Monday, December 12, 2005

It's started....

I just finished writing my graduate review statement for Friday.

I suppose the fact that I am nauseous and dizzy is no surprise. This simple page length document always takes it out of me.

Here it is:
This summer I enrolled in (said with all due respect to Susan-I think she knows I have to indicate to my review board that these were not college classes...I think you know you made a big impression too!) informal classes in fiber collage and fabric monoprinting to enhance my graduate studies in open media. In doing so, I made connections of processes with which I have been struggling for years. As such, this new work transcends my longstanding reticence toward pattern, color, order versus disorder. It reflects my love of the visual complexity and riotous beauty I see in both biology and human nature. The two works I consider most successful are beautiful and ugly, reverent and angry, compelling and repulsive. This thrills me.

The subject matter – women’s bodies, self-portraiture and identity – represent a return to themes I favored as a painter. However, they are encouraged by the contextualization of fabrics, embellishment and adornment.

I also completed my special projects work over the summer and fall, developing a biodegradable sculptural medium that will sustain plant life. In addition, I discovered numerous variations of the recipes that will have applications for future works in two and three dimensions. One is reflected in this review.

Next semester I am enrolled in open media and fibers. I am convinced that as I work toward a thesis proposal I will merge these disparate themes and processes. At present, I foresee a combination of works that are complex, temporal and tactile, addressing identity and its antithesis, consumerism. I am sketching dresses that melt to reveal a hidden self, identities that rot under heavy coats.

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