Driving Petah Coyne to the train station and driving home in tears.

The title of this piece is the only way I know how to start writing about my experiences today: first, looking at the work of Petah Coyne, a New York based sculptor, then listening to Coyne speak about her work, and finally driving her to the train station.

Driving Petah Coyne to the train station and driving home in tears.

Petah was a Catholic and now she isn't; however, her work is profoundly religious. Her sculptures are physical narratives ridden with beauty and tragedy, they are redemptive while being as heavy and quiet as cancer. Her work seems fidgety and uneasy as if her sculptures had just realized they were, in fact sculptures, made to always be looked at.

As she spoke I sat in the crowd amongst my peers whom I love and hold little back from. The first year MFA's seem to need each other though rarely do we actually touch each other. The lack of physicality only bothers me in moments like this: moments where I really need someone to just fucking hug me. Moments when affirmation or encouragement, seem as distant as Christ in the flesh. In these moments I need the violent love of Eleanor or Annabel or Kris, but they're not here and I am too much of a pussy to walk over to Ben, bury my face in his chest, and just fucking weep.


Of course, Ben walks into my my studio the very moment I type that paragraph and the mostly dead christian magician buried inside me waves his white "miracle" flag. I read Ben the pervious paragraph and he hugged me; he smelt like coffee, and I felt the way a little kid must feel when they are in a supermarket and accidently grab the leg of a stranger instead of their mother.

How do I exist in the midst of miracles? My 45 minutes with Petah Coyne was a miracle. When she got into my car she offered me a Halls and I took it. She was amazed by my GPS system and we talked about faith and how it will never leave her or I despite our attempts to divorce it. I walked her to the train station where she hugged me and told me with her striking blue eyes that it was going to be ok. I started to cry and she kept looking at me, forcing me to look into her crazy baby blues as I fought against them and her and god. She wished me luck and asked me to contact her if I ever figure out what makes my work so feminine [she had seen a sculpture of mine the day before].

I cried all the way home. Losing your faith is traumatizing; furthermore, discovering that you have been traumatized is absolutely horrific. People who are traumatized usually have been victimized, which means I had been victimized by my own faith. Traumatized victims typically have someone to blame, someone to forgive, someone to attempt closure with; however, my faith was my own. Remember, I had a personal relationship: religion based on a god that was interested in my response to his gentle knocking on my heart.


...to be continued.