Back in the studio for the first pass, the warm up.  having been granted, I sit with the drawing paper, the laptop, the wire and electrical and optic work stations.  and in my mind, there are materials still to order for specifics that I’m relieved to see.

When I worked in clay the entry into the work would be slab-making. Slip making. Sketching.  just my footsteps in the studio, the tip of the knife skritching canvas under the familiar, tame clay, the creaking slab roller and clack stacking boards, scrinkling plastic sheeting, unfolding newspaper. There was a pattern, a repetition, to unfold and refold the newspaper to fit the plywood clunk-thunk shelves and one-handed unroll the fresh clay slabs longways onto my upturned other arm all the way up to the shoulder, and then unfurl them heavy and cold in a single swoop to wherever they were going, a shelf for wrapping, or the work table, or daytimes on the cement outdoors, the sun on one side of the clay slab, the thirsty concrete on the other. I make the baker’s five fingered flourish mmmwuh kiss because this way they become perfect for sculpting.

I don’t say everything I see.  I just wait for the work. what’s its body, what’s catching light, what’s casting it? nothing is exactly as it seems.  Everything gets utilized.

What I am looking for is the first question. The first inquiry. Because all you ever need to do is… is…. start it.  o is that all

What is the first thing to show? Muse always knows, making me read that Atlantic article in the negative about storefront fortune tellers, and how I myself had started in with one, and quit on gut feeling.  She could see. and I saw her turning away from me in diaphanous sheets, turning from me behind her mask. Weeks later, I read nearly the script of my visits in the first few paragraphs of the article. Muse says, see see… the gypsy knew how to open a person.  So look how … even if it’s dark, no matter, a coin can always be flipped.

Muse makes me see too much, makes me look into the evolution of the screen work, makes me tell it to myself like a story, maybe so I can see what happens next, but I’m not allowed to speculate or the work turns to a pillar of salt.

with the electricity and the glass, the wire and paint and drawings, the writing space ( i miss clay) I am ready to embrace my craftsmanly ways, Ready to make the work now, I see the first aspect already:

counter     |     balance

the fundamental voodoo of chess: You can always find the most opportunities for change, the most possibilities, at the beginning.

Counterbalance.  and now, looking for a way this first installation begins to be physical, it begins to be physical by addressing the physicality of the viewer. Muse takes me a weird route to a NatGeo article about the effervescent pocket of tiny air bubbles Emperor Penguin feathers release that makes their underwater passage fast as air.  I sit back quietly and wait to be shown what muse means by that.  going a different speed from the medium in which you’re traveling.  I know from experience this will only become as clear as the making eye needs to see, and that I won’t be able to see it when I look straight at it, like the pleiades, because there are laws against me understanding the work.  lest I turn it into a pumpkin.

It is starting to show itself in all the spaces my eyeballs go, a downtown lobby i saw a pendulum of mesh that makes figurines of the presently installed couch-sized sculptures in my studio. the fingers don’t even want the writing anymore, so muse cajoles me with formal programs and constant visions. i check for time, i wait to build up the nerve to take my studio down for installation. Fortune First Friday, muse re-presents the term like a jazzy chess move. It gives the work a parameter, and i am pushing the edges of the appointments back into the brush. Studio is about to overtake me. again.

The work won’t stop, two days too early. Higher level Higher devil ask the winds and throw the bones

I decide to begin with questions

how much does seeing tell?

how malleable is vision? how reliable? how consistent?

what process has occurred with seeing? with what elements, what materials?

what ways is it possible to see more?       what happens to the image in alternate ways of seeing?

Is vision reporting what we are not attuned to?

what is darkness?

what does vision describe besides the surface of things? location/perspective/vantage

Shadows

Optics

Baffles

Scrim/projection capture

Wire weaving/body of the work

Image presence of it/personality of it

Installation

Performance/fortune reading/soul of it

LEDs/ the shine of it