Performance Art vs. Performance Craft

An unsolved conditional statement in the form of a question.

IF hypothesis, THEN conclusion.

IF

Craft refers to skill

THEN

what does Art refer to?

When a Partnership turns Sour…

What happens?  Whether or not the partnership limps along on its dysfunctional path, barely making any progress or partners start pulling out of the program fed up with the perceived impossibility of their colleagues, everybody loses.

The following is a worst-case scenario:  The afterschool arts program ceases to exist at a particular school in a particular community where additional arts learning is of particular necessity.

1. The kids lose.  Over and over again, the kids will always lose the most, absolutely.  Every single time. Forever and ever, amen.
2. The kids’ community loses.  Every young artist spreads seeds of creativity wherever they go and kids like to show off what they know.  No art for the kids means less art knowledge and lack of innovative skill sets dispersed among their peers and their families.  The parents won’t see how their kids are growing their voices and identities because of their exposure to the arts. No art = no arts advocacy.  The community goes back to seeing the arts as frivolity and not as necessity.  Politicians steal money from federal arts funding initiatives and nobody stands up for supporting the arts because they have not seen what the arts can do.
3. The teaching artist loses a large chunk of her bread and butter and a potentially great opportunity to grow within her practice and learn teaching strategies from the classroom teacher.  She loses the ability to teach kids with a new perspective they may not have ever been exposed to.  She loses the opportunity to learn from her kids and become inspired by their energy and ideas in order to formulate new concepts about teaching and making art.
4. The teacher loses a little supplemental scratch and a potentially great opportunity to grow within her practice.  Her eyes remain closed to creative possibility and the transformative properties of arts learning for her kids.  She loses the chance to see her kids in a different light and have deeper, one-on-one relationships with them, as they make decisions for themselves, become smarter and more empowered.  She never finds out how a great collaboration with an artist can improve the course of her teaching and the achievement of her students.
5. The school loses an outstanding opportunity for improved student achievement through creative problem solving and arts expression.  It loses the attention of a new widespread audience gained by the partnership.  It loses recognition by supporters of the partnering arts organization and those others who may make decisions about much needed funding.  It loses variety, color, expression, individuality and high spirit as fostered by a nurturing arts learning environment.  The hallways are artless blank concrete block.  The kids continue to “hate school.”
6. The partnering arts organization loses the support of everyone attached to that school.  The organization loses visibility as proactive supporters of the community. The funders have questions instead of confidence in the partnership and the organization’s decision as to why they chose to work with this school in particular.  The organization’s reputation for doing stellar work may be impacted in the eyes of some.  No funding = no arts programs = no jobs for artists = a boring, failing economy .  See #s  1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

See here for more on arts advocacy and its impact on arts policy.

Is there anything else left to lose?  Surely I must have missed something.

Curiously, looking over my list, I wonder: is it possible that the teaching artist may actually have the least to lose (bread and butter aside)?  Is it perhaps because she already has the arts learning under her belt and goes forth with the foundation of empowerment she is trying to cultivate in her students?

It is past time for those who are charged with leading to grow up.  Failure is not an option.  There is too much at stake.  {Also known as:  Time to suck it up again, self, and keep on keepin’ on.  Even in the face of adversity, ego, confusing power trips, continual misunderstanding and diminishing communication.  Just do your work, stay clear on your focus and trust yourself.  Hopefully the rest will sort itself out if you lead by example, because words don’t seem to be working right now.  It ain’t easy.  If it was, you wouldn’t be doing it.}

Ahhhhhhhhh!

*photo courtesy of sense-think-act.org

Teaching Art [has what effect on] Making Art?

What effect do you feel work as a teaching artist has had on your art making?

I don’t know the answer to this question.

I took a Teaching Artist Survey (TARP) on Monday from the University of Chicago’s Survey Lab and I was surprised to note how it opened my eyes to looking at my teaching artistry in a more objective sense.  Every so often, it helps me to “take inventory,” as it were, of my teaching artist’s practice.  To step aside to view my professional life in black and white, instead of the myriad shades of gunmetal grey with which I tend to surround myself.  I remember in undergrad my mentor had to physically remove me from one of my drawings just so I could get some damn perspective on a piece I was potentially overworking.  This act of kindness I have tried and failed to replicate for myself over the years.  Theoretically, I can easily comprehend the value in stepping back.  In an empirical sense, I notice that my dedication to the act of making reigns and, ironically, I have trouble observing my own practice.

What I know is this:  My artmaking and who I am as an artist informs every aspect of how I live, teaching included.  I strive to live artfully, without retreat.  So how come I can’t figure out the impact my teaching has on my artmaking?  I want it to have some positive impact, I sense that some impact exists, but I can’t put my finger on it.

On the survey, the scale was 2 to -2 for this question of how my teaching impacts my artmaking.  Very positive, somewhat positive, no effect, somewhat negative, very negative.  True to my character, I checked ’somewhat positive,’ knowing not how, but hoping I would figure its impact out soon.

Looking again at my answer, my feeling on the matter is becoming closer to the negative side.  The fact is: teaching is my trade.  By this, I mean that I trade the time I would spend making my own work for the income I gain by teaching.

It may sound grim and flat, but here it is, the result of taking inventory of my teaching practice in black and white.

Two truths and a question:

I learn to make better art by practicing making art.
Teaching distracts me from making art.
If I discover that my teaching has little or no positive effect on my artmaking, I must then consider the larger question at hand:  Why continue teaching?

Teachers: Gripes and Thanks.

Every so often, I am in partnership with a classroom teacher with whom, for whatever reason, collaboration is difficult, if not excruciating.  Silly things like ego, territorialism, and lack of flexibility tend to make a promising collaboration something just short of a nightmare because not only must I manage a classroom full of kids, but I now also have to manage the teacher.  The worst part is that the focus comes away from the kids in situations like these and that just plain pisses me off.

So I make sure the teacher knows I am not a threat but an equal, I offer my cell number as an additional way to contact me, I clarify all that is confusing, I send my detailed emails and hope for the best.  I can’t {read: won’t} carry a program all on my own.  It is unjust for all parties involved.

Then the flipside to this darkness:  These are the moments in which I realize just how fortunate I have been, in all my 9 years as a teaching artist, to have been a part of some truly amazing partnerships with classroom teachers.

To my partner classroom teachers:  Thank you.

For being open to possibility, for believing that the arts do work because you see it happening, for encouraging your kids to think outside of their comfort zones by bringing me into your classroom.  Thanks for being an active collaborator, a partner in crime, as it were, and raising critical questions about our work together.  Thank you for communicating with me in a timely fashion, and for being simultaneously confused and curious and allowing the latter to guide you.  Through budget & time constraints we travel, sharing the work with our eyes on the prize.  Thank you for taking risks alongside myself and the kids and for acknowledging that the unknown is a beautiful place.  You treat me with warmth, as though I am not a stranger or a visitor to your class.  You treat me as a part of your  family.

Thank you.

On the banks of the river.

Today, I began a project on creating audio-based oral histories with a group of lively seniors at a high school in my neighborhood.  I knew I would be seeing a few kids who I’d taught previously in an afterschool arts program I created at a youth service agency a few years back.  I knew I’d be teaching my next-door neighbor whom I have watched grow for the past 5 years.  I stood by the door as the kids shuffled in like heavy weights and watched for “my” kids.  I was surprised to see 3 additional kids I knew from the same afterschool art program, all growed up and reliably awkward and more or less ready to learn. Out of 6 kids I knew, 2 gave hugs, 2 gave hand slaps.  I was honored.

We will be using vocalo.org, sort of myspace or youtube for audio.  The kids were knocked out when the classroom teacher and I told them that they will be using their cell phones to document their audio interviews.  We will also be teaching them sound editing by way of a free program called Audacity, which is how I cut my teeth learning to build sound.  I’ve since graduated to Ableton Live, which I use in spurts when I get those evasive, glowing moments to work on my own projects.

While I was explaining why making oral histories is important, I said that, believe it or not, they have a voice in the world and their voices have power.  Their eyes lit up at my declaration, so on I rambled, speaking of practical skills the arts teach which will increase their pay rates; how, as seniors, having sound editing skills and a better ability to listen will will pay off in respect from their peers; that once you learn something well, you, too, become a teacher.

I was amazed by the gloriousness of the architecture I plodded up to through misshapen mounds of gray snow on the westmost side of my high-risk neighborhood.   I’m pretty sure I saw the building glow.  I definitely gasped.  The school was built in  2004 and looks like a shiny, modern community college.  The school emblems are embroidered onto the polo shirts, not screenprinted.  The computer lab works.  I didn’t hear any angry yelling from teacher or students.  The kids made eye contact and held the door open for me.  The hallways were teeming  with young lovers holding hands, holding hips, kissing lips; somehow I sensed curious love and a gentle respect for one another.  What I am struck by most is that there is definitely something to be said for a clean, open-spaced, brightly sunlit school building.  There is nowhere to hide and perhaps little need to.  I can tell even in my first visit there that these kids, whom I know have endured some of the worst, most tragic events one could ever imagine, take their schooling at least a little bit seriously.  What a difference a space makes!

As a “bell-ringer” in the morning, the classroom teacher will ask the kids to consider something and write down what it means to them.  Here is the quote she had for our first day of this project, attributed to Will Durant:

Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry… The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river.

Adventure No.1: Frozen Waterfalls

Yes!  Only 3 days into the new year and already I have accomplished one adventure!  Very important for me to keep up with, since my “free time” is not as dependable as I’d like.

Today, my Beloved and my SuperPuppy went to Matthiessen State Park in Utica, IL to see about some frozen waterfalls.  We didn’t find much evidence at first glance, since the recent thaw turned glaciated spills into running water, but we pressed on, walking along chilled land, exploring fantastical scenes taken straight out of the winter-y part of Legend…

The real show began at the Lower Dells, an odyssey we could have easily missed if not for our curiosities.

Reluctantly, the ice spoke with us as we slid across it to the tilted footbridge.  Our mortal interference elicited responses giant and low.  Distant delayed refrains in onomatopoetic cracks, hisses, booms, pops and sizzles appraised our small paths across its surface.  Sheets of ice upturned as if a gentle earthquake had passed through.  Panes of glass, they were, clear as atmosphere and thick as romance novels.  We threw them like skipping stones across the surface of the glazed water and watched as they skittered as mice do into safety.

Nearby Starved Rock was flooded, as we found out later in the day, and had made a distended skating rink of the parking lot.  All that ice was not much for easy climbing and descending of the umpteen stairs we took to French Canyon, especially as dusk fell and the treacherous, frictionless path made it that much more dangerous.  And, as we all know, danger = fun.

The End.

Je ne sais quoi, but I like it.

As I stand where I am this brisk and monochrome morning, grinding my coffee as I always do in my grandmother’s wooden box grinder, I consider how I want to begin this new year.  2008 has certainly been a wild ride: very huge highs and very deep lows and, to my surprise and awe, somewhere in the middle… it just evened out.  I am grateful for my good fortunes and, for once, I don’t feel the need to furiously bury the past year under stacks of new year’s hopes.

This is why, when my Beloved and I came home to our animal house last night from a good couple of hour’s cheer with friends, he and I agreed to just be doing “nothing” when the clock struck midnight.  Merely eating our scrumptious homemade meal and watching a movie.  I want the blessings of 2008 to continue on into 2009.  No old doors slamming shut, no kaleidoscope-fantastic portals opening… Indeed, no big whoop.

Selected Acknowledgements for the Crooked Roads of 2008:

I love that my family and friends know me well enough to ask at the beginning of our phone conversations: “So where are you now?”  It makes me happy to feel known in that way.

I kept in contact with loved ones better last year and for this I feel accomplished.  Even though my time and, more importantly, focus goes to teaching for 18 hours a day, I want to reach out better to many more pals, even if it is at random hours or I am feeling slightly braindead.  After all, my friends are amazing and worthwhile!  Why not call even when I am a little braindead so that we can perk each other up?

Texas reaffirmed that making art in the middle of nowhere is an indispensable odyssey and is one of the many hearts of my artist’s practice.  However it comes and however I craft it, travel and site-specific work are necessary to my work’s survival.  Ghost towns, here I come!

I finished a book for the first time in possibly a decade or more.  Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. It took me 6 months to complete, but I did it. Reluctantly, I concede that I don’t possess the wherewithal to still myself and read books (or even sit and write!),  this year I will experiment with audiobooks, beginning with Steve Martin’s Born Standing Up and Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.

To Soap Opera’s diligent inception and the bright future of Scary Movie Party:  let the insatiable creativity never end!  Thank you, friends.

I told one of the many non-profits that I work for a couple of years ago that I wanted to do more work with them.  When it rains, it pours, but happily this time! For the first time in my 9 years of teaching, I did not have to fear for my general city survival this winter and wait a dismal, anxious 3 months for my programs to start.  Truly, I do not know what to do with money that doesn’t quickly slip through my fingers and I need to be careful, especially as so many others are sliding down the economy’s chute of darkness.  Hopefully, I will continue to work that out in 2009 and beyond.

President Barack Obama and his pragmatic and hopeful approach to the splintered wheel of American Politicks.  He is just one human, as we all are.  So let us all come together and stay together these next 8 years.  Let the positive impact be infinite.

My Beloved still goes away.  My Beloved still comes back.  He will always be my Beloved.  It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.

My first adventure of the new year will already be this Saturday the 3rd. I am on the hunt for frozen waterfalls. Here we go, pup!  To beginning our 14th year together…

I wish a bountiful and prosperous new year to you all.  Keep up the good work.

Be the Change.

I spent 5 hours at Grant Park in Chicago last night at the Obama election night rally, waiting and watching and cheering with a quarter million others.  My voice is hoarse from the jubilee, my heart is remarkably light and, with my eye on my many communities, I can see clearly the work I have ahead of me.  Not since the RNC protest in NYC a few years back have I felt this good about being in solidarity with an enormous crowd.  Through the crisp autumn air, the giant reverberations of Obama’s speech electrified the atmosphere and ushered in a sort of awakening within us.  We went in confident and spirited and came out renewed and inspired, with much hope for overcoming the many dark sides of our United States.  I think for possibly the first time in my life, I felt a very distinct pride in both myself and my fellow americans.  And a deep respect for the candidate I voted for, which is definitely a first.

I’m not sure if you all felt different today, I certainly did. As I drove myself from one school to another down a decidedly forgotten portion of town, I watched how people were nearly swaggering along the city streets, how their usually aggressive body language had relaxed a bit, how many were smiling instead of scowling.  Then I realized that it may not actually be the world which has changed overnight– it must have been me and my perspective of scenes I’ve viewed so often that I have them memorized.  The change Obama is talking about must first come from within each and every one of us, but we also must desire that change.  Apparently, I do. I find myself looking at my world differently now, not as guardedly as city living tends to dictate, but without doubt that, somehow, we can all make our shared space better for what little, yet generous, time we have here together.  As we all witnessed on election night, the impact of one individual is quite profound.

My newest adventure involves co-teaching sixty-six 4th graders about screenprinting, the rise of mass media, the role of propaganda and workers’ rights, specifically child labor.  It is an extensive and ambitious exercise in teaching social justice with many stumbling blocks to overcome and only half the funding necessary.  As usual, I will have to get “extra-creative.”  Today we looked at WWII-era US propaganda posters and came to the iconic and handsome Rosie the Riveter who firmly states: “We Can Do It!”  Though it was truly an unwitting reference, these kids, who live in Obama’s Hyde Park neighborhood and are incredibly excited about the election results and their souvenir Obama t-shirts, immediately understood the connection between Rosie and Barack’s messages.  Further into the project, the kids will learn all about the phrase coined by César Chavez in his work with the United Farm Workers: “¡Sí se Puede!” or “Yes, We Can!”  The message is the motivation, the spirit is innate and the world is most definitely watching.

No matter how (or if) you voted, it is probable that we all voted with a certain amount of self-protection in mind.  Like/unlike many americans, I have no 401k to protect (by default), no health insurance (by choice) and, as an artist AND teacher, nothing more to lose.  This is the first presidential election in which I have had the opportunity to vote for a candidate instead of voting one way because I am against the other.  This time, I am proud to have voted my conscience, with hope in heart and fuller steam ahead.

Like it or not, this is a time for change, we are in desperate need an advocate, a symbol of possibility, a leader whose mere presence in the white house shows us how far we’ve come and still how much farther we have to go.  We deserve an extraordinary president, not a dim bulb.  Obama has promised us many things, much like anyone campaigning, and we must hold him accountable for his actions on our behalf.  Likewise, if we are to heal our divisions and offenses both inside and out of our country, he must hold us accountable for doing good work for the benefit of the whole.  There is no more space for the President nor the People to let one another down anymore.

All of this is why I am going to try my damnedest, no matter how much more strife is ahead, to be the change which I seek.

Burnination.

Wow.  I never thought I’d be at the point in my practice when I could say that I am very tired of writing grant proposals.  I have been so active in finding and applying for opportunities that it is difficult for me to see my own work well enough to write about it objectively anymore.  It doesn’t help to keep looking at this “old” work at the same time that I am anxious to make new work and am already planning the beginnings of my most major project to date early this fall.

I am certainly thankful, just burned out on thinking about myself, what I mean by the art I make and how to put that definitively on the page.

What is on the other side of this crappy feeling, I wonder?  I mean, Iron Maiden has been playing the same songs for decades.  How do they not get tired of their work?

(The above, originally begun on 6/29/2008; Below, amended today, 9/7/2008.)

Three days til I hit the road and I am still not done with that blasted application.  Instead of beating myself up over it, I am sitting peacefully beside my resistance to completing this task. I presume I am overwhelmed.

Yes, I still have too much to do in addition to finishing it and yes, I am definitely bored of self-analysis (because I can get painfully detail-oriented, especially when discussing my work) but… I think what is really happening here is that I am just anxious to get on with the work itself, the dig, the happy ache, the efforts which let me veritably know that I am indeed alive.  In truth, dissecting what I make and translating its multiple facets is just not cutting it for me right now.  We shall see what happens between now and Wednesday.  Perhaps I’ll just say farg it and get it over with, knowing that there are people out there who may be quite happy to support such a preposterous endeavour.  Even for the hope of that recognition, I am very thankful.

Now to continue sewing my dress for the project.  Perhaps while sewing, I will become reinspired to complete the application as just one more stepping stone on my crooked path in this enormous dirty magnificent scary breathtaking unhurried sanguine journey.

Onward! To the peepshow!

Inside Texas.

Soon I will be driving 1200 miles to the middle of nowhere Texas to dig a hole as deep as I am tall.  Around the hole will fall circles of handmade, life-sized concentric trenches built by pickaxe, shovel, might and sheer will.  So continues my inquiry into body studies: movement inside landscape; exploring toil as an artistic medium. Moving far beyond durational performance and headlong into performative endurance.  Yeah, it’s going to hurt.*  Realization that survival is key in such untamed terrain is simultaneously an uneasy and thrilling thought.  But isn’t that always the way it goes in a peepshow?

Ah yes, the peepshow.  Entertaining animals who would feast on the spectacle of a woman at work, only this time, the animals are deer, rattlesnake, javelina, bobcat, scorpion.  I will truly be at the mercy of the land and its creatures.  Ultimately, this piece becomes about the artist’s surrender of control over her medium, since nature cannot be toppled.  Good.

Reinventing the peepshow is my curiosity.  Sounds dirty in the soil-less sense, but this piece in particular is actually dirty, filthy and sweaty from excavating the ground we walk on.  I’ve come to realize that the whole world is one peepshow right after another, fragmented and pieced together. Politically skewed soundbites, slightly parted curtains of neighbors, previews at the movie theatre, the view of the road through our glasses or windshields.  And as much as we think we see, we are always held at arm’s length from something.  As a friend so nimbly put it after seeing one of my more successful performances:  Everybody loves a peepshow.

Digging inside the earth and inhabiting that space denies description in favor of experience (which I highly recommend), but I’ll try.  In my perception, the shaving away of layers and years in glaciated sand and building a hole custom-fitted to the height and width of my body was like building a secret space which exists under the sandcastle, set timeless in situ away from the populace, yet on public display.  I tend to do work involving some performed action which puzzles the audience as to why anyone would want to do… that. Why I call my peepshows “grotesques” is because, as in Southern Gothic literature traditions, the hero/ine is heavily flawed, having highly cringe-worthy traits while still somehow eliciting the sympathies of the audience.  And if I am not similarly flawed, especially when I am performing these repulsive/preposterous/comic feats, then I don’t know who is!  Catching a glimpse of the audience squirming yet smiling at my work is incredibly satisfying to me.  If I happen to succeed at inspiring a physical or emotional response from the audience, then that is my greatest reward.

What of the dig?  I have found digging to be meditative, repetitive, simple and arduous.  It breaks through the boundaries of portrayal of an action straight into the true, the genuine, the honest-to-goodness action itself.  Movie magic can fake perspiration and blisters outwardly, but it is what I am actually physically feeling during and after such an undertaking that I am most intrigued by.  Instead of “pretending” that this is hard work, it truly is!  That physical ache from a job well done ultimately has the power to change the piece. If, for example, this trench is much more difficult than I am anticipating and I can pull through it without getting hurt*, the result of such strain will be obvious and will change my posture, how I hold the shovel, how much rest I take between digs, even my facial expressions.  Authenticity seems hard to come by these days, and so, as an artist seeking her medium, I pursue it headlong, undaunted by doing things the hard way.

* Disclaimer: This Concentric Trench piece is an exercise in physical (and, I’m sure, mental) endurance and, yes, some might say impossibility, though I don’t believe that to be true.  In no way do I mean to intentionally harm myself, nor is this a masochistic or fetishistic action.  In fact, I’ve been going to the YMCA to beef up so that I don’t hurt myself.  No health insurance, man.  Prevention is everything!  Cheers!

The Gravity of Loss and What to Do with It.

After mourning the loss of a truly inspired, visually beautiful and, by my own hand, fatally doomed project for the past two days, I finally quit my moping and incorporated that part of the process into the final piece. These are pictures of the statement and original manifesto about the piece, as taken from the long rice paper scroll at the site of exhibit. The current state of the wheatgrass cakes, which are far from what I intended yet are congruently as beautiful as the originals (actually, they are the originals, just overgrown, moldy and half-living), are evidenced at the bottom of the scroll.

Why I got so bent out of shape about this piece was because I was using food as the medium to speak about hunger. I was acutely aware of my privilege as an american to use food products for an artful purpose (a sort of implied “waste” to begin with). As well, I was cognizant of the weight I was putting on myself to not waste what was really, truly food for someone somewhere or my own family. Alas, I was not paying enough attention and I ultimately created some “waste.”

Expounding upon the idea of waste and experimentation in art… There is certainly some waste involved in figuring out a piece, I fully understand that and realize its necessity. It is the volume of the waste created that I wanted to change about my own practice. When I started using foodstuffs as my medium, I was concerned with ideas of how to make sculpture which would decompose/biodegrade or at least not cause too much of a fuss in my compost pile or at the landfill. In a sense, I was just trying to do my part without sacrificing my creativity or aesthetic. By establishing different limits based on how I wanted to proceed in my approach to artmaking, I was opening myself up to new possibilities and exploring unexpected choices in materials.

At the opening last night, I received several positive comments about how I exposed the all-too-familiar failure in process and figured out how to show the “failed” piece anyway. I had already forgiven myself and was excited for my resolution for this iteration of the seedcakes, but those comments really helped to lift my spirits even higher. I felt alternately completely vulnerable and brave about how I worked the failure part into the whole because speaking up about failure in process was, I suppose, a pretty decent risk. Ultimately, I feel as though I have begun a movement for my practice because I took that risk. And that feels wonderful.

Death of a Project.

I am mourning the loss of a great project today.

My apologies to the seeds and their people.

More, Bigger and Outside.

Not that I am trying to non un-write my fellowship application which is naturally due tomorrow, but I had a day full of meetings and it just got my wheels a-spinning, you know?

Questions…

So after I do all the good work with the kids, how do we make their learning more visible, more public, more inclusive? How do we in the arts integration community reach a broader audience? How can we engage our communities outside those school walls? Do the kids ever get the opportunity to intentionally choose their audience?

Well. It certainly brings to mind a maxim that I learned in undergrad and which still makes me smile when I say it: More, Bigger and Outside. What the hell am I talking about?

Long ago in the Early-Mid Nineties, in undergrad critique class, the Sculpture Club man-snobs would reduce any piece on the chopping block into something dismissable, simply because it did not live up to their particular code of what they thought sculpture “should” be. Their assessment of one’s artwork would generally go like this: “You know, I think this piece is great, but I wish there were More of them, you know?” or “If this was Bigger, then you’d really have something…” or “You know what you should do with it? Put it Outside!” followed shortly thereafter by “‘Cause there ain’t nothin’ bigger than Outside!”

Still, it was funny then, though mostly aggravating, since their manly critiques were sadly uninspiring and ultimately wasteful… but I do think of those words and those boys with a very simple fondness. The phrase popped up in my head again today in silent mental answer to the questions I mentioned above. Funny, the things that pop into your head at a work meeting.

More: The sheer visual volume of masses of artwork speaks not only to a child’s ability to create, but also to their desire to be in an active state of creating. How do we make their learning visible? By making visible their learning!

Bigger: Massive works of art diminish the possibility that creativity can ever be contained. There are scant few, if any, limits in both the scale and scope of any project, especially at its inception in imagination or on paper. Leading kids toward getting in the habit of thinking, learning and teaching big is vital to their sense of self-empowerment, self-awareness and self-worth. Besides, who’s gonna argue with a monolith?

Outside: How best to reach the People than by interjecting artwork right where they are? My biggest grouse with galleries and museums is that, though they serve to preserve the art, ultimately, those fortress walls tend to keep certain classes of people far, far away from the art. Exclusivity will not bring better understanding between folks and it certainly won’t teach the children about what it means to cultivate their own community.

Already, I am planning for next year’s programs and I am doing a unit on screenprinted protest posters and the rise of mass media. Since this whole project is very much about communication and how to do it, I made sure the classroom teacher and I would make these posters as public as possible. I am going to build an accordion-hinged “post no bills” wall of plywood right in the school’s well-traveled front yard and the kids will get a chance to wheatpaste their messages all over it in a simple, but effective public display of awesomeness.

And what of “there ain’t nothin’ bigger than Outside“? Oh yeah. I believe it.

Speaking of Metal…

My Beloved took me out two nights ago.

I saw massive, transitional artwork and fire and a bunch of people who made me feel like I was back in Florida again. There was a lot of hair, a lot of screaming and some extremely majestic garments to behold. I became engulfed in a field of goats. Lots of people brought their siblings, lovers and amicable dude posses. I saw tattered flags grandly swung by a singing redcoat. There was $7 bud light and I ate a superpretzel with mustard, relish and translucent onion mash, just for kicks. The fog rolled in and the air was purple. There was a very tall man with no skin who had weapons and a musical bent. I met a fellow named Cletus who is pals with friends I went to elemiddlehigh school with. I saw a large mummy. It shot sparks from its eyes just as it started its all-too-familiar shaking.

Oh yes. Two days ago, my Beloved took me to see Iron Maiden. It is all still sinking in as I type. What fabulous supporters of the arts are they! It all makes me wonder about the viability of pyrotechnics in my peepshow performances.

Seriously, treat yourselves to an Iron Maiden show. You will never be the same again.

And maybe when you buy a bunch of junk at the gas station as you get lost after the show, your dollar total can amount to mine. Funny, not satanic.

Inviting the impossible.

You know what I love? I love when people doubt me. This week, I have been doubted twice in as many days, one of said instances feeling more like an offhanded curse than anything else. The other, well, they must not understand that I make my livelihood creating impossible things and generally living an improbable, if not impossible, life.

Yesterday, I hung four enormous, gorgeous metal mobiles that the kids crafted during an arts-integrated residency combining Alexander Calder + the Periodic Table of Elements + the social impact of mining for these metals we were using. A teacher came by and doubted, unfortunately in true CPS fashion, that I would not get everything done by the time the building closed at 4 o’clock. I told her that now that I’d figured out how to hang one set of mobiles, the other set would be cake.

I hung those heavy beasts two at a time in two matching stairwells on a cable strung from wall to wall at a height of 30 feet right in front of a panel of lovely old chapel-like windows. I untangled each mobile’s steel wires and patina-ed copper and aluminum pieces and made sure they would spin. It was 95 degrees yesterday (thank goodness!) and only the new building added on in 1997 was modern enough to have air conditioning. Yes, I was sweating for my kids’ art. It was wonderful. After the last mobile was hung and my mess cleaned up, I ran down the hallways in an endless storm of documenting my students’ work. I looked up and this is what I saw:

With two entire minutes to spare, I went home tired, sweaty and starving, but immensely happy to have done good work for my kids.

On impossibility… Allow me to wax art theory-like for a moment. The un-possible is what the artist not only cultivates, but what the artist must welcome if she is to have an arts practice which is absolutely alive, which feeds not only on its own existence, but also challenge, fearlessness and certain doom. Acknowledging the impossibility inherent in the creative arts is to truly call myself on my own shit and triple-dog-dare my work to breathe. I believe in living a fierce, artful life right in the face of actuality and things I don’t believe in, where good work eventually comes from leading a true and conscious practice.  Sure, I bristle when someone informs me that I “can’t” accomplish something.  I understand now that my bristling is a response to their inability to believe and not my ability to achieve.

Howdy, Stranger!

Meaning myself, of course.  Wow.  I have been busy with teaching and its subsequent responsibilities, like tons of meetings, PDs and putting together endless documentation of what the kids did during my many residencies at many different schools.

The thing that makes it so difficult to keep up with myself is not the lack of time I have leftover at the end of a 16-18 hour day, but lack of energy and focus I end up with.  That means I have been robbing myself of “me-time” which translates into feelings of dis-ease with the idea that I have to sacrifice making my own artwork during my busy season of teaching (Jan-June).  As Zombie-Child Gage would say in Pet Sematary with his little soon-to-be-re-dead hand gripping a scalpel: “No fair.  No fair no fair.”

So how to make my work be a year-round endeavour even when my money-work beckons and overrides my schedule and energy…

I’ll figure it out, I always do.  In the meantime, I am forgiving myself for not having created the delicate balance I desire worked out yet and for not keeping up  with writing.  Moving on, happily…

Now is the Winter of My Discontent… again.

Holy crap. It is snowing again. Winter storm watch. Up to 8″ of wet, heavy snow. Proceed with caution when shoveling.

Yesterday was so lovely, a brisk, mid-40° day which I spent raking up dank fall leaves and errant dog turds in the garden, discovering that, yes! there is some green left on earth! And it is in my yard!

I gave my beloved pooch a much-needed b-a-t-h and a windy walk to the park, thoroughly enjoying that the most horrible, desperate winter I’ve experienced since 2001 was finally drawing to a close. I’ve not really made too much mention of why it was so horrible, but, as today’s grey sky and quietly sifting snow reminds me, to bear witness to these teaching artist struggles in an honest and forthright manner is a major tenet of this here blogge. Taking a rest to let the frustration and panic subside is also key to writing about it objectively. So git yer hipboots, for we are going in.

Much of the downside of being a teaching artist is not always knowing if or when the work will come, and part of that is not always knowing when you will receive your compensation for your time and expertise (read: when the check has survived the offsite printer, the signoff, the post office, the weather and the mailperson and is now sitting plainly in your hand. Considering all those steps, sometimes it really truly seems like a miracle to just get paid.). For instance, this winter, I did the same program with the same teacher whom I have been working with for the past 5 years. It is both verbally understood and in writing, that both the classroom teacher and teaching artist get paid half the total due at the program’s inception (this year it was November- when I hadn’t started the program yet, but I am never in a position to not take the money…) and the rest after we submit our mid-year report, which occurred at the end of February. No problem, right? Well, what happens when, in our recessionist economy, rent is due and the check has not yet come? I have given up suffering in silence (for Lent?) and have become very proactive in assuring that I have no lapses in payment, because firstly, it is not right or fair for me to not get paid on time and secondly, it just cannot continue to happen without me going insane.

So. I had to make that phone call. You know, the one that makes everyone uncomfortable and embarrassed. The one where I ask, “Where is my money?” Let’s just say that being self-employed has its drawbacks and this is one of them. I am not a big spender, I do not consume gadgets and plastic pieces of crap like most other Americans do. But, like most other Americans, I am wading in debt, I am fierce about spending my time and efforts wisely and without waste, I do enjoy a nice meal out every once in a while and I am absolutely hellbent on taking care of my family.

Fortunately for me, I work with some truly caring and amazing individuals who, as soon as the words, “I can’t pay rent this month” fell flatly out of my mouth, whipped up a check request with funds they hadn’t even been paid yet (the payment structure of non-profits is a confusing labyrinth of mystery, indeed), and had it ready for me to pick up. From that moment on, I decided wholeheartedly and to the best of my ability, that, although this was definitely not the first time that I could not afford rent, this was to be the first and last time those words will ever be uttered from my lips to my employer again. Which means that I must continue to address these things:

• When the deal is that I get paid monthly for my work, I will request to be paid every two weeks, because the former method of payment is unrealistic to a teaching artist who does not have one steady job in addition to this work, but has only an unsteady series of jobs, all of which can tend to be unreliable. The most important part about this is getting over my fear of even discussing money with employers because it makes me so uncomfortable and is absolutely unnecessary: I do the work, you pay me on time, what’s the big deal? This winter showed me that I can no longer make wishes on empty mailboxes for that check- that sometimes people, even my employers, need a little nudge or reminder, just like I do from time to time. We are still human, after all.

• I will continue to advocate for direct deposit with my employers. It is becoming the standard for many large workplaces, and specifically for the teaching artist, it solves the running-around-endlessly-with-one-more- thing-to-remember-to-pick-up challenge. I would love to see an “Amazing Race”-type show displaying the actualities of the constant errands in addition to teaching and meetings that a teaching artist has to accomplish. Not a complaint, just a reality of the work at hand.

• In lieu of direct deposit, and much like any other American workplace, when it is payday, I need the check to be ready for me to pick up by Friday morning. That means it must be signed and ready to go by the time the doors open. Having just moved to a new city back in 1998, I remember temping, doing mind-dulling corporate data entry for an auto insurance company and making (wait for it-) $8.93 an hour. No, not an even 9 bucks for this girl, but the check was ready and waiting for me at 9 am every other Friday. There was no discussion about it; getting paid was a fact and getting my check in the morning which gave me the option to use my lunch half-hour to run to the bank was pure bliss.

So now, after revealing another teaching artist behind-the-scenes moment and having said my peace here, I will revel in the last few days of my (surprise) spring break. I will saddle up the pup and trudge through the falling snow to the great doggy bathroom of the outside world and get on with my day by being able to afford to treat myself to a hairdo which suits my newfound spring spirit of hope, happiness and soulful wealth. I wish you a great haircut, too.

We am Somebody!

We got the grant!

My beloved and I were writing and rewriting daily for a good solid month for this one…talk about feeling insane! Two days ago, he called me with the good news as I was driving to work and I just started screaming glad tidings into the whole world (of the cab of my truck). I am still trying to wrap my head around it. I feel like Navin R. Johnson when the new phone book arrived at Mr. Hartounian’s gas station.

This is what it sounds like inside my head these days:

Peanut!

I don’t get it, but it is beautiful.*

*Peanut Update!

One day after this picture was taken, the lengthy stalk was growing spikes and looked like a character from a Dr. Seuss book.

Two days after, those spikes multiplied like werewolf bristles growing longer and longer and began to resemble roots.

Three days after, which is today, I gently pulled it from its growing medium and realized that I must have somehow planted the peanut upside down! That stalk that began looking rootlike actually was a root- it had found the dirt and had begun growing a long taproot under the soil.

Now it looks like this and, as a peanut mother, I feel much, much better. Isn’t she lovely?

Birth.

Cotton. Cats. Ideas.

Rejoice! My first green cotton plant has sprouted! I started the seedlings a little behind schedule, but one has already emerged, yawning and stretching, and that is a good sign. I also planted, for the second time, Valencia peanuts- I used lighter soil this year so the peanuts wouldn’t turn to opaque white slime from being waterlogged. Midwestern clay soil, no matter how amended by compost it is, is still no good for a Southern crop which needs a healthy dose of sand in its growing medium. Yeah, I miss the sand.

The resident pregnant Frankenstein-calico cat has given birth to at least 5 kittens as of my last check-in last night with my kind-hearted neighbor who has decided to temporarily take her in. I have never witnessed a live birth, neither animal nor human. Actually, I have seen seahorse babies pour out of the bulging tummy of the male seahorse when I was in 10th grade. And I have seen an elephant plop one out in the middle of an African road on Ye Olde YouTube. Come to think of it, I have seen a human birth in the works of experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage while peeking through my fingers, but I can’t imagine it has the same impact as seeing it happen live (and I’m not sure I’m ready for it). Unfortunately, there are still plenty of pregnant cats left in the neighborhood, so I may just get my opportunity yet.

Which brings me to the birth of ideas: the performance thing I did yesterday. I was the performer/subject/object {she cringes} of my friend’s directives, which she recorded on video. We worked on exercises which were simple actions and still images brought to life through performance. In light of my recent obsessive hyper-analysis and critical, detailed writings for the grant proposal which is now thankfully in the hands of the Fates, what inspired me most about these directives was the simplicity, clarity and immediacy of the actions I was performing. I do believe that the simpler the action, the more space there is for the audience to discover their own meaning in the work and ∴ the work becomes more accessible. I do ride alongside the fear that the action and resulting performance will end up boring or unchallenging if it is too simple. I think that in our era of complication, we seek the simple, the direct, the unadorned… and no matter what, things tend to remain a little messy. Entropy is beautiful, isn’t it?

One of the things I was inspired by was the level of trust it takes to nurture a healthy collaboration between artists. I was creating work with/for my friend which was not made with my own content, but the performance of the content was mine. By asking me to embody these actions, she was taking a risk by sharing her creative control with me. She was also sharing insight into a smidgen of her creative process, which I found invaluable for bringing up questions I have of my own process and also how to incorporate new methods into my own.

So speaking on the impact of live vs documented work… My friend and I mused briefly about The Video Document vs. The Live Performance. I have always said that I need to be three of me to get any work done. The catch is how to be those three simultaneously.

After our conversation, I just kept thinking about the live/recorded face-off… Each has very specific characteristics toward very specific goals. There is a certain quality of performing that is unattainable except through the live act. Video and film both have certain characteristics of image which can add to the overall narrative, and the challenge for me lies in how to present the footage. Live performance is bearing witness to a performer actually in the moment which is lived, breathed and shared with a watchful audience, whereas film/video is the document, the artifact, of such performed moments. Live work is the now, the actual, the ephemeral which exists only in that one particular moment and then it is gone; documentation of the work exists primarily in the past tense, yet it also exists in the now and the future as evidence and artifact. How to merge the two or even know the difference between them can be a mind-bend in itself. And there it is. What I look for more than answers: questions.

Whose Art is it anyway?

On the long drive home from an inexplicably weighty day of teaching, I thought these things:

I teach the children to make the art to make the money to make the work to be an artist.

I must actively be making the art to earn the title of “teaching artist.”

When I am teaching so much that I do not have the energy or time to separate myself away from teaching to make my own art, does it follow that the kids’ art becomes an extension of my own? Is the orchestrator as much an artist as the maker?

It is fair to say that I am finally questioning the sustainability of being a teaching artist.

And relatedly, but no less important, where the hell is the paycheck for all this work I am doing?

After numerous years of teaching and taking on teaching artistry as a major part of my identity, where do I go from here?

Feeling genuinely miserable by the time I got home, I was fortunate enough to be greeted by both my beloveds, one with a waggy tail, the other with arms outstretched to steady me. On the other side of that embrace, I spied a curious thing: the expired paperwhite bulb I’d hung on the wall two years ago was sprouting new green blades!

That is what it is all about.

Harbingers of Spring:

1. the courting of cardinals
2. hearing birds sing at all is lovely
3. pregnant alley cats, two
4. my cotton seeds are incubating on the stove/in the oven
5. general antsy-ness intensifying and heavy mental greyness lifting, but slowly
6. fantasizing about how nice it would be to give my truck a bath
7. lots and lots of money work to unscramble, schedule and complete
8. the shift from whiskey to beer
9. that certain “something’s different in the air” feeling as I step out onto the porch to dump scraps into the compost heap in the morning
10. the back alley’s greasy disgustingness melting into the polluted snow which swills itself into my basement/studio
11. wearing sneakers again… mmm, stinky.
12. the dead grass reveals itself once again
13. living in winter but booking my summer already
14. being too busy with money-work to have the time or energy to make any art-work.  don’t worry, this too shall pass.

more to come…?

Loonar eclipse of the heart.

I am losing my fondness for writing today due to this hopeful/insufferable grant proposal.

I read an entire kids’ book out loud en español, and I do not speak the language.

I finally got paid this afternoon. One down, ? to go.

Kalamazoo Porter is delicious (the ex-Bells’ beer famine is over!). Thank you.

This lunar eclipse was brilliant and speedy. Quite remarkable how its oranges and reds swallowed the moon as I stood watching. Now she sleeps. Goodnight, Moon.

Peepshow crows.

Before I dive into Everything today, I must say out loud that I have been thinking of incorporating more than just the sound of crows into my performances, I want to start using their imagery as well. I have used the angry, tattered din of blue jays and the lonely, resigned coos of mourning doves in addition to the cacophony of crows and have searched tirelessly for the breathless laughter of my absolute favorite, the fierce, yellow-eyed great-tailed grackle, which I have found only Texas can provide…

Alas, the venerable crow.

Their gatherings and circles naturally make for a great audience, which is one of the main tenets of my performances- the inclusion of onlookers as understood participators in the action- crows are indestructible, daredevilish, unrefined and classy all at once. And the way they rip into a carcass on the grassy side of the Southern highway is truly something to behold.

Lately, I have been making these redefined-peepshow character studies and I perform them as a red-headed love-and-war-torn creature, who may or may not live in the swamp. I first started performing her at the pinnacle of her burlesque career with her final show, and have moved backwards in time. The point is not to make her younger, as I only know so much about age, it is more about the clarity and absurdity of culminated experiences. It is also about those certain situations we knowingly create for ourselves and the manner in which we get through them, hence the visually tempting, public/private, situationist environ of the peepshow.

We are a nation of peepers: we rubberneck at traffic accidents, eavesdrop on strangers’ conversations, perhaps even check up on the “open curtain guy” in the dwelling across from ours- you know, the one who always seems to be doing something audacious and definitely something we would never do, though we may like to watch. Like it or not, we are all involved in the lives of others whom we do not/care not to know. We just love to see a person in the midst of their distress- but do we choose to help them or do we just “innocently” stand by?

When I bore witness to the first postmodern burlesque show I’d ever seen, I was floored. I loved how unabashedly political the pieces were; they were short and sweet, very carefully handmade and working quite outside of the assumed dirty-old-man audience to include a mix of supportive, uproarious spectators who were having a truly great time. Sure, the girls (and boys) were taking it off, but the what-for was enticingly clear: because they wanted to. Because, in the midst of our sensuality-starved, show-me-the-money-shot culture, these performers have something uniquely important to say and they are using all of themselves to say it, while still leaving a little something abstract and open-ended for the audience to consider on their own.

Between my happy cheers and laughter, I somehow paused to really take a look at what was unfolding (undressing!) before me and I thought: I could do this. Complexities of simultaneously being a teacher of the underage and newbie burlesqueyish performer be damned! I was excited and looking forward to how I was gonna do it the only way I know how- my way.

I do believe that much of the role of the artist is to knock down walls of perceived limitation, of closed-up views of what art is “supposed” to be {Aside, she cried out, “What crap!!!”} and, perhaps most importantly, to let the work lead by example. Hey, that’s exactly what teachers/teaching artists do too, imagine that! Well, I don’t know when I have ever viewed a performed artwork and have left as changed or have felt more empowered to just take my artistic practice by the ballz and challenge myself right to the core. And I have been challenging myself (sort of nearly not really) clothesless since then…

Yarrr! The Dreaded Artist Statement!

Sometimes feels like it will be the death of me, and I’ve only just begun writing several of them for my multitude of endeavours. Being a person who is rather thinky and branchy by nature, to ask myself to actually sit still for once and analyze the who what where when why of it all tends to lose its excitement factor rapidly. I’ve always been of the mind that the work needs to be strong enough to speak for itself. Especially since the artist will not just be hanging around the gallery waiting for some scant passerby to ask questions about the work. Although, in my mind, that scenario does make for a superb 10-second film.

Those are the reasons why I (selfishly) don’t want to write about my work. Even so, as I fumble through endless revision and self-editing, I realize that artist statements are proving to be necessary moreso as a comment on the oversaturated times we live in than on the nature of the work I make. Contemporary artwork requires supportive text to differentiate it from everything else out there. Also, it helps out people who are just starting to appreciate the arts and may not be as well versed in discussion or critique. What is important to me is preserving the artifact of those myriad statements, drafts and virtual crumpled-up, smoothed-out Word documents that I feel happy to have accomplished, good, bad or ugly. Or too verbose, too abstract and indirect. Or hilarious, stupid and missing the point entirely. Onto the next draft, then!

I think I need to just be a pirate about it. Put on my smelliest, most fashionably tattered clothes, not brush my teeth for 12-57 years, sit on the poop deck of my brain with my trusty parrot-puppy by my side and just pillage and plunder my thoughts to get it done. Eventually, I know I will find and keep the joy in being this analytical about my work and, ultimately, myself. And here, the problem presents itself: Where is the separation between the artist and the work? Are(n’t) we one and the same? Must I remove myself from my work in order to be able to talk about it? Um, how do I do that?

That there are decades of process rolling around in my brain like tumbleweeds, it ends up being difficult to access it all in an orderly manner. Allow me to be indelicate for a moment, will you? I can’t help thinking of Ren and Stimpy in the episode(s) where Stimpy wholeheartedly barfs up a major hairball, probably all over Ren. That is what I feel like the self-imposed stress of constantly re-writing artist statements does to me- it just makes me feel like I am purging too much all at once.

But then, I love a good challenge, and that the challenge is myself is fitting. I have always believed that there is great power in not knowing, there is freedom to breathe and play inside of the entropy. Writing artist statements, bios and proposals keep me in a good space to constantly review my work in order to keep it fresh, alive, relevant and honest. So I’d better get to it- there will be many more along the way…

Yarrr! Where’s me eyepatche?

Everybody get stoopid!

In trying to remember what I learned today of note, then barely being able to remember the basics of what I even did all day, what I did remember was this interview I heard on Fresh Air yesterday (?) with a woman who wrote a book about the normal memory loss which accompanies growing older. See how irony plagues me? Well, anyway, I haven’t made time to revisit the interview (although I do have it bookmarked- score one for me!), but from the notes I’d scrawled in my book while I was driving, there seems to be more than one type of memory- semantic and episodic- otherwise known as the memory of stuff we learn and the memory of stuff we’ve done. When these types of memory choose to cross paths is of great curiosity to me.

Very interesting, indeed, since I often catch myself forgetting names of things and so I have to make up a long string of words to describe said thing and then everyone I am talking to gets bored and starts looking around the room and then I get all nervous because I know I’ve lost my audience and then and then and and and uhhhh, I totally forget what my point was. I mean, in this example. I know what my point is now, see, because I am writing it. It’s different. But why is writing it different, I wonder? And how come the kids in my life seem to be my best audience? Maybe because I act like a kid; to them I am surely a curiosity.

I digress.

This supposed memory loss thing is actually relevant to my performance work in that I have written a proposal detailing a project in which I will perform the digging of a series of concentric trenches, to be filmed in Super8 and projected from a hole upwards into a large military-issue parachute which is caught in some trees. There, now you know my secret. Don’t wake the dagron, if you know what I mean.

So the point of digging in general is thousandfold as a matter of self-constructed improbability and preposterousness, in mimicking the debris-filled valleys of waxen LP records shifting through time, in terms of getting closer to the ground by nearly being swallowed by it, by challenging myself to willingly tear my hands apart through construction of this lock-grooved structure, to not know whether to begin from the core of the target or work my way in from the single most enormous and laborious of circles, to relate this structure to advancements in military architecture- particularly regarding the trench warfare of WWI- and the stasis/futility of global argument… oh, I could go on.

These concentric trenches, these land-locked paths of memory, so to speak- I sure thought I knew what I was talking about when I wrote my proposal. I suppose I did, having proposed nothing more than a large-scale theory, as it must be because theory is precisely what a proposal claims (as opposed to actual practice). But now that I’ve heard all this mess about types of memory, I am wondering beyond the structure of memory and the structure of the trench and I am wandering about, cutting paths from idea to next idea, asking myself if this proposed piece may happen to become less about memory itself and more about the search for memory (hence the digging and futility of).

∴

Relatedly in a Doctor Who time-warp sort of way: This morning as I exited my lovely shower, from outside the bathroom window in that sprawling Great Oak-looking tree that sprouts from the nu-hippies’ yard, I heard what sounded like an army of crows mercilessly cawing. I know enough about birds to recognize that those insistent caws mean trouble. I ran to get my Zoom mic and bounded out the back door into the 15 degree morning in my robe, nearly knocking over the resident tiniest ever-pregnant cat with the screen door. Much to my dismay, at sensing my presence, the crows flew away across the street so I couldn’t get as great of a recording as I would have liked. Argh! To be see-through and still able to hold stuff in my hands!

Not surprisingly, the crows were chasing a hawk away from their turf. Farther and farther they charged and I started getting cold and bored, so I went in. Four hours later on the highway headed home from teaching, I spied a black cloud out of the corner of my eye- it was the crows still chasing the hawk! Now, I know it possibly wasn’t the same party of crows and the same rascally hawk, but this what I am talking about when I refer to paths and, in particular, paths of memory. As I was incredulating over this development, my mind made a physical path- a map- that those birds must have taken to get allllll the way to the highway from my house, a possible 7-mile journey, which I fully understand is no big whoop for a bird…

And another: Two days ago, parked out by the dumpster in one of the alleys by my house sat a dejected kid-sized toy VW bug. Electric, convertible, silver. I thought, Who would throw away a perfectly good little car like that? Especially in such a callous manner, out with the trash! I kept walking. The next day, the car had moved and was parked a block away in front of the elementary school. I smiled, enjoying how the little bug was still getting its ride on, and hoped it wouldn’t get mistreated. This evening as I was riding my bike home from the retail job, I spied this little bug sitting all belonely under a yellow streetlight, its tinted plastic windshield broken beyond repair. Now that this little bug has proven that it can still make its paths even though it was discarded, I am excited to re-find it again tomorrow, as perhaps we will both be on similar enough paths to be of note to one another.

I am my own community.

Twenty-two degrees at 8am on a sporadically sunny Valentine’s Day. I’ll take it. Today I am taking to one of my classes a huge bag of my recyclables, not so the children can see what I eat, but as props for a Public Service Announcement project we are diligently working on. Yeah, today I am bringing in the garbage in a number of respects… do read on.

I will be pretty busy today, traveling from one school to another all day long and then a short stint at my retail job (to gently coax my finances to behave) will bring my day to a close ’round 10 pm. Then, as I swallow leftovers whole and tend to the animals, more work at home ensues as I continue scheduling programs, answering emails and preparing for my Friday and Saturday classes… a typical 18-hour cycle. Sometimes I long to be able to just go to one place of business and stay put. Other times, I feel like I might gouge my eyes out from the bore-ific routine which would surely ensue from heading to one place and then a mere 8 hours later, making my way back home through a bevy pissed-off midwesterners. An office life for me? Naaaahh, I don’t do very well unless I am in the trenches…

The main outreach residency that I have been working on is at its 2-month point, an inquiry-based, arts integration project which requires an eye-rubbingly gigantic amount of planning, research and in-class process. As the teaching artist visiting their classroom 4 times a week, I am the video guru helping 2 classes of 4th graders learn how to create a PSA based on their understanding of how global warming works and the three R’s (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle). For the past 5 years, I have visited the 4th grade class as arts specialist in various areas/media and work with the school’s art teacher to guide the kids toward making connections in their learning through the arts. “Making learning visible” is what they call it and it works and I am proud to be on the cutting-edge of arts-based research through the work I do. {Subliminally: Let us make sure that whoever our new president is, that she or he has a sustainable plan with dedicated funding for arts education!} To be certain, this year’s partnership has certainly been the most ambitious project to date- we are already well past the anticipated total of 8 classroom visits per each 4th grade class.

Confused? Yeah, it is a little confusing, but this is part of the reason why I am writing this Jessi Appleseed thing. It seems that the ways and means of the teaching artist are known only in very specific circles of, well, teaching artists and the organizations who support us. Expressing myself about the frustrations or happinessess or crazynesses of doing this work is more of an understood, acknowledged but unspoken, between fellow teaching artists. I’m not talking about some disgusting exclusivity here- rather, I am pointing out that when I spy a fellow TA down the hall, the commentary on the work we do- the work we believe in- is most easily conveyed in a wink, a laughing shake of the head, a wide-eyed zombie face or sometimes not at all. All that is silent code for the same sentiment which we realize needs no words: I know what you mean.

I notice here that I am stopping short of making a (foolish) wish for a cohesive artistic community. In my whole artmaking life, I have continually experienced the solitary end of my practice, both artistically and in teaching, working in isolation, not knowing where my community is, feeling disengaged from a perceived larger community of artists whom I should* want to be included in, etc. I say foolish not because we cannot join together in community, but perhaps a physical gathering is not what it takes to manifest community (although I sure do appreciate the easy laughter and beers). The longer I do this work, the easier it is for me to comprehend that teaching artists create community. We carry this community with us, no matter if it is comprised of kids or cohorts, whether it is represented in group gatherings, faculty meetings or not. And further, as a singular teaching artist, I must realize and go forward with the knowledge that I am my own community. As artmakers and, certainly, as teachers, we are asked to be more than who we are as human beings. We are asked to be leaders, agitators, problem-solvers, advocates, magicians and experts for the ones who feel less than empowered about their own learning or artmaking abilities.

I don’t think there is any particular succinct ending to this write today. So take it and run wherever you please with it.

*I declare: I do not believe in any concept of should. Should is a word which is meant for things I feel obliged to do, most times begrudgingly, and doing my best to erase this connotation from my life is one of the best decisions I have ever made.

Sunshine.

I can’t remember when I last saw the sky. The sun is coming down so big I am pretty certain I can hear it ringing. The snow is great and all, tons of fun kamikaze sledding at the park sans health insurance, but nothing else is going to make my cotton grow this season.

That reminds me- I’d better get started on germinating my planties so they have a fighting chance to bloom like pale chartreuse hibiscus flowers and go to gorgeous nodding seed in our short growing season. The absolute irony of growing a Southern staple crop like cotton in these Chicago climes is definitely not lost on me- that is precisely why I do it. And actually, why I tend to try anything with a supposed high rate of failure- to prove to myself that suppositions like these are inaccurate, if not completely wrong. In truth, I’m not sure how many seasons it is going to take me to raise enough green and brown cotton fiber to spin anything out of… judging from last summer, it may take a while.

And, like daring an anomaly to thrive, when my body is flying with great velocity off the edge of a large, self-constructed snow lip, health insurance is the last thing I am thinking of.

I never thought I’d see the day…

…when I actually created a blog. Mm-mm. I was lying in bed this morning on random February day off #2 thinking, Why keep my experiences as a teaching artist to myself when they could be of help to someone? And, Maybe this will keep me in a good habit of learning to write about my work- damned artist statements! Considering I have a list of 11 things to do waiting for me in my office (er, at the kitchen table), why on earth would I throw myself into one more thing? Rhetorical, perhaps. Why one is able to do anything in our Untied States which are seemingly addicted to war, poverty and injustice is beyond me, but we just keep on keepin’ on. Don’t we?

I’m hungry.

I am supposed to be making some vegan cinnamon apple muffins right now to fuel today’s grant-proposal writing endeavour with my beloved brown-panted sound engineer, but (as usual) I got sidetracked and decided to take the leap into the voidless void of the online community to make my very first blog . >snif!< I live in a great web of mystery, it seems, jumping from one thing to the next and then collapsing from my dutiful efforts come nightfall. All in a day-night-middleofthenight’s work for this teaching artist.

What the samhill is a teaching artist, you ask? Well, I won’t box us teaching artists up and ship us off to Corporateland by trying to come up with a universal definition. However, after 8 solid years of being in the business of teaching performance and visual arts outreach to kids who may not have equal access to arts programming in their schools, I have at least come up with some ideas. And that is (some) of what I wanna say on this here bloggy thing. So let us delve into the beautiful messiness together, shall we?

Oh, and the apple cinnamon muffins I managed to bake while writing this, nearly sitting on the cat, checking my email, answering a call, scratching my dear puppy behind the ears, reheating leftovers, watching the 30th day of measurable Chicago snowfall from my kitchen window… those muffins are pretty darned good.