Me, me, me...

I haven't written for a while. Writing...well blogging, incestuous blogging, for that is what I do...anyway, the practice of writing for me has a similar effect on me that my performance does. All of my work is about transformation. With sculpture the transformation happens to the object; performance and writing however, transforms me - and I don't like that. Obviously I'm drawn to transformative processes, I surround myself with them from the books I read, the "coming of age" shit I watch on hulu, to the world views I have subscribed to, all of these things are located in a change...a metamorphous where you start off as one thing, you transform, and you finish anew. You are transformed and you are better for it.

Recently I have hit a wall. I don't know what the wall is, we'll call it my 4th or 5th life crisis (if I had continued to call it 'quarter life crisis' I'd be dead by now). So this crisis (whatever its number) would be fine, that is I would be okay with it accepting it for what it is the triennial Jamie-break down, if it wasn't affecting my work so much. This crisis is dripping a cancer into the one thing I pride myself on, the one thing that I can actually admit that I love about myself: my work ethic. Today the UConn sculpture tech, a guy who has traveled the world, built buildings and now obsesses daily over his tiny daughter AND still has time to listen to me squabble about my studio while choking back tears with coffee, threw something at me. A softball sized nugget of hard love. Reality at it's most painful, like when my mother apologizes to me for fucking me up a little as a kid and then tells me that I am an adult now, she's sorry, she loves me and to get over it. Perhaps the way I approach my studio practice, the discipline, the gold stars the puffy-chest feeling after a 12 hour studio day that started at 6 am is not serving me, or worse not serving my art.

The performance and writing, writing especially, are incredibly vulnerable for me (...as I post on the internet). In a way they are a break from my own authoritative structure, by performing and writing I am protesting, having tiny sit-ins and fiery revolutions against my very structure, led by my own body.

Performance and writing are easy to avoid. I don't have to do those. But my sculptures, my John the beloved, are revolting too. And they are doing it in the worst way possible: they have become safe and they are pretty. Worst of all they are being created outside of me and doing just fine for themselves. They are at college, they have gotten married, they know how to change a tire and I sure as hell didn't teach them that.

As an artist maybe it isn't such a bad thing, producing sculptures that are good looking and self-sufficient. I would love to ride that wave all the way through my thesis and then roll around in the white water like a dumb kid. However, a funny thing has happened. Some other part of me is standing up, waging battle against the hyper producer and all its Stepford spawn. A crippled and suppressed something has pushed it's finger through the dirt of me and said, "stop." Productive me hates this. It writhes in this halted strike, rationalizing it and is cruel about it deeming this gesture, this hand wave, this red flag as retarded. Productive me needs to move, and since my hands have stopped my mind turns in on itself. Name calling: I'm slow...worse I am stupid.

The sun is out and it is fall. Edie, my hyper sexual plant is out-growing her wooden box planter that I just bought for her in August. It was my birthday when I got Edie's new home, I was at Ikea with Lani. We ate crawfish and I walked around Ikea for hours trying to consume but leaving only with Edie's box and some AA batteries. I am not stupid. Really, I'm not. I'm not broken either. My new god Time, like my old god Yahweh, isn't telling me I am stupid or broken either, that's my vernacular. I am tired of telling gods to shut up and leave me alone. Let them come. Let them drip through ceiling, or strut from nature, or dash around the room on the backs of light rays. I'll be here, I'll be quiet, and I'll be working.

images:Joe Sola