The positive trajectory continues.  The new studio is an incredible opening.  I spent the first five weeks patching, painting, schlepping, and organizing, and all that prep evolved into the start of new work last weekend.  I share some new pieces below.

I began reading and working with Mapping the Intelligence of Artistic Work, by Anne West; the book was edited by Katarina Weslien, who directed the Maine College of Art MFA program when I was there.  Maysey introduced me to the book and let me carry it around when I was in Memphis; I've been waiting for the right time to dig in.  I'm in.  It is powerful.

On another note, starting in July I will be full-time faculty at LIM College, where I've been an adjunct since 2005.  This development has several long stories behind it, but what matters here is this sea change at exactly the right time.  I've not wanted an employer until now; now I have one.  To enjoy stability in a community I know and love and that makes the right demands on me and gives the right things back is a game-changer.  My semesters will be fuller than full, but my off-time will be plentiful.  Residencies will be possible.  I need to continue freelancing to make it work, and even more to keep the studio.  I don't know how it will roll out, but what is rolling out is a keen awareness of a long-term change.  My work at the College feels different, and surely my work outside the College feels different.

I don't want to say anything about these new pieces yet.  The first piece is from last weekend (a dark cell phone shot), and the next four are from this weekend, in the order in which they were made.

Wood, paint, fabric, thread
About 6" x 3"

Wood, paint; 2 3/8 x 3"

Wood, paint; 5 x 1 1/2"

Wood, paint; 2 3/8 x 1 1/2"

Wood, paint; 2 1/8 x 1"

Liz Sweibel, Untitled (Draft), 2012
Wood, paint, wire (Maysey's studio)
About 1 3/4 x 3/4 x 2 1/2"

I so often want to write here yet am so pressed for time that priorities often have to lie elsewhere.  Still, I want a record of how things are unfolding, for myself and for whoever checks in on me here.

The breakthrough I wrote of five weeks ago continues to evolve - not as a sudden production of latent work, or noticing that work was being made to my left while I was focused on my right, but rather through productive experimentation.  It continues, spurred on by a series of openings and opportunities.

1. In mid-February, I went to an artist event initiated by Heather Cox, where 20 strong artists talked, ate, looked at each others' work, and talked some more.  It was terrific.  A second event is in the works.
2. When I walked into Heather's space, I saw a studio was available.  No longer!  I will have space in the Gowanus area starting April 1. It's a big stretch (understatement) in financial terms, but I can't afford not to take it in every other way.  All signs point to this being a good decision for now.
3. In mid-March I visited my dear friend from grad school, Maysey Craddock, in Memphis, and spent some of our time together working in her studio.  It was exhilirating, and my new studio came through while I was there.  Maysey introduced me to her friend Melissa Dunn and we visited her studio, where nine paintings destined for a museum show and the Golden Mean are in full force.  I also met Terri Jones, whose work feels like extended family.
4. I'll be exhibiting at the Medicine FACTORY in Memphis in September.  This invitation to do site work propelled me into a way of thinking and looking and ruminating and being that I have so missed; it infects me like nothing else.
5. A practice that melds with my teaching and other responsibilities arrived.  I have a subway drawing series underway.  When one thing opens, it seems the fences around the rest give way.

Liz Sweibel, Untitled (Draft), 2012
Wood, paint, wire (Maysey's studio)
About 1 1/2 x 2 1/2 x 3/4"

The being and thinking and doing are opening up.  A breakthrough.  Protecting my time (and 24 million other things) has opened up to new ideas for work.

Saturday I visited  the Reanimation Library Midtown Branch at MoMA.  I found I used it like a library rather than a workshop, and settled into The Rural Studio, a book on the architecture of Mockbee.  His work and impact were (and are) profound, how he integrates creative work with layers and layers of helping.  Paired with The Power of Limits, architecture has come forward without any real intention on my part, and helped me push through.

I know what to do, and it feels like it will absorb and move everything important I've been struggling with, hurt by, and pissed off at for years now.  Thank God.

I'm uncomfortable with how I left this journal, as I've muscled myself out of that flatness (no exaggeration), largely thanks to daily writing - using pencil on notebook paper.  It suits me better in some ways, including and maybe especially the physical experience, and of course the privacy.

Daily writing is impossible with the semester under way, but I've set better limits to protect weekend time from student e-mails and, to the extent I can, schoolwork.  I start my Saturday mornings with my paper, pencil, and coffee.  Today I want to capture my handwritten words here, exactly as written on page 41, and align my public self  more closely with my private self.  I wrote:

Just opened my new book, The Power of Limits.  Scanning, flipping through, I arrive at The Greatness of Little Things (p. 123).  Of course I stop, and in reading, "bump into" Zen Buddhism, Golden Mean, music, haiku (this, in two pages).  Drew me back to Introduction to Architecture at UF, where I learned about the Golden Mean and have never forgotten that (or recalled anything else from the course).  I have been telling students about carbon paper.

My trajectory has felt so meander-y, and to the extent it has been, I pay the price (e.g., no PhD).  At the same time, the patterns and connections all point to something coherent (or at least coherent in its vagaries).  My struggle, which has become increasingly clear in and since art school, has been to locate ways to integrate in my life what is integrated across the universe.  Or, to find an existing coherence (which I seem to be doing) and get it out of me into the world.  It's so subtle, yet I'm wanting to make it powerful.  The subtle mark is too easy for me, even though it does everything I want.

Some backstory:  Last weekend I took a keyboard apart (thanks, Mo and Adrian) to make a collage for my nephew Daniel.  That opened the floodgates (mine are small, of course), and the ideas that started coming are very much about integration - not in the universal sense of the journal references but in the possibilities for my work, which should connect with the universals if the work achieves what I'm after.  (I'm sure I'm drawing distinctions that don't exist, in my endless restating of the obvious to get to what's just beyond my reach.)  I've been researching and attempting haiku.  My other new book is The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (thank you, Justin); her stories have the economy of haiku.  All this to say that I keep bumping into a collection of objects, ideas, and processes that is all the same, or leading to the same.  It is a relief and a comfort, and explains my frustration at making work that gets at what I'm after.  I do have ideas, so now I'll turn to them and hope for the patience, the time, and the tenacity to pursue them.

The flatness of last night's post troubles me; just as my work escapes flatness, I seem to be embodying it.  Despite my self-cajoling, I'm struggling to summon enthusiasm for much of anything and instead am acting as if.  It's more or less successful in that I'm meditating, running, in the studio, and accomplishing the necessities.  The imposed structure of teaching may command my time and attention, but it also helps me stay psychologically organized.  With less time to slosh around in my own thoughts (or slosh around at all), I seem to have more energy and a more positive outlook.

The semester finished before Thanksgiving, and once again the break has enabled me to get back to work.  I'm making new sculpture for the first time since 2007, before the Troutman Street loft vacate.  I'm using painted wire discards from 2007, which is a nice piece of continuity.

Liz Sweibel, Untitled, 2011
Thread, wire, paint

(It must be said: I gave it away last semester - gave too much of my time - and am resolved to set better boundaries.  Reading and answering college e-mail on weekends is self-sabotaging, and something I entirely inflict on myself.  The experience of being needed is so seductive!)

Liz Sweibel, Untitled, 2011
Thread, wire, paint

My friend Lisa Tubach visited last month and posed the right challenges.  Much of my work, including the pieces above, cuts right to it rather than remains in question for long.  It's opened and closed in a single session, avoiding extended uncertainty and discomfort.  So I began a more open-ended exploration:

Liz Sweibel, Untitled, 2011
Thread, wire, paint, paper, graphite

It doesn't feel so pat and I'm not even sure I like it.  I know I don't recognize it in the same way as I do the two above.  Extending the materials (even just to paper and pencil) opened the process to more possibility and anxiety (I'm so easily overwhelmed!), but I see that willingness as a good sign.  I'm not dead yet.

Also important:  the most authentic, realistic strategy is for me to prioritize exhibition opportunities outside NYC and residency opportunities around NYC.  It's a relief to see that clearly.  I've again made my home studio more functional and engaging.

Getting older - feeling older - is coming to feel like time is running out for me as an artist.  The distance between my daily activity (mental, emotional, physical) and my vision for myself (rooted in history, not fantasy) feels so great that bridging it seems ever harder.  Every day I push back against this thinking, with occasional breakthroughs, yet it's thick.  For instance, this summer I decided to sublet a studio rather than apply to residencies.  Actually getting to a residency is so problem-ridden that spending time on applications (especially with little new work) seems wasteful.  Better to get a space to make new sculptural and installation work, then use that to create opportunities down the line.  Another idea:  to build a miniature installation site I can develop in my home studio, and use the documentation to change the scale.  Like a maquette, but since I work small, who knows?  I do like this urge.

Obviously, I'm not without ideas.  What I am without is time.  This will shift with the end of the semester (mid-November), and I must shift everything else with it.  I've actually been wishing I were a writer!  I spend so much time writing and love it, but the gap between what I can say in words and what I can convey with my work is unbridgeable.  In "'Evidence' Revisited" in a long-ago issue of Art in America, Carter Ratcliff wrote about the impossibility of reducing art to words.  Nor can I elevate my words to art.