A Chink

The Drawing Center released an open call to Viewing Program artists for an exhibit titled "Day Job."  I began writing last night and in 20 minutes produced a lucid explanation of my situation from a perspective I'd not been conscious of:  essentially, that while the theme of my work has always been care, relationship, and paying attention, my day job has shown me the stronghold that abuse and exploitation can have within and between communities and individuals.  And not just shown me, but inserted me into.

My work feels puny in its shadow.  No wonder I feel so lost; no wonder whatever I do feels so futile; no wonder my work feels irrelevant in relation to my art heroes.  The need to leave my job in order to continue working has been a much bigger force than I knew.  And now that I am leaving, I can't just pick up where I left off, because its puniness is exposed.  The "Day Job" proposal comes at a synchronous time (it's even due August 23, the Monday after I leave); it's having me understand and confront this sooner than later.

It's also tapping my sense of being under-ambitious in my work, a sense that predates and stands apart from my day job.  In Prospect, Anne Truitt writes, "I remember a life-or-death feeling that security lay only in independence.  And I remember grief, grief that the cost of independence was an unspeakable loneliness."  Independence was essential in my growing-up too, and I've never learned to take on anything that was bigger than what I could do myself.  It could well be that my growth now hinges on my willingness to challenge this, and in the instant of writing this I feel myself grieving my ways of working, instantly forgetting that I don't have to give them up but do have to question and expand them.  I've grown too comfortable, which is grating given how uncomfortable I am.