon. The shapes are simultaneously a memento of the passage and a score that evolves with the weather, the day and the season.

manifesto

2010-08-15T16:08:00.003-04:00

A while back, a friend and I were talking about manifestos. I had recently seen m=Marina Abramovic perform hers at the Museum of Modern Art and found the experience moving and unsettling.

I think a lot about what it means to be an artist--particularly what it means to be an artist in the world, so I started this list as a set of instructions for myself and a criteria for thinking about my work (the noun and the verb).

1. An artist should change the world.

2. An artist should be part of communities--within and outside of the "art world."

3. An artist should subvert the invisible structures that maintain oppression and inequality.

4. An artist should be engaged with the world and should cultivate and examine ideas about life at the local and the global scale.

5. An artist should be promiscuous: technically, intellectually, emotionally

6. An artist should be committed: emotionally, intellectually, creatively

7. An artist should cultivate curiosity and should constantly learn

8. An artist should cultivate physical, intellectual and emotional space for people to consider foreign ideas and experiences

9. An artist should not be lazy

10. An artist should be brave

11. An artist should be a seer and a teller

12. An artist should tell the truth

13. An artist should dwell in contradiction and uncertainty

14. An artist should be uncomfortable

seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees

2010-06-25T10:46:00.002-04:00

"There was a certain point," Irwin was explaining to me one afternoon, "when I realized that if I was going to play, I was going to have to make the commitment necessary to do it. There was no simple shortcut. It was a question of, 'Do you want to do it, or don't you?' And I don't remember what it was that instigated it, but at one point, I decided I really wanted to do it."

Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: Over 30 Years of Conversations with Robert Irwin, Lawrence Weschler

Visual Percussion 3

2010-06-12T20:24:00.002-04:00

Visual Percussion 3 from Elizabeth Hamby on Vimeo.

Note:

2010-03-05T14:06:00.001-05:00

"What really exists is not things made, but things in the making. Once made, they are dead..."

William James

Introduction

2010-02-15T20:03:00.000-05:00

My work takes place in a complex space between the studio, the classroom and the city. As an artist, an educator and a researcher, I examine the concept of place and the dynamics of urban space. I see the city as a palimpsest, and my work as archeology, sounding, and ground-truthing. My practice is grounded in drawing as a way of excavating meaning and diagramming the set of forces (i.e., proximity, density, rhythm, and speed) at work in complex spatial situations.

Two essential questions frame my work: What does the city look like? And what does looking at the city tell us about broader questions of space and time?

I approach the city both as a real, observable place and as a model for understanding complexity. The dynamics of people and place at work in the city generate different kinds of time and space that exist symphonically and simultaneously. As urban areas become home to more people, each of them, “builders, constantly modifying the structure for reasons of their own,” (Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City), equally complex modes of research and examination are necessary in order to address the social, political, economic, and epistemological challenges they embody.

More than half of the world’s population are classified as “urban dwellers,” but their experience is hardly unified. Drastic socio-economic disparity and unequal access to resources occur in startling proximity in dense urban areas. Slums, favelas, gecekondu and other informal settlements house a large portion of the world’s urban dwellers. These peri-urban spaces exist at the edges of development and embody a frontier between the urban and the rural, the rich and the poor, the empowered and the oppressed.

Further, consider the phenomena of shrinking and sprawling cities within the same country. In the United States, cities such as Pittsburgh, Detroit, and St. Louis are developing master plans focused on concentrating redevelopment and infrastructure projects on smaller geographic areas—razing outlying neighborhoods and transforming them into recreation or open space. At the same time, cities along the Atlantic Corridor continue to sprawl toward one another, becoming what Louis Mumford called a “megalopolis.”

Finally, the virtual spaces and places of the internet represent another transformation of the concept of the urban. Web-space paradoxically expands and contracts simultaneously—users build virtual communities or have instant face-to-face communication across vast geographic areas. The “many builders” of the internet move within new of zones and spheres, transforming accepted notions of space and time. Facebook, for example, uses the metaphor of the built environment to structure interaction: users write or post links or photographs to one anothers “walls,” setting controls as to who can and cannot see what.

The expansion of the concept of the urban is accompanied by challenges to modes representation and research. GoogleMaps and Turn-by-Turn GPS units offer hyperlocal, de-contextualized cartography at the touch of a button. Although this technology means that one need never be lost, cartographic literacy is in crisis. Fewer and fewer Americans, across age, gender, and socio-economic spectra are able to locate their home on a map of their city, and Mary Spence, President of the British Geographic Society says, “Corporate cartographers are demolishing thousands of years of history – not to mention Britain’s remarkable geography – at a stroke by not including them on maps which millions of us now use every day. We’re in real danger of losing what makes maps so unique; giving us a feel for a place even if we’ve never been there.” (Media Release: “Internet mapping wiping Britain off the map, says President of British Cartographic Society” August 30, 2008)

However, the agility and scalability of contemporary geo-spatial technology means that previously un-mappable spaces, such as informal cities, are now recorded and accessible. “Place” becomes a set of data points within a geospatial framework, rather than a set of values and associations. There is a wealth of geological, geospatial, infrastructure, and demographic data available, however, as recent tragedies in Haiti and New Orleans have proven, just because data is available, in its raw form and without the tools that make to synthesize it and translate it into actionable information, it is futile.

Trevor Paglen has asserted that the production of space implies that, “the human condition is characterized by a feedback look between human activity and our material surroundings... If one takes the production of space seriously, the concept applies not only to “objects” of study or criticism, but to the ways one’s own actions participate in the production of space.” (“Experimental Geography: From Cultural Production to the Production of Space” in Experimental Geography: Radical Approaches to Landscape, Cartography and Urbanism)

Therefore, investigating the expanded notion of the urban, intersected by problems of representation and synthesis, as well as visual and cartographic literacy, this paper will explore cities as both a space for/as interpretation and a site for/as the production of knowledge. The city is presented here in a series of strategies: Visual Rhythm/Visual Percussion, Si(gh)t(e) Plans, and Island/Archipelago. These strategies are meant to not only curate and passively observe sights, sounds, buildings and people, but also to contextualize and interpret them: viewing the city as a mnemonic device for and an amplification of our most basic understanding of space and place.

list

2010-01-24T20:51:00.000-05:00

This is the first list I ever made as an artist. It was in my undergraduate thesis.

nomadism

globalism

space

place

time

scope

scape

proximity

location

identity

site

understanding

observing

fitness

intimacy

triangles

circles

bodies

tortoises and tortoise shells

scribbling

aleatory

sound

listening

hearing

touching

tasting

seeing

smelling

spelling

underlining

highlighting

mapping

digging

archeology

anthropology

webs

nets

networks

systems

grids

chaos

order

passive

receptive

coding

encoding

decoding

nests

shells

huts

burrows

hotels

motels

highway rest areas

airports

seaports

railway stations

cross-country train rides

walking

measuring

outlining

drawing

building

writing

swelling

remaining

staying

squeezing

fucking

fucking up

breathing

reading

blurring

burning

tearing

cutting

tying

looping

scratching

watching

categorizing

layering

penetrating

interpenetrative

perception

intuition

exploration

explanation

investigation

site

sight

simultaneous

simu-placious

to scale

interdisciplinary

multidisciplinary

cross-disciplinary

didactic

phenomenological

epistemological

ontological

Palimpsest (from Vermont)

2010-01-16T19:44:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I need a little encouragement

2010-01-15T10:19:00.001-05:00

Quick thought to be followed up on later

2010-01-08T09:40:00.000-05:00

If industrial time/space was about production and accumulation--a relationship between the center and outlying areas, and post-industrial time/space represented a shift towards synthesis/infill--like the megalopolis developing along the northeast corridor, what happens with the sped-up time of interaction facilitated by the internet?

Just wanted to jot that down...

Overlay, 2009

2009-12-26T08:50:00.000-05:00

!!!!!

2009-12-24T08:17:00.000-05:00

1. Celebrations as liminal time/space

2. Rituals to preserve cultural memory

3. Smuggling knowledge through tradition (Santeria, Voodoo)

4. Parades

5. Decoration/Ornamentation

6. Sequins as poor people gems.

7. Liberace

8. Twinkle Lights

9. Festivals that temporarily challenge existing class hierarchy

Rhythm/Composition

2009-12-19T12:15:00.000-05:00

Archipelago

2009-12-11T12:50:00.000-05:00

Rhythm City/City Rhythm Notes

2009-12-06T14:36:00.000-05:00

1. Use of "conceptual" and "performative" to break out of the box/frame

2. Experience and artifact

3. The symphony of the city

4. Looking at music

5. Music for/as Installation

6. Complexity

7. Film projects: Hans Richter Rhythms

8. Performance artists: Julia Mandle (Variable City)

9. How does performance/conceptual art change people's perspectives

10. Music: John Cage (scores)

11. Visual Rhythm, pattern

12. Hip hop, poetry

13. Notation/Composition

14. Public/Private

15. Rhythm incorporates performance and conceptual art by treating the situation as the artwork. Drawing on the history of participatory artistic practices (situationists, dada)

16. Investigating the situation as artwork. Performance/documentation, artifacts

17. Walking as an artistic practice

18. Lygia Clark

19. Helio Oiticia’s investigation of Samba/geometric abstraction

20. What is the vocabulary of interactivity?

21. The city is the product of many builders. The image of the city

22. The Western artistic canon privileges vision

23. Afro-indigenous traditions embody knowledge and history in ritual

24. (embodied, inhabited ways of knowing)

25. parades

26. the spectacle

27. costumes/clothing

28. the role of media

29. street performance (breakdancing)

30. the role of the viewer and the status of the artistic “object”

31. the identity of the artist, and the authority of authorship

32. secondary status of the object in support of a sensorial or relational experience

33. Ann Hamilton

34. Lenore Malen

35. Eve Mosher

36. Lize Mogel

37. Multiple spaces, multiple forms, heterogenous spaces, practices, cultures

38. Aesthetics aesthesis: sensation

39. Yago Conde “[movements like conceptual art, performance art and video art] have substituted, for a unique preoccupation with form, experimentation and the investigation of disciplinary limits.”

40. How is art contextualized so that it is percieved as "work"?

41. Blurring the line between "art" and "life"

42. Re-appropriation

43. Reappropriating space

44. Danto, the appropriated image is “the taking over of images with established meaning and identity, and giving them fresh meaning and identity.”

45. City as subject: rhythms, ebbs, flows, patterns, repetition

46. What is the proper “site” for non-objective art? Artifacts? How do (or do not) we preserve ephemeral works? Is that important?

47. Collaboration, participation

48. Investigate historical practices that undermine the supremacy of vision and its associated forms of meaning/communication (i.e., painting and sculpture). Towards a more “embodied” way of knowing and exploring

49. Class-as-experiment. Lines between art and life, art objects and everyday objects, the gallery and the “real world,” are investigated as students consider experience, participation and performance as works of art.

Si(gh)t(e) Plan, 2009

2009-12-05T17:07:00.000-05:00

Untitled Construction, 2009

2009-12-04T00:26:00.001-05:00

twin cities

2009-11-28T15:24:00.001-05:00

thoughts/fragments/inspiration

2009-11-27T12:58:00.000-05:00

Overlay (in progress)

2009-11-15T16:41:00.000-05:00

Double 6s

2009-11-01T14:31:00.000-05:00

Collaboration with Jay Vilnai.

Double 6s from Elizabeth Hamby on Vimeo.

Gazetteer

2009-10-28T19:32:00.000-04:00

Gazetteer from Elizabeth Hamby on Vimeo.

notes from a seven hour drive

2009-10-25T20:55:00.000-04:00

1. there are different kinds of time.

2. time works at different speeds in different places and with different company.

3. heterogeneous time.

4. "civilization" and access to accelerated time as a cycle that maintains oppressive structures/is inherently oppressive

Gazetteer (in progress)

2009-10-02T00:35:00.000-04:00

Nonsense #1

2009-09-20T22:09:00.001-04:00

Nonsense #1 from Elizabeth Hamby on Vimeo.

More Visual Percussion

2009-08-22T21:33:00.001-04:00

Visual Percussion #1 from Elizabeth Hamby on Vimeo.

archipelago

2009-08-17T00:23:00.000-04:00

Visual Percussion

2009-08-12T02:47:00.000-04:00

more sketches

2009-07-19T09:36:00.000-04:00

new drawings (two sides)

2009-07-15T21:49:00.000-04:00

parachutes!

2009-06-08T20:03:00.001-04:00

are coming...

of knowing

2009-05-23T10:28:00.000-04:00

1. dictionaries

2. encyclopedias

3. almanac

4. gazetteer

5. museum

6. library

7. database

8. histories

9. songlines

10. map

11. atlas

12. archive

13. repository

14. collection

15. plan

16. section

17. elevation

18. album

19. folio

20. edition

21. cabinet (of curiosities)

22. dossier

23. curriculum vitae

23. lists

24. ledgers

25. schema

26. glossary

27. key

28. spectra

29. meter

29. odometer

30. anthology

31. oeuvres

32. style sheet

33. passport

34. grammar

(untitled)

2009-05-07T00:06:00.000-04:00

book

2009-05-03T14:30:00.001-04:00

more book

2009-05-03T14:28:00.001-04:00

more book

2009-05-03T14:24:00.001-04:00

a thousand photos, each with it's own story

2009-04-27T22:46:00.000-04:00

i've been making these paper cut-outs. i'm pretty sure they're neighborhoods. and stencils. right now they're screens.

and two videos

2009-04-27T22:37:00.001-04:00

Note:

2009-04-18T09:57:00.000-04:00

the use of abstraction maps the space between the reappropriation/reconfiguring existing visual phenomena and the re-presentation of "real" phenomena.

(in)habitation

2009-04-12T13:10:00.000-04:00

1. the way that a work, a place, assumes meaning over time, through interaction with people.

2. dwelling, resting, to stay with

3. palimpsests (clearly...)

4. building: simultaneously a noun and verb

5. to quicken, to become quick: to become whole, solidify

just saying...

2009-04-11T11:22:00.001-04:00

i love tumblr.

(in) progress

2009-04-04T21:38:00.000-04:00

map

2009-03-09T02:27:00.001-04:00

list

2009-03-09T01:44:00.000-04:00

information architecture
the shape of things
flow
repetition, repetition, repetition
anxiety
weather patterns. any kind of patterns, really.
ways forward
figure-ground, ground-ground, no-ground
quilting
symphony/system/semantic
wave and particle
-as model
the problem with painting
the problem with men
the problem at hand

point-counterpoint

2009-02-01T21:35:00.000-05:00

(untitled)

2009-02-01T19:19:00.000-05:00

process

2009-02-01T19:17:00.001-05:00

january 20, 2009

2009-01-22T22:18:00.000-05:00

Space and Place: An Investigation of Si(gh)t(e)

2009-01-18T22:52:00.001-05:00

I wrote my undergraduate thesis about the concepts of Space and Place. After a year of doing, making, and thinking about space, I felt like I had made more of a mess than anything and I put the thesis away feeling sort of like I had monumentally failed. BUT! I took it out today. And it's actually not that bad! AND I'm still thinking about some of the ideas that I outlined.

Here's the introduction:

This book is the culmination of a year-long project of writing, drawing and research about the concept of space and place. The project has generated more questions than answers--befitting the model of contradiction and complication that I have developed. My investigation into the nature of space and place sketches out three key concepts:

1. Boundaries form the ontology of space.

2. Space becomes place-ful through inhabitation

3. Art-making is a form of place-making

From these, I have developed not so much a theory as a complex observation into the nature of space and place. I have drawn extensively from a wide range of disciplines: art history, critical theory, phenomenology, epistemology and architectural theory.

As a way of crystallizing the terms by which each of these fields functions and in order to work through them rather than over or under them, I have pulled a set of terms--some of which I have cobbled together by hand in order to use the language as precisely as possible--that form a linguistic frame for my work. (See Glossary)

Similarly, rather than forcing concepts that are inherently three-dimensional into a narrative line, I have mapped out my ideas about space and place in a somewhat messy triangle. The apexes: Art, Architecture, and Philosophy, are thicknesses of idea that are patched together by smaller bodies, and penetrated by the three key concepts already introduced. I am less interested in the potential for symmetry here, than the opportunity for a multi-centered way of working.

I present here a range of observational forms. There are three essays: Of Art and Place, Philosophy of Space and Place, and The Architecture of Space and Place. Between them lie shorter observations, ideas, and art work.

Therefore, I would like to present this work as an inhabitation of the concept of space and place. I am aware that this work merely scratches the surface of a field of inquiry that is as deep and wide as it must be in order to deal with the terms of deepness and wideness themselves. By establishing place as nomadic and transitive--serially local--I am hoping to set up the very conditions of my own being in the world.

over and over and over and over

2009-01-10T17:04:00.001-05:00

Rebus-Vik Muniz (MoMA)

2009-01-03T10:09:00.001-05:00

(from the wall text)

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.

--Albert Einstein

The Human Brain responds directly to the eye's inability to process all the visual elements of a scene simultaneously. As our eyes move from one point to another, they create a continuous narrative that is perceived by the brain as a seamless whole. I have often contended that human consciousness emerged from the growing complexity of such optical narratives and our penchant for interacting with the world through cause-and-effect models, graphs and timelines. The pleasure we derive from Rube Goldberg machines and rows of falling dominos is an echo of one of our most primitive perceptual handicaps. Attention is what enables us to capture a manageable vision of the world, by allowing us to ignore its natural complexity.

Generally, a group exhibition is an assembly of works by different artists arranged according to a chosen theme. However, just as mortar joins bricks together to make a building, the space, both physical and temporal, between works in a gallery is as important a component of an exhibition as the art itself. As a viewer moves through the sequential arrangement, the ideas and forms of each artwork linger and have a cumulative effect. This installation is not bound by a unifying theme, but instead invites the viewer to be conscious of the arrangement of the works and aware of the perceptual connections they provoke.

A rebus is a puzzle that combines unrelated visual and linguistic elements to create a single narrative. Borrowing from the rebus's simplified linear structure, I stripped my own group of visual elements (the artworks) from their original taxonomies and focused on forging intuitive connections based on form, color, scale, quantity, function and pattern. This exhibition encourages viewers to think about the connections between each object and the next. Rebus is a cognitive, visual ride that I hope will affect how visitors experience art here and in the rest of the museum.

sketchbook

2008-12-30T13:47:00.001-05:00

also, from Music Quickens Time, by Daniel Barenboim

The education of the ear is perhaps far more important than we can imagine not only for the development of each individual but for the functioning of society, and tehrefore also of governments. Musical talent and understanding, and auditory intelligence, are areas that are so often separated from the rest of human life, relegated eitehr to the function of entertainment or to the esoteric realm of elite art. The ability to hear several voices at once, comprehending the statement of each separate one; the capacity to recollect a theme that made its first entrance before a long process of transfromation and now reappears in a different light; and the aural skill of recognizing the geometrical variations of a fugue subject are all qualities that enhance understanding. Perhaps the cumulative effect of these skills and abilities could form human beings more apt to listen to and understand several points of view at once, more able to judge their own place in society and in history, and more likely to apprehend the similarities between all people rather than the differences between them.

one two three four five (with unsteady hands)

2008-12-20T15:23:00.000-05:00

there's a sense of space and time that i have been trying to work through with these videos. something like the liminality of film as a form--in the spatial and temporal sense. especially shaky-handed shots. they're not quite sketches, and they're not snapshots either. i guess they have to be re-presentations, because of the nature of the media.

maybe they're artifacts.

i am thinking about

2008-12-12T15:33:00.000-05:00

1. mobiles (as in hanging, as well as phones)
2. chandeliers
3. juxtaposition
4. point-counterpoint
5. social networks
6. multi-modal creation
7. object-based forms of inquiry
8. collective intelligence
9. shapes
10. foamies
11. mixed editions
12. the intellectual work of being an artist
13. portability
14. ephemerality
15. layers
16. complicate
17. thickness
18. creating new forms of knowledge
19. what makes a great teacher
20. generosity of spirit
21. courage
22. microcosms
23. ecosystems
24. self-adapting systems
25. feedback loops
26. cities as systems
27. relationships as systems
28. paths
29. "white-ness"
30. density of atmosphere
31. process
32. identity
33. color as form
34. personal space
35. the difference between honesty and truth
36. silence is the basis for classical music, noise is the basis for hiphop
37. complexity
38. proximity
39. speed
40. accumulation
41. texture
42. what is the difference between a producer and a musician?
43. alonely
44. practice
45. praxis
46. readability
47. patience
48. states
49. transformation
50. exponentiality
52. regionalism
53. emergence
54. hegemony
55. history
56. revisionism
57. sparkles
58. window displays
59. sequential
60. spontaneous public art
61. the greater good
62. mediocrity
63. scapes
64. spread
65. landscape/aerial view
66. color against grey
67. the way that snow transforms the scape--reduces the palette
68. internationalism
69. globalism
70. nationalism
71. portability
72. I am an I, I am an Elizabeth
73. painting
74. making lists
75. mapping my thoughts
76. vulnerability
77. association
78. gestalt
79. professionalism
80. wiki as a way of knowing
81. authenticity
82. audacity
83. "otherness"
84. both/and
85. tradition
86. ritual
87. language
88. churning
89. assemblages, melting pots, salad bowls
90. geo-coding
91. listening
92. triangles
93. pairs
94. also to affirm
95. simultenaity
96. synchronicity
97. glossolalia
98. echolalia
99. deme
100. you.

...

2008-12-03T23:36:00.000-05:00

some thoughts

2008-11-23T12:39:00.000-05:00

i have been thinking a lot lately about the audacity of being an artist.

and what it means to me, as a woman, as an artist, to be so whole, so audacious. is audacious-ness a posture through which i can bring about positive change in the world? in other words, from an audacious posture, is it possible to act in communion/collaboration with others, THE other(s)?

this all started with matt mullican (among other things), and i'll get to that in a minute. but i want to start with june jordan (and may well end up just being a love letter to her.)

i have had a copy jordan's collection of essays, some of us did not die, since college. i pick it up constantly, to read an essay, a passage, a sentence, about what it means to be brave, to be a woman, and to be an artist. but most importantly, i learn from june jordan how to be political--in the greek sense--to be part of the body politic. how, as artists, the myth of the solitary (white, male) genius alone in his room looms large against our yearning for community, for solidarity, for real collective action and intention as a way of life.

i think that, although this essay was written in 1986, it is especially relevant now. from, "waking up in the middle of some american dreams"

We would undertake collective political action founded on admitted similarities and grateful connections among us, otherwise needful citizens who now regard each other as burdensome or frightening or irrelevant. This would mean a great national coming out--a coming out of our cars, a coming out of our deadpan passage through the streets of America, a coming out of the suburbs, a coming out of our perverted enthusiasm for whatever keeps us apart: home computers, answering machines, VCRs, and then the proverbial two weeks away in a faraway cabin in the woods.

But each American one of us feels so special and so different that none of us assumes the validity of his or her outrage or longing inside the mythical context of "the American Mainstream." We become persuaded that the people of our country must be somebody else, not you and me, even as we regard our government as some alien, half-deaf, and unaccountable monarch to whom we--sooner or later--must pay homage, or at least, taxes. We tolerate insulting, homicidal proposals for national security--such as an aircraft carrier, or a helmut and bulletproof vest--when what we know is that national security must mean, for example, respectful and adequate and guaranteed tender care for elderly Americans and for any American one of us who cannot, by herself, do things without help. And meanwhile, our American worship of space, open road space, frontier space, astral space, and more particularly, as much space as possible between me and whoever you are--on the bus, on my block, on my job, in my field--our American dreams of "the first" and "the only" produce an invariable mistaken self-centered perspective that repeatedly proves self-defeating, and, even antidemocratic. Demos, as in democratic, as in a democratic, as in a democratic state, means people, not person. A democratic nation of individuals is an impossibility and a fratricidal goal. Each American one of us must consciously choose to become a willing and outspoken part of the people who, together, will determine our individual chances for happiness, and justice.

By people I mean the white people the black people the female people the lonely people the terrorized people the elderly people the young people the visionary people the unemployed people the regular ordinary omnipresent people who crave grace and variety and surprise and safety and one new day after another.

so here are my questions.

how do i wield the language of abstraction in a way that is common (as in plain-spoken), inviting, thought-provoking rather than as a weapon of "i am, or the work is, smarter than you."?

how can i make art that is relevant to people who are socially, culturally, geographically, or economically outside of "the art world"? how can i allow the lives, the stories that i hear, to bear down on the work?

how do i take work that is honest (i am not lying) and make it True (we are in agreement)?

SO. if, as i say that i do, i intend for my work to be a conversation, to be as intimate as skin-to-skin, or long pauses in deep conversations. AND if, as i say that i do, i intend for my life to be both part and whole, what is the nature of art and work?

audaciousness, it seems to me, is a posture of "I am right." Is "You are Wrong" implied by default? (and, ahem, President Obama and The Audacity of Hope seem to suggest that THAT too might not be so bad)

is this the nature of the discomfort around non-representational artwork?

is it the discomfort around or distaste for artwork that addresses traditionally "other" subjects--the experiences and aesthetics of non-white or non-male or non-euro-american people? is the audacity of claiming Rightness for one or many of those experiences so threatening to the established order that we create a moral culture that dismisses it as un-serious, un-cool?

pooneh and i went to see matt mullican give a talk at the drawing center last weekend. he talked a lot about creating states, through hypnosis in particular, through which he was able to become "other." and in his case, "other" was schitzophrenic, obsessive, autistic but was also himself. he drew as a way of experimenting with his "other" self, allowing "him" to work, to draw, to himself experiment with the space of a paper, a wall. and also to deal with the fear of an audience--an "other" over whom he had no control.

at the end of the talk, an audience member asked mullican about the nature of his relationship to the viewer--implying that mullican's fear of the audience had resulted in work that was un-readable or alienating or arcane. and mullican replied, "i don't know what to tell you. i'm trying the best that i can."

and maybe that's just it. maybe the job is to do the best that i can. to be audacious as a path rather than a way of being (static).

i want to end with one more quote from june jordan. this one is from "a new politics of sexuality."

If you are free, you are not predictable and you are not controllable...To insist upon complexity, to insist upon the validity of all of the components of social/sexual complexity, to insist upon the equal validity of all the components of social/sexual complexity.

This seems to me a unifying, 1990s mandate for revolutionary Americans planning to make it into the twenty-first century on the basis of the heart, on the basis of an honest human body, consecrated to every struggle for justice, every struggle for equality, every struggle for freedom.

Give me a week off...

2008-11-18T23:05:00.001-05:00

and i will give you a whole new body of work. this is my studio...

Old Images/New Inspiration

2008-11-16T17:05:00.001-05:00

These photos are from the summer of 2007, but formally very much where my head is. Also--just for the record, these aren't retouched. the light really is that beautiful.

More Foamies and Tape

2008-11-15T10:39:00.000-05:00

i'm not going to lie. i love foamies. and, you know, tape. and stuff.......

Site Specific Utah

2008-11-12T23:29:00.000-05:00

The amazing Pooneh Maghazehe (her work is also here) and I collaborated on this piece on the side of the Sego Art Center in Provo, Utah. We had a great time, and I found a new material. What more could a girl ask for?

more shadows

2008-11-02T12:00:00.001-05:00

studio sunday afternoon

2008-10-26T13:55:00.000-04:00

yellow triangles

2008-09-07T13:16:00.001-04:00

meduse

2008-09-02T14:53:00.000-04:00

i shot this at the atlanta aquarium. it's unedited, but kind of awesome in my humble opinion.

Finished!

2008-08-28T11:43:00.001-04:00

003
Originally uploaded by elizabethhamby

work in progress

2008-08-25T20:38:00.001-04:00

okay, so this is all still in progress, but i feel like i took made some big changes, so i thought i'd share. you can see the whole set on flickr here.

spraypaint and stencils

2008-08-11T09:51:00.001-04:00

IMG_0096
Originally uploaded by elizabethhamby

okay, so i've resisted using spraypaint for a long time.

too many people that i know, love, and admire use spraypaint for very "culturally specific" purposes, and i didn't want to seem like i was imitating their process, technique, or style.

however.

working with spraypaint and stencils gives me the speed that i've been looking for. it allows me to work more like i think--as in, all over the place, rather than in a neat line. here is a picture of work in progress. this will also help you see what my workspace looks like. (notice red dirt...)

hello from georgia

2008-08-08T11:38:00.000-04:00

so here i am.

one week in.

i am feeling incredibly relaxed. refreshed.

i haven't gotten a whole lot of work done, but i've downshifted to a level that i'm not sure i've EVER felt. it's really really nice. i can hear myself think.

i'm doing yoga every day, and reading some really great books.

from the preface to Notes on the Synthesis of Form by Christopher Alexander:

The idea of a diagram, or pattern, is very simple. It is an abstract pattern of physical relationships which resolves a small system of interacting and conflicting forces, and is independent of all other forces, and of all other possible diagrams. The idea that it is possible to create such abstract relationships one at a time, and to create designs which are whole by fusing these relationships--this amazingly simple idea is, for me, the most important discovery of this book.

Pictures of the workspace to come.

rejection

2008-08-06T13:51:00.001-04:00

okay, i'm trying reeeeeeally hard not to be negative, but in the last year, i have been rejected from:

1. Columbia University MFA Program
2. Hunter College MFA Program
3. Bard College MFA Program
4. Lower East Side Printshop Keyholder Residency
5. Brooklyn Arts Council "Creative Cartographies" show
6. Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Studio Program
7. Irish Musem of Modern Art Artist in Residence Program
8. Dieu Donne Artist in Residence Program
9. MoMA RED Teaching Artist Summer Program
10. Au Courant show at Dam Stulthrager in Williamsburg

in other words, everything i've applied to.

i know that part of learning to be an artist is learning to deal with rejection, not take it personally, etc. i know that it is not personal. i know i know i know. it just really....sucks.

raindrops/map

2008-07-27T16:21:00.000-04:00

again

2008-07-26T14:26:00.000-04:00

new directions

2008-07-13T20:24:00.000-04:00

i've shot a bunch of little video sketches over the last year or so, and i'm just starting to sort through them to try to make sense of them. here are two that i shot in mexico last november.

new directions

2008-07-13T20:12:00.001-04:00

new directions

2008-07-13T20:08:00.000-04:00

Part 2 (from Bushwick Open Studios)

2008-06-24T10:35:00.001-04:00

Metropolis Part 1

2008-04-03T21:55:00.000-04:00

artists statement

2008-03-31T14:20:00.000-04:00

i finally wrote an artist's statement that i believe.

"Opacity and horizons, obstacles and perspectives implicate one
another because they complicate one another, imbricate one another to
the point of allowing the unknown, the giant city, to be glimpsed or
guessed at. With its diverse spaces affected by diverse times:
rhythms." (Henri Lefavbre, Rhythamanalysis)

My work is a palimpsest of urban experience. Layers of meaning
(cartography, landscape, musical notation) and materials (found
objects and images, tape, graphite, charcoal, paper and spraypaint)
build up and fall apart over time and through space. I am engaged in a
cyclical, constant pattern of work: repeating forms and gestures and
processes. Rather that working in a linear manner: conceiving,
executing, and then exhibiting works, I am constantly engaged in a
more total project.

I work intuitively and improvisationally with a controlled set of
rules that are contextual and specific. My investigative/productive
process is spontaneous and utterly specific in both spatial and
temporal terms, and forms come together in and through the work like
harmonious and dissonant chords. Working with a small "key" of shapes,
I build large forms, varying in opacity, depth (thickness), scale, and
permeability. The forms are related to one another in cartographic
terms, but what is "land" (solid) and what is not is sometimes
unclear. Charting an imaginary space and playing loosely with
boundaries, I build islands, archipelagos and continents. The work
tends to spread. Grids made from masking tape grid "cities" and
colonize the space past lines or borders. The grid builds up from the
"landmass" or "sea-mass" forms. They occur repeatedly, anchoring the
work to itself—creating a sense of the global.

Each individual work always has a familial relationship with the
greater body of my work. Often a fragment of an older work becomes the
nexus for a new work, so each piece is both part and whole, inhabiting
a world in between perfect object-hood and the ephemerality of a
thought, an idea. They are formally delicate, fragile. Edges dissolve
onto the wall. I do not work within a specific set of boundaries (i.e.
a rectangle), rather, the work grows organically and chaotically
outwards. Each piece is in a constant state of flux, hovering between
material-source and perfect object.

Atlas/Explosion #2

2008-03-10T12:24:00.001-04:00

abu dhabi

2008-02-27T10:19:00.001-05:00

as some of you know, i spent a couple of semesters working for the learning through art program at the guggenheim, here in new york. i had a wonderful experience, made some fantastic connections, and as a result, i recieve job postings from the guggenheim.

yesterday i recieved a batch of job postings for the pending guggenheim: abu dhabi. it's not the right move for me, right now, but how exciting! and how bizarre!

the press release says, "Abu Dhabi’s museum will join a highly exclusive Guggenheim museum network which currently includes New York, Venice in Italy, Bilbao in Spain, Berlin in Germany and Las Vegas,” said HH Sheikh Sultan. “The MOU is testimony to Abu Dhabi’s ambition to become an upscale destination and to ensure that the Abu Dhabi name resonates worldwide."

this begs the question: is the guggenheim the starbucks of culture?

Images from Atlas/Explosion #2

2008-02-14T11:15:00.000-05:00

so i've spent the better part of the last week working on atlas/explosion #2, for the "momentum" show. julia carobonetta, the curator, was generous enough to allow me free reign over the wall for the entirety of the installation, so every night, when there are fewer people around, i've gone in and transformed the piece. unfortunately, i haven't been as thorough with documenting that process as i wish, but i do have some pictures of the current state (see below). it's been really great to just work with my process as i actually DO, this kind of flowing-with or moving through that is not really about "finishing" anything (in the sense that to "finish," as such , would involve a certain tying up of loose ends, and solidification of the work-as-object), but rather is a documentation of this set of relationships: me, the space, the materials, over time.

not to be all, "it's the journey, not the destination," but i've always loved that aspect of traveling. i've talked before about my love affair with airports, train stations, post offices. i find myself in motion. i read this great quote from parker palmer recently:

To be fully alive is to act...I understand action to be any way we can co-create reality with other beings and the spirit...action, like a sacrament, is the visible form of an invisible spirit, an outward manifestation of an inward power. But as we act, we not only express what is in us and helps us give shape to the world; we also receive what is outside us, and we reshape our inner selves.

Henri Lefebbvre

2008-02-07T09:25:00.000-05:00

So I'm reading Henri Lefebvre's book rhythmanalysis. It's been really fascinating (and really useful, for me) because, basically, Lefebvre uses rhythm as a way of exploring the complexity of everyday experience.

When we look at a constellation, we are certain that a rhythm comes from the stars. A rhythm that we suppose because we think that there is 'something' 'up there' that coordinates these elements and which is more substantial than each star taken separately

YES!

I've been rolling around the concept of rhythm for a while now. At first I thought it was just about patterning and repetition, which are really obvious visual phenomena. But now I'm seeing that it has to do with the parts-to-wholes-in-constant-flux idea that I love so much.

The piece that I'm doing for the alumni show at Parsons (see invitation below, and please come!)is made up of the same forms I've been experimenting with for a while, but I've started to think of them more concretely as chords. I would really like to think that there is something approaching an aural quality to my work, even as I continue to work in fiercely visual media.

More Atlas/Explosion Images

2008-01-24T11:02:00.000-05:00

New Images!

2008-01-21T14:25:00.000-05:00

Here's what I've been up to for the last four months!

I've been thinking about this work as an Atlas of Islands/Explosions. The first image is a site-specific piece I made over the last two weeks of 2007. It's around 14 feet long by 10 feet tall. I used graphite, tape, graph paper and vellum (the usual suspects...) to play out these shapes as landscapes, maps, sounds. No one except for me (and the photographer) got to see the work in-site, I've kind of been holding it in my heart like a secret. The islands underneath are part of a series that I've been working on (am still working on...) for a while. Each on is around 36 inches wide, by 20 or so inches tall. They're cut-out, and they also have tape, vellum, graph paper and graphite.

There are two levels of ideas kind of swirling around here.

On the one hand, theres this thing about relationships: how can something be a part-of-a-whole, but also a perfect whole in and of itself. Furthermore, what is the nature of a whole-in-progress? (These are questions that I have about being a human being, as well as for these pieces, obvs...) These are questions about process. I've never been the kind of person (or artist) who comes up with great ideas and then executes them. It's just work, work, work for me. And this particular body of work has gone wider in that respect than anything I've ever made. I'm still in the middle of it, and that's something that I find extraordinarily exciting.

On the other (not so unrelated) hand, there's the idea of an Atlas, geography, and place. Theres something about the epherality of place (I say this over and over and over again) that I'm trying to approach in the way that I make work. I use a limited set of materials, marks, shapes and use them in different ways to produce different (but related) ends--all of the pieces exist in the same family. I still love Borges, still love the idea of an infite set. One of my new favorite concepts is work as a palimpsest. Meaning, each thing, each piece both erases the piece that came before, and becomes thicker through its historical/material relationship to the past.

I've been reading Bill Viola's collected writings. I want to make videos and music. I applied to graduate school and I'm teaching second grade. It's an exciting time and I promise to be better about updates. Stay in touch!

Love,
liz

2008-01-21T14:15:00.000-05:00

the history of love

2007-03-20T17:22:00.002-04:00

i just finished reading The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss. it was by far one of the best books i've read in a long time. stylistically it reminded me of "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" by Milan Kundera, which is one of my favorite books of all time. Both are woven, thick, novels that deal with the complexity of ordinary life. and both weave their texts with a really elegant philosophy of the everyday.

one of my favorite passages from The History of Love:

So many words get lost. They leave the mouth and lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days you can hear their chorus rushing past: IwasabeautifulgirlPleasedon'tgoItoobelievemybodyismadeofglassI'veneverlovedanyoneIthinkofmyselfasfunnyForgiveme...

There was a time when it wasn't uncommon to use a piece of string to guide words that otherwise might falter on the way to their destinations. Shy people carried a little bundle of string in their pockets, but people considered loudmouths had no less need for it, since those used to being overheard by everyone were often at a loss for how to make themselves heard by someone. The physical distance between two people using a string was often small; sometimes the smaller the distance, the greater need for the string.

The practice of attaching cups to the ends of hte string came much later. Some say it is related to the irrepressible urge to press shells to our ears, to hear the still-surviving echo of the world's first expression. Others say it was started by a man who held the end of a string that was unraveled across the ocean by a girl who left for America.

When the world grew bigger, and there wasn't enough string to keep the things people wanted to say from disappearing into the vastness, the telephone was invented.

Sometimes no length of string is long enough to say the thing that needs to be said. In such cases all the string can do, in whatever it's form, is conduct a person's silence.

scattered islands #2

2007-02-14T09:31:00.000-05:00

here are some images of some new stuff i've been working on. i've been working with paint samples (which i did in college, too) to make multi-colored shapes assembled with tape. i've made around 56 of them so far.

sleepwalkers/historias minimas

2007-02-07T22:19:00.000-05:00

so i've seen two really interesting pieces of film recently that have helped me nail down something that i really enjoy in cinema. about a week ago i got an argentinean movie called Intimate Stories (Historias Minimas) and tonight i went to see doug aitken's film projection at the moma called Sleepwalkers. both are centered around the rather banal lives of everyday people (although in intimate stories they're poor and argentinean, and in sleepwalkers they're famous actors/musicians/cultural icons).

there's something that i find really touching about the use of cinema to explore the simple encounters between strangers, actual acquaintances or service people, or the imagined encounters we have with people we see in movies, on television or in pictures: these people, who are more like caricatures or symbols in the process of our interactions with them are, in fact, tied to a whole other set of associations and relationships.

in the case of sleepwalkers, which my friend erich (accurately, i think) described as being somewhat like a volkswagon ad, the use of multiple projections of different people going through the basic daily activities (waking up, taking a shower, having something to drink, going to work...)simultaneously created a sense of commonality, of unity. the sense is furthered by the use of sort of rhythmic pans of the facades of buildings or traffic zooming by, as well as the use of the rising and setting sun to note the passing of time.

intimate stories has one central narrative: an old man who goes on a journey to find his lost dog, that is crossed by other narratives: a travelling salesman is in love with one of his customers and is bringing a cake to her son for his birthday and a poor, provincial woman who has won a contest and will be on a tv gameshow in one of the bigger cities. there are patterns of language (for example: a pair of mirrored scenes where a character is trying to bribe another character for something that everyone knows doesn't REALLY matter) and gesture that tie the movie neatly together.

the first thing that i find so appealing about these sorts of movies is the fact of their utter embodiment of cinema as a time-based media. but more so, i think that they address the kinds of thicknesses and thinnesses of time and experience that i think are really quite important. when movies are able to be more than just single, linnear narratives they begin to approach something that is about the richness of life, rather than just the richness of a particular story.

drawn wires

2007-02-04T00:25:00.000-05:00

so i have all these pictures that i fixed up for my grad school application, so i thought i'd post some. this is a series that i call "drawn wires." they're these funny little wall pieces made with paper, tape and tacks.

structures/relationships

2007-01-28T19:22:00.000-05:00

i'm still here.

i've been wrapped up in real life and not documenting one single bit of it, so i'll muse for a little while:

2006 was an incredibly hard year for me for a number of important and not so important reasons. all sorts of things happened: things that were solid gave way, situations were not how i percieved them, patterns shifted, but steps forward were taken along with the accompanying steps back. i did a lot of work last year.

over the last few months, i've given in to the comfort of relationships. i've made an effort to reach out to people i love, and to be open and strong to all the complications and heartache that involves. it's a lot easier than loneliness, but that's easy to forget.

i've always though of relationships as inherently structural. to me there's a very physical sense of being bound to the people i love by some sort of filament or fiber. sometimes the filament is thick, sometimes it's thin. sometimes it's tangled, sometimes it's smooth. when i tug on the tie that binds me to you or let it drop away, we both feel it in a perfectly real way. i think that 70's concept of the personal and the political has to do with just these sorts of bindings.

rauschenbergy

2006-12-12T17:30:00.000-05:00

my roomate bryan and i were talking about these robert rauschenberg pieces that were at the guggenheim last month, and i haven't been able to stop thinking about them. so i made a couple of small homages.

nest

2006-12-08T09:04:00.000-05:00

when i was walking home from work last night, i found a nest laying in the middle of the street. it was pretty intact, and it looked like it had been built in a gap or something because instead of being completely round, it was flat and packed with dirt on one side, with the round nest-y part coming out like a pocket.

of course i picked it up and brought it home...

i'm really really excited about my little nest, because i've been thinking about making nests again, and now i have one to study up close.

more pictures/what i'm reading

2006-11-26T09:43:00.000-05:00

so i haven't posted in a while and i'm about to go out of town (going to visit my family in the south, i'll have lots to say about that...)so i thought i'd just post a couple more studio pictures and tell you what i'm reading right now.

i just got two books by Alain de Button in the mail. one is called "The Architecture of Happiness," and the other is called, "The Art of Travel." I heard an interview with de Button on the radio the other day talking about the Katrina Cottages and the concept of home. specifically the connection between our home and our identity. personally, i have really mixed feelings about the Katrina Cottages, and the architectural community is completely split. on the one hand, the Cottages are less expensive, more durable, and more aesthetically pleasing than FEMA trailers. on the other hand, their architectural detail is relative to a time that is long gone--i think that it's strange to try to start again (from an architectural/urban planning perspective) by trying to completely recreate the past. anyway, i'll report back when i've finished the books.

i'm also re-reading "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting," by Milan Kundera. it's one of my favorite books of all time--the first time i read it was when i was in india, and i read most of it on a sleeping bunk on a packed train because i couldn't sleep. classic.

the pictures are some of the 'drawn wires' i've been making. i've started putting them together with my beloved pink tape. they're starting to look kind of like those snowflakes that kindergarteners cut out.

what i've been up to...

2006-11-08T17:42:00.000-05:00

So I thought I'd post some pictures of what I've been up to in my studio for the last couple of months. I'm going to post them un-color corrected and un-photoshopped, so please forgive the snapshot-y nature. I've been working on a couple of series' of drawing/collages that I alternate between calling Island/Explosions and the Balkanization series (I read a great article a while back called, "Positive Effects of Balkanization" and I've been listening to a lot of Goran Bregovic). They're really process-oriented works, that grew out of the Explosion drawings I was making at the end of school, and some junkyard photos from Turkey. The first image is the studio view--just for context. I'm so happy with this space--the big windows and the high ceilings make it really easy to stretch out with my work. The wire-y drawing/installation (still in progress...) kind of started the whole series. I started making the drawings the night that my roomates pulled all sorts of wires and cables out of our ceiling in an attempt (eventually successful) to get our internet up and running. I took a bunch of photographs of all the stuff going on up there, and then just began drawing from it. The series of drawings on graph paper (I loooooove graph paper...) followed. I took the scraps from the cut-outs of the wires and began to reassemble them according to some pretty loose rules. (This is where the junkyard photos come in--they're all grouped glass with glass, porcelin with porcelin, wires with wires, etc.)Then I located them on the graphs. The last image is a larger group of Islands. I wanted to see how they hung together in one space. I like the sense that they have of floating around in some un-identified area.

wave and particle

2006-10-29T19:33:00.000-05:00

The year after I finished high school I went to work for Heifer International () at their farm in Rutland, Massachusetts. There were always people coming and going from the the farm, staying for a few weeks or a month or two, but there were three or four of us who stayed there for six months. We made a little family, complete with the distant members who came and went. We cooked amazing dinners together, listened to gypsy music and went contra dancing. I always ducked out of chores by bribing the farm steward with homemade biscuits. And after six months, cold and tired from Massachusetts winter, I moved to California.

The time that I spent at the farm was so intimate and easy and real that I thought that I had (finally) found some place to settle--some place to call home. Even though I wasn't crazy about Massachusetts, I thought about what my life would be like in one of the little houses nearby, and imagined myself being married and rooted--feeding chickens and goats and children and having a little homegrown life. Everyone who knew me then couldn't IMAGINE me moving to New York, and of course, just like always, I let the relationships slip away. I still see my friends from that time, but not often, and every time we're together, we talk about how we wish we did it more.

So today I got one of those calls that I'm always a little bit afraid of getting. My friend Karen called to tell me that our friend Kris's husband had died of stomach cancer. I called her back and after we said our hellos and how are yous, I just blurted out, "Karen I just need you to tell me what to do." She told me that I should call, and that it would be important to Kris and her daughters to know that they were in my thoughts. She said that I could come up for the funeral if I wanted to, but that that would be for me more than anyone else. And that everyone would love to see me.

It all just makes me think about how we become familial with one another. And how distance and time and space are all just irrelevant when we love eachother. I named this post "wave and particle" after a short story by Ellen Gilchrist, called, "Light Can be Both Wave and Particle." There is a continuity to our lives and our relationships that is more than just their particular nature. I think that I forgot that when people love eachother, they continue to do so even after they stop putting effort into remembering birthdays or calling just to say hello. It is (not to intellectualize something that feels highly emotional) as though instead of finding roots, I've located myself within a rhizomatic structure of infinite length and complexity. Family trees should probably be more accurately called family rhizhomes, because they spread as wide as they do deep.

I think I'll go up to Massachusetts on Tuesday, and go to the funeral on Wednesday. I'll get that funny feeling that I always get there--not so much of a homecoming, but of a settling into something that is not strange.

this is a little meta...

2006-10-18T16:30:00.000-04:00

So I hope this doesn't feel like an invasion of privacy, but I added a site-tracker to my blog today. Although I'm sure that other, more internet-saavy people know all about this and might be sneering at my naivete as they read this, but to me, the site tracker--particularly the world map it offers with little dots showing where people have looked at the site from--is a pretty cool little glimpse at the webbiness of the interweb.

It's also a little funny to me, since I've been calling my string sculpture/installations Interweb(s) as a little joke on their structures. But I think there's a little truth in it. The Interweb sculptures are site-specific, as well as durationally specific (the one shown here was constructed in a few hours, whereas the one I built for my Senior Thesis show took over a week). The space, density, and scale of the work is all variable.

But back to the world map on the site tracker. It's kind of gelling in my head that my little blog is it's own little tangle of the internet. And really, that's how I think of the whole world. This whole idea of place that I'm working with is about the presence, structure, and relationship(s) of/between these little tangles. How individuals, groups, and phenomena create thicknesses and thinnesses of experience. Finally, I think one of the concepts that I hold closest to my heart is that there are certain things that bind everything together, and that a tug here is somehhow feld as a pull all the way over there. This is, of course, not an attempt to make some sort of shlockey "We're all one, man..." argument, and it's not an attempt to dismiss or even condemn conflict and disparity. It's really not even an argument, rather it is a statement of obsevation. I think that John Dewey puts it really well,

The first great consideration is that life goes on in an environment; not merely in it but because of it, through interaction with it. No creature lives merely under its skin; its subcutaneous organs are means of connection with what lies beyond its bodily frame, and to which, in order to live, it must adjust itself, by accomodation and defense, but also by conquest. At every moment, the living creature is exposed to dangers from its surroundings and at every moment, it must draw on its surroundings to satisfy its needs. The career and destiny of a living being are bound up with its interchanges with its environment, not externally, but in the most intimate way.