The exploration of myself within the traditions of making and the made, learning my place as a survivor and a creator.
Through the course of my thesis program, I have had a complicated relationship with making, even as straightforward as my point of view may be. But I made. I did so because I had to: sometimes badly, sometimes well, but always with the same value, whether I was able to see it or not. When things go wrong, it very suddenly and horrifically puts making in a different sort of light when there is no strength with which to make any art art. We make because we must in whatever ways we can. When things get weird in the world at large, we all turn to making, and often very simply: baking bread, writing bad poetry, taking up crafts, working hours on rotework in the studio. Perhaps we don’t know any better way to survive.
To survive, you make—in whatever ways you are capable. Later comes the art you could have never fathomed otherwise, no matter how much it hurt to get there.
