In Actuality

I wrote about my surprise at seeing the figure come into my recent work, and now a week later see the obvious: it hasn't. My work remains as it's been, about absence. All that's changed (not to diminish it but put it in perspective) is that the trace or shadow or ghost is representational.

Actually, I feel like I don't know how to work any more. It takes a million hours to earn a living (and I'm fortunate enough to like what I do), and my studio is now a giant table in my living room. What does it mean to be an artist, when I have maybe half a day a week to work at it? I know I'm an artist no matter what I'm doing, but it's hard to stay connected to that. And if I have so little time to work, do I slice that into smaller pieces to market it? Galleries are less appealing as a stage or gauge of success; they seem so separate from the life I live and the things I care about.

All this has turned me toward the Internet. As friends can attest, I long rejected a Web site, generally with insights like "My work looks like shit on a screen." And there's truth in that! It confuses the scale, for one thing. My pieces are often larger on the screen than they are in actuality; viewers who assume the opposite and don't look at the dimensions lose something essential. The materiality is also essential to the slow engagement I'm after. These intentions are at odds with the scale changes, speed, texture-lessness, and anonymity of the Internet.

Still.

I choose the work to show and its presentation. I say what I want to say or keep quiet. And the making and the marketing can overlap (and even sometimes merge). It's like there's an efficiency at work that I never foresaw - and that wasn't a priority when I had time to stretch 3,000 twelve-inch lengths of wire and dip the tip of each in hot wax six to eight times (Threshold). Large-scale installations also feel out of reach, but that's not just a function of time, space, and the limitations of the Internet but one of opportunity, which brings me right back to marketing.

So.

While some things are now less possible, others are more possible. Just like anything else, it's an exchange, and this one may be the only way it's still possible for me to work at all. Am I still me?