(no subject)
It's funny, I do spend about as much time writing about art these days as I do making it. All part of the program, but weird and counter-intuitive. Qualifying paper/exam coming up, application essays to write, etc. etc. etc.
I'm loving this job I have working for Carter Hodgkin, she's doing a public art commission and I (and my husband and another MFA student) am (are) doing the grunt work. Sorting three hundred different colors of 1/4" tile, and following her specifications to glue them onto 15" x 15" mesh sections so they can be shipped to NY and installed at Queens College. The pay is not as good as it should be, considering we're working twice as fast as she projected, and she budgeted the project thinking it would last until November (when we're clearly going to finish it next month), but seeing as how H's teaching income is really what we're living off of, it's giving us a chance to save a bit anyway. We have an account for that and everything. Like grown-ups.
Anyway, we get home late, like 7:30-ish, and we eat supper and then I start painting at 9 pm, wrap it up and head to bed at 11. It's working out well, work-ethic wise, but this new piece is going so slowly I'm trying not to despair. I'll consider myself lucky if I finish it before school starts. It's a seven-panel work, in the format of an altarpiece, but peopled by scenes from my life (friends camping, stuff I see in the street, etc., all "look at me combining the banal and sacred, I'm not the millionth painter in the world to do this OR ANYTHING"). I'm working on the central panel now, the largest, and there're some serious patterned fabrics, a little architectural ornamentation, several figures with articulated limbs, all of that lovely time-consuming stuff. Fortunately not many faces, most have their backs toward the camera/viewer/4th wall/me. I'm enjoying it so far, it's a pretty satisfying and engaging piece to work on, but I'm concerned about a future in which I produce only two or three pieces a year. But not so concerned that it will keep me from finishing this one. When it's complete I'll be able to make a judgment about whether it's worth it to continue with others.
I'm loving this job I have working for Carter Hodgkin, she's doing a public art commission and I (and my husband and another MFA student) am (are) doing the grunt work. Sorting three hundred different colors of 1/4" tile, and following her specifications to glue them onto 15" x 15" mesh sections so they can be shipped to NY and installed at Queens College. The pay is not as good as it should be, considering we're working twice as fast as she projected, and she budgeted the project thinking it would last until November (when we're clearly going to finish it next month), but seeing as how H's teaching income is really what we're living off of, it's giving us a chance to save a bit anyway. We have an account for that and everything. Like grown-ups.
Anyway, we get home late, like 7:30-ish, and we eat supper and then I start painting at 9 pm, wrap it up and head to bed at 11. It's working out well, work-ethic wise, but this new piece is going so slowly I'm trying not to despair. I'll consider myself lucky if I finish it before school starts. It's a seven-panel work, in the format of an altarpiece, but peopled by scenes from my life (friends camping, stuff I see in the street, etc., all "look at me combining the banal and sacred, I'm not the millionth painter in the world to do this OR ANYTHING"). I'm working on the central panel now, the largest, and there're some serious patterned fabrics, a little architectural ornamentation, several figures with articulated limbs, all of that lovely time-consuming stuff. Fortunately not many faces, most have their backs toward the camera/viewer/4th wall/me. I'm enjoying it so far, it's a pretty satisfying and engaging piece to work on, but I'm concerned about a future in which I produce only two or three pieces a year. But not so concerned that it will keep me from finishing this one. When it's complete I'll be able to make a judgment about whether it's worth it to continue with others.