Notes transcribed from a chat with vivian that I recorded: (I really should do this more!)

Clothing is an intimate manufactured thing with which we use to communicate, we use to warm ourselves, protect ourselves, almost figurative because its shaped to us. Something about breaking down something that’s cloth, that’s clothing, its more than just figuring out how its made, I’m breaking down the barrier between the person and the world.

Beginning with clothes, how I first started being interested in them, starting with the figure, then clothing, then breaking it down, and then becoming interested in the manufactured element of it, and that moving into broader materiality. How my interest in this “making” which is vague, came from something specific.

Seeing how clothes are made overseas, most people don’t know where their food comes from, using this language to access a much broader conceptual thing: we are torn from being intimate with our immediate world. Globalization and technology has resulted in a loss of intimacy. Today, product is disconnected from process; life is disconnected from life. We are disconnected from the production of our food, our loved ones, wars waged, and the making of our clothes. There is dimmed distinctness of need for all the deep, simple necessities. Real is torn from real, Facebook friends from actual friends; processed food from organically grown food, knowing from knowing. It is impossible to have respect without knowing, that is, without intimacy. (inHere)

My goal with my thesis at first was to get people more intimate with the stuff that they interact with everyday. It morphed this thing that we all know, we are all familiar with patterns, you see an outline of a t-shirt and you know exactly what it is. But its not necessarily something you have interacted with or seen, or even touched yourself. At its most basic, it is a flat shape. You see what a three dimensional shape looks like when its flat. And taking that and morphing it into something entirely different in its essence because it becomes a big consuming environment that you can’t ignore. Taking these objects that are easily dismissed, that are normal things in our culture and drawing attention to them and how they’re unique and strange. There are a lot of strange things that we don’t pay close attention to. Part of my goal was to make them known or teach people, but it was also to make them strange—to highlight how strange it is. In the same way the map piece, Reconstructed Destination, reveals how weird freeways are. Road systems are so strange and interesting. By cutting along each highway and re-stitching them back together, it makes that more apparent, showing where lines, roads bisect farms, lines mingle and come and go, develop and destroy themselves. After embarking on the task of taking apart and reassembling a map along its highways, I had to run my sewing machine, essentially drive, every highway. A lot of art work being done right now that I find interesting is process oriented. Its so fundamental—you look at something and you see the detail, and its done by hand. The process of doing something laborious, tedious, and the energy that goes into making it is apparent which makes it all the more interesting.

Statement of purpose toilings / ideas for the section about what are my great problems: memories and ideas made of materials colliding. These becoming more complicated and expanding, trying to join, but being separate. incessant/insatiable need for personal growth.

unknown of the beginning and the unknown of the end. work can find its own way beyond my preconceptions . evolves from being systematic and logical and becomes nonlogical, like its own entity.

Video ideas:
burning:

Aerial views, projection on the ground, maps, quilts, the editing/amending of cities

Submerging into water, under water, as a means of abstraction

Reflection, kaleidoscope effects

New Orleans: Crafting a scene. approaching installation as a stage set or environment. Utilizing my experience with theatrical design and landscape architecture.

some inspirations on a misty sunday with the folsom street fair in its full leathery swing:

{my own scabby metropolis (video), eva hesse, nick cave's soundsuits, jesse dunahoo, rachel harrison's conquest of the useless, peter doig's ravine (this piece as an inspiration for my production design work for tontawald?), janine antoni, susan giles}

lots of new ideas and the organization of old ones.

today working on editing the video I made in Portland—adding music. I’m handing it into ATA which is that video collective that I went to a show at when I first got to the city. When I saw that show I was interested in becoming more involved with that video meets music meets installation world—I guess this is a good opportunity. I guess applying to juried shows feels important and good when it supplies me with an external and real deadline to work towards. The outcome of whether or not I get selected is sort of irrelevant to me. But I think I’ve chosen to revisit this Portland footage because I believe it is good and never really had the affirmative response from the folks there … perhaps ATA will see it differently?

My description of the video:
I am interested in the disconnect between an object and the process of its construction; I see my material world as teeming with labor, history and potential. This video depicts both literal and metaphorical tangled and interconnecting systems that continually reorganize, expand, and ebb; I have used knitted structures to allude to environmental landscapes, biological cell structure, and textile based handwork. Through unmaking and then remaking, I destroy a microcosm of our world, and then, hopeful, I rebuild it.

I’ve been trying to revisit my artist statement and make it more relevant to the work I’ve done since college. Seeing these little bodies of work I’ve done (thesis installation, costume work, individual objects, Portland installation) as related but separate… how can I better link them with words?

Right now the big themes are :
- disclosing/making foreign the process of making clothes & the material traces of making, processes disconnect from product - mapping, systems and information
- destruction, rebuilding, and traces, decay with time
-the material environment abounds with an anarchic energy of making -- objects, materials and environments have their own volition
-value & trash-to-treasure, preciousness, clothes are portals into the past/stories. the bargain barn & the idea that manufactured objects possess a life cycle of their own
- process is a combination of whim and system
-closet rituals and the curation of one's personal things.

im back------I’ve been feeling a little displaced and am trying to figure out how to spend my alone time. Ive been creative in strange and sort of playful spurts. Last night I tried to do a cover of a dolly parton song and it turned out awful and super weird. Tonight I played dress up and prettied myself for a weeping self portrait drawing impulse that now seems silly to act upon. Meanwhile, Here is a new seam drawing and then some actual drawings of seam drawings. I used charcoal, gouache and water. They are on brown paper that was used to wrap blue-prints at my work. I’ve been dwelling on the idea of drawing something material that you made, something that could be important on its own. Is it an excersize to get to know an object I made better? its been nice to get dirty charcoal hands again after like, 3 years or so away from the second dimention.

this weekend I want to do some drawing foreplay with alex—im going to be house sitting for my parents. Blind portraits? Something about drawing someones face is so intimate. Is that what im doing with these seam drawing drawings?

i'm currently looking for another place to live. now im thinking, like, some sort of place where i have a room for sleeping and another room that is a studio, and hopefully its all not too too expensive to ask for. after looking at all these studio spaces in the city-- its more clear how impossible it is to find a large industrial private space with an arts community that is affordable. everything that is in that vein is in bayview (too far to get too on a regular basis) or is a tiny cell in more convenient locations.

since im at a computer all day at work i get really wrapped up in looking at craigslist and a lot of my art ideas have to do with craigslist. i love art projects that use it as a tool to structure imput-- claires thesis where she made people who responded to her ad dinner in exchange for filming them tell stories. this woman sophie blackall's missed connection illustrations. i keep wondering if the people talked about in the san francisco missed connections are me-- i feel so connected to male bikers on market street in the morning, the men buying yogurt at the corner store, and i find myself reading missed connections and wondering if im the redhead on the bicycle even though my hair is brown or if im the curvy woman in black jeans at the gym even though im not very curvy and never go to the gym. i dont even own black jeans. my new idea is that i want to recreate the posts in photographs but with me in every situation. eyla and i were talking about collaborating on some sort of project-- maybe this would be a good thing to do with her cuz she makes really great photographs . (this is her blog, below is one of her pieces).

i want to revise my artists' statement. feeling like its not completely relavent anymore/trynign to be a little too much like anne wilson. i think i need to write more about the work i made this summer and the work i made in portland and merge that with the writing i did for my thesis. the obvious connection between them is clothes, but i feel like there is more going on that im not totally able to pinpoint which i think was why i had such a hard time in portland, especially when the boys kept urging me to talk about it all and i dont know if i was able and i was frusterated that none of them were reading my blog.

things i want to do this weekend while in santa cruz:

1- baking cookies
2-beach
3-go swimming
4-draw portrait of alex (blind?)
5-go to the bargain barn
6-eat bagels
7-laundry
8-bring back thread
9-fix leather jacket
10-look at residencies online
11-write kristin a letter

{photos: 1-6 my own seam drawing drawings, 7 sophie blackall's missed connections, 8 eyla cuenca's x-files version of felix gonzalez-torres' posters, 9 the santa cruz coast from wikipedia}

so i've decided to start a blog. it seems fitting to record my studio process chronologically, day-by-day, mirroring the stitch-by-stitch or frame-by-frame nature of my work.

i plan to paste things that inspire me from things i read and see, and update whoever may read this blog on my process in the studio. i also hope this blog can be an interactive conversation-- perhaps the people who follow it can leave me feedback in the comments.

i'll start with my artists' statement that i have been working on for sometime (it never seems right and i welcome edits and criticisms. i always worry about my tendency to lean on 'art speak' and academic language as a blockade for the fluidity that needs to happen. i want people to be able to peek over my shoulder to see what i'm thinking about and in return i'd love to peek over theirs.

"I construct my sculpture within a world that builds and recedes around fragile systems, in the space between the human body and the anonymous material world. The overlapping and evolving discourses which clothing inhabits form tangled and interconnecting webs that continually reorganize, expand and ebb around culture, society, industry and commerce. I see my material world teeming with labor, history and potential. As an artist, I am interested in exploring how objects grow disconnected from their process of construction. By mapping knitted and sewn systems or the age-old directions which govern clothing making, I re-interpret through stitches, snips, marks, sculptural installations and video projection, the places where followed and miss-followed directions collide, where the vestiges of labor become drawings and where obsessive rituals encounter industry. I call this process “unmaking.” My intent is to find new meaning and include others in labor’s rituals, both personally invented and globally used. Through unmaking, I metaphorically break down the cloth barrier between the intimate and the external, while simultaneously addressing the importance of making itself. "

more blogging from the unmaker to come!