Since mid-July I have remained day-to-day connected to fragments of our own (with the exception of last week, the close of summer semester).  It's not about making things as much as about writing, thinking, daydreaming, running, walking, researching.  Most days come with a little breakthrough or two, as if the source of this work is undergoing (or undertaking) a stripping-away process that is subterranean for me, only making itself visible with conclusions.  Some may not make it to the installation, but they are conclusions when they are delivered.

I've felt low and worried the last day-plus, agitated and sad, overly tired.  I reflexively struggle against that - What's wrong with me? - as if any inner rumblings are the beginning of some kind of end.  Today those layers of emotion appeared in the work as if cleanly, exactly as I realized that the installation was at risk of becoming one-note.  So the internal shift was necessary, both to move the work and to recalibrate my expectations and wishes of life (and of myself).  These tiny openings snap shut quickly if I'm not hypervigilant, and always return to their starting position eventually, as emotional habits do.

I'm on vacation - started yesterday and go through Thursday - and trying to pepper studio time with not-the-usual things.  I walked the Park Slope flea market after the studio today, then sat in the open window of a Windsor Terrace pub-for-cool-ish-people and read the Sunday Times over niche beer, watching people in the street and intermittently making notes for the exhibit.  It's layers and layers and more layers.   Tangents.  It all just seems to make a return to this work.  So much of it will happen during installation in the gallery; I have to stay calm about that and remember that this is what I do; so much of it is trusting myself when that is precisely what it's taking me a lifetime to learn to do.

The work on the upcoming NurtureArt exhibit, titled fragments of our own, is coming along.  I'm surprised how much of the process is subterranean; I'm not making a lot, but a lot of ideas are surfacing that show the work is at work.

Moments ago, I was sorting through a random iPhoto collection that's long been awaiting sorting, and came across pictures I took at the Brooklyn College turtle pond in May.  They anticipate the floor drawings I started two or three weeks ago.  Below is one of each.

Turtle Pond at Brooklyn College, May 2013

Study #5, July 2013
Graphite on vellum; about 6.5 x 6"