28 June 2007

the material world

I forgot how inspiring it is here. Wait, I mean I forgot the ways in which it is inspiring. It’s not really the work being done – there’s as much (or um, way more) bad Craft as bad Art out there… Rather it’s the materials and tools I am surrounded with. It’s the hot-forged steel, the perfect green printers’ ink, the cases of lead type, the boiled bones and pieces of carved ebony, the pulled glass cane, the split logs, the gray clay… It’s a small store full of sawblades and handmade papers and silver tubes and bone folders and oddly-shaped brushes. It’s the morning grass dotted with spiderwebs and tiny mushrooms. It’s the four-leaf-clovers in the grass near the grave of an old friend, buried 10 years last week.

I wish I could say it’s the people here and the work they’re doing that’s got me all fired up, and I certainly don’t mean to say they aren’t fascinating and inspiring; they are. In fact, it seems to be a more accomplished session of people than I’ve encountered in a long time. But I’m used to the slower pace of the two-month concentrations I’ve done. Those classes are brutal and isolating in their own way – stuck on the mountain with only 75 people for so long – but you get to know the thinking and the working ways of those around you much better than you can in these two weeks, with twice the number.

No, I’m fired up by the simple physicality of this place, in the landscape and in the studios. It’s not so much about thinking here, as it is about doing. This community is one of shared action, in a way, and my friends who live here often bemoan the fact that there is little room for discussing art. Meanwhile I come here impressed by just how hard everyone works. In New York it often feels like all talk: gossip, parties, openings, arguments, reviews, and (particularly during the Annual Dump of Grad Students on our doorstep) theory and bullshit. Maybe if I can keep coming down here, I’ll find some balance.