MFA Year 1: Spring 2019

Spring Tests

January – February 2019

I went into January with a much clearly mindset. After completing my first semester of graduate school, I realized my brain had been jumping between thoughts. Essentially, it was near impossible for me to find a focus or any sort of thread to follow through the work I was doing in that first semester. My critique at the end of that semester showed me that despite feeling somewhat confused, I did have some sort of connection between ideas and thoughts. It was EXTREMELY encouraging.

That being said, beginning a new project, or really knowing what to start with was hard. So for the first few weeks, it was a lot more about reading, focusing on course work, and completing single day projects in the studio every time I was able to come in. The following are iterations of the panel work I began doing during the 2018 Fall semester to see what else I could do with the material, and maybe land at a why for what that process was. To no-one’s satisfaction, these didn’t really give me a why, but they did give me a what.

Crumbling Spaces

February 2019

Installation:

Drying:

Decay:

Deinstallation:

Light Trials

March 2019

Light Trials is the first full performance piece I have worked on. This piece is an exploration of iterations and the sequencing through time. In each performance, there will always be a projection and a live performance element. This project is set up to be repeated as many times as possible. Ideally, once some of the technical aspects are smoothed out, I plan to perform this at least one a year as a documentation of my progression through time.

The notion of past, present, and future is the baseline for this project. In the live element, I will always start to left of the spotlight (the past) and will enter into the space with an exploration of the boundaries of the light source (the present). The majority of the performance takes place in the center of the spotlight as another exploration of my interactions and understandings of the limitations of the light/present. The ending will always be with the performer (me, for now) falling out of the light into the space to the right (the future). With the remainder of the time, I return to the edge of the light — now no longer able to enter back into that space — as an act of reflection.

I see this action of performance done in conjunction with the projection of a past interpretation as another attempt at understanding the relationship between these three stages in life, which are somewhat arbitrarily defined. When the performance is repeated, the projection will be replaced with the most recent documentation of the live performance. I see this as a way to build on both my understanding of the interaction as well as a remnant of my memory and experience. One of the main interests in this project is to see how over time this work will become a documentation for what past version of myself were able to do and how there are consistencies and differences through/between the stages of life.