It's taken until my very last day out here for all the thinking, working, writing, worrying, reading, walking, looking, and the rest to congeal into the feeling I am going home refreshed.  I'm not sure a vacation has ever taken so long to sink in; then again, I've never been crushed by the particular challenges that have been crushing me.  (Or had to work so many hours teaching and editing while on vacation.)

I am so, so satisfied to see that the drawings are starting to suggest their next direction.  It's a feeling I've not had in a long, long time, and it is such a relief.  I'm luxuriating in it, allowing it to develop of its seeming-own accord while I work.

My students are expressing curiosity about the nature of inspiration.  (I actually detest the word.)  I've been sharing Picasso's perspective - that it exists but has to find you working.  It's a perfect description, yet I've not been living it.  In working steadily for just these two weeks, it has returned to felt experience.



Office of George J. Stretch, Ocean Beach, Fire Island

I'm wrapping up my time on Fire Island, ready to be going home.  The weather has been gray and rainy more than not over the two weeks, and it's starting to take a toll on my mood.  I'd rather be in Brooklyn at this point, back with my home and cats and Prospect Park, than with the beach a two-minute walk away, but not really available.  I have worn shoes less than a single day while here, and I will miss barefootedness.
I spent today on a new drawing and need to add a third word to my two-word statement:  essence.  Each piece needs to be built of as little as will hold it up. (And built is specifically apropos.)  Anything more dilutes, muddies, distracts.  None of this is new realization, but in returning to the studio after a period of absence or distance, it is a relief.  Like I recognize myself and can accompany myself moving forward.  The necessity is to keep working and defending the time.  The drawings have something, yet want something.  If I bring a freshened connection to the work home with me, and build on it, I'm satisfied.  The work is such a solace, yet equally a source of discomfort.

A teensy spider took a hike on my drawings, then up a spool of thread.

Spider, Thread, Planes in Japan Post-Tsunami
(thread, vellum)

The Ocean Beach Parking Lot

I've been on Fire Island now for more than a week - the most incredible gift of time I could ask for.  My intentions were for this to be a self-created residency; my applications were not accepted. The immersion of a residency isn't possible (so the word itself is a stretch), as I am teaching an on-line course and have other work that must be done, but the amount of time that I can call my own is generous.  I've been wanting to write here, but always finding the time better spent, whether working in my makeshift studio, reading, or just being on vacation.  I try to accept that I need to restock if I'm to produce, so have allowed restocking to find its form.

Yesterday I walked from Ocean Beach to the Fire Island Pines, with a detour through the Sunken Forest and the paths of Cherry Grove.  How often are we truly, truly alone without any sense of what the next few minutes will bring, yet not anxious?  It's early in the season here, and so I had long stretches of true solitude - on the beach, in the forest, on the town walkways.   Incredible!  I'm glad to be comfortable in my own company, while realizing I don't necessarily need to be solo for the rest of my life.

I brought materials to continue with the vellum and thread.  As it turns out, the 19x25" format hasn't worked.  I don't see them resolving and stored them away for awhile.  I brought the 9x12 pad and have completed (I think) two drawings.  While at first it was essential that the photos I worked from be my own, without thinking I moved to images from the Japan earthquake and tsunami.  I was amazed at how quickly this moved from the front page.  Our memories are so short; we move so quickly to the next thing

Making the drawings, I keep thinking of fragility and impermanence and see that those two words are as complete an artist statement as I may ever write.  Anything else I have to say is in reaction to - or layered upon - those ideas.

Other awarenesses:

• Unless I'm working for someone else (students, money), I always think I should be doing something else.
• By limiting my applied vocabulary to line with these drawings, I limit my subject matter to the man-made.  I don't know what to make of that.
• I'm not applying for anything until my studio feels active and I feel like I can argue on my own behalf.  My short-term goal is to work only.  I want to update my Web site by Labor Day to coincide with the exhibit at Gallery Korea.  C'est tout.

I'm reading The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen and will write about that tomorrow or so, as I have much to say.

Cottage Walk

I now take two-month breaks from this blog.  I think about writing and wish my head were filled with the ideas and questions that take shape here, but my studio is still and I'm in a rut.  My climbing-out strategies include a private writing exercise, so this blog waits.  And judging from the struggle I'm in with myself, it could wait awhile.  Then again, all it takes is one shift in one moment and I'll be back.  Soon, I hope.

It has been a long while since I wrote, though I've been working in the studio as steadily as life allows.  On February 25, news of a death came suddenly and opened an enormous, painful void that just knocked me down.  He was a parental figure, a man who taught me about unconditional love and the nature of family and generosity.  He made things possible for me - both tangible and dynamic - and was a blessing in my life.  The loss undid me.  For most of my adulthood I identified myself by my losses, as if that sum were all I added up to, because that's all I felt.  I don't live that way any more, thankfully, but this loss activated the old ones.  It also shone a light on a current situation, and I was reeling.  I felt invisible, and turned fully inside.  Only when I allowed myself to reach for the resources that could help did it start to turn, and now, almost a month later, I'm vertical.  Changed and sad, but vertical.

I've continued with the thread-and-vellum drawings, working from photos.  The 19 x 25" format was a good move.  At first I kept doing what I was doing in the 9 x 12" format: just building the fragments in a much vaster space.  But something felt off, though ... incomplete.  It was only this weekend that their lack of tension, or punch, became clear to me.  They are inert; they don't get anywhere.  So now I can return to the several I have and view them as starts.  Of course, all of this perfectly parallels my return to verticality.

The weather has kept me from running for more than a week, the longest break since I got my rhythm back. I can do the cold, but less so the snow, which is piled high, and, worse, the ice. I haven't even tried to find my car beneath it.  I'm meditating spottily.  What I'm doing with utter consistency is wrenching myself around in my own head so that my default position is what I'm not getting done, not feeling, not succeeding at.  My thinking is like an obstacle course, or maze.  What I can say is, I keep trying.  I am nothing if not tenacious, even as my fear is that the struggle is just spinning wheels, no traction.  I know that's not true, but my psyche is doing its own thing and I spend a lot of time and energy wrestling with it.

At the same time, I'm doing a better job of disciplining myself so that work stays in the week and the weekends are free.  I'm overextended with the work I've taken on; containing it makes for very long weekdays.  The freedom of time on the weekends has its own perils, but is of course necessary.

So I am starting this Monday here.  These small acts of self-preservation are crucial.

My work has tended to strengthen as I yield to my innate sensibilities and use materials to pull them into being.  Something different is going on, and I'm having to resist the habit of dismissing the literal.  It began with finding photographs I took many years ago, before I was making art, and being struck at their aesthetic and conceptual consistency with what my work has come to.  My sensibility is already there, in them.  That led to using them for new thread-and-vellum drawings.  Here's a studio (i.e., amateur) shot of the first one, with a detail:

Liz Sweibel, 2011

Liz Sweibel (detail), 2011

It's all there:  the space, the structure, the weightlessness, the translucency, the process, the intention.  They do what I need my work to do:  slow me, keep me present so I can reach back to move forward, find the perfection in imperfection, build through repetition, allow for the slightest of means, hide nothing, leave room.

I have about ten now, all 9 x 12 except the one above, which is an inch or two smaller and more squared off.  I want to work on larger sheets (now that's new); this particular Canson vellum only (!!!) goes up to 19 x 24.  I'm very particular about the color and texture of the surface, so will sacrifice scale if need be.  I'm researching supplies, including colored vellum (!!!!!).

Here's the second drawing and a detail:

Liz Sweibel, 2011

Liz Sweibel (detail), 2011

I've started taking new photographs, and Thin Ice is from one of those.

Liz Sweibel, Thin Ice, 2011

Liz Sweibel, Thin Ice (detail), 2011

I went for a gorgeous run in the park yesterday.  I planned to go again today but prepping for the start of classes tomorrow ate my weekend whole, despite my intention to get my work done so I'd have studio time this weekend.  Next weekend, definitely.

The swan family is still intact, and the signets are still carrying some baby feathers on top.  I don't know why this surprises me.  I couldn't get all six in one photo, since dad (I assume, given my dad) was off doing his own thing.

Five ...

... Plus One

I've been keeping up with my applications, though admittedly my goals are modest.  Working on a statement for the Saltonstall Colony, I actually had a kind of epiphany:  a burst of understanding about how my work conflates (parallels? expands?) facets of my personality and pursuits.

The bolt hit when I was trying to articulate the role of restraint in my work - and like a flash seeing it as an act of generosity.  Holding back can maintain and protect a space, which means it can allow (wait?) for something or someone to enter.  Psychotherapy comes to mind, as technique.  (I love In Treatment, and am going to catch up on some episodes when I finish here.)

Holding back is different from withholding, which is rooted in anger (and fear); my father could be guilty of that.  Withholding is selfish, so that would make the two opposites.  They take opposing approaches to creating distance, one offering possibility and the other taking it away.  Where does this inclination live?  How deep?  Can a person change?

While this might not seem like an earth-shaking observation (my insecurity about stating the obvious as if it were a deep insight), something has come into juxtaposition that I don't think I understood as clearly before.  I've carried around a fear that I'm selfish, instilled by my father.  I've had to work to uproot that, which meant learning enough about myself to know whether he was right (he wasn't) or projecting (he was).

Perhaps without consciousness I've feared the restraint in my work has its roots in hostility.  (It doesn't.)

In continuing to set up my better studio I unearthed old family photographs that match the stories in preceding posts:  my mother's last Thanksgiving in the park, the palm tree where she carved my father's initials after his death, more. It was heart-wrenching.

I discovered a random, noteworthy measure of our priorities, for lack of a better word.  Every morning I open the Animal Rescue site and click to make a free donation (oxymoronic, I know). (One day I hope to see Glenwood on the home page, as I submitted her story.)  Then I click along the tabs left to right:  Rainforest, Literacy, Child Health, Breast Cancer, and Hunger.

At the start of this new year, the site reported the total number of clicks for each tab in 2010.  The differences were such a surprise.

• Animal Rescue:  72,170,000
• Rainforest:  10,446
• Literacy:  411,552
• Child Health:  668,061
• Breast Cancer:  2,112
• Hunger:  53,800,000

I like January 1 ... the whole idea of a fresh start.

Art biz coach (Alyson B. Stanfield) offers some good tips, most recently advising a year-end stock-taking of accomplishments and plans moving forward. I am expert at downplaying achievements and challenged to set goals, so am giving it a public whirl.

Accomplishments in 2010: Attended the Selling Your Work Online workshop at NYFA in March, and listened. Also in March, was invited to develop a group exhibit proposal with Yoon Cho and Priscilla Stadler (Just a Moment). Relaunched my Web site in July. Showed my video and digital images for the first time in Ekleksographia.  Reinvigorated my studio practice, in part by leaving my full-time job at the Evil Empire in late August. Returned to running two to three times weekly. Reconnected with two friends from grad school, Paula Wood and Kirsten Reynolds in September. Posted new drawings to the Viewing Program at the Drawing Center in November. Spent time with my Boston art community in December (Diane Ayott, Susan Scott, Kathleen Connolly, Mary Bucci McCoy, Barbara Grad). Set up a much better studio at home, with the help of family and friends. Contacted the Drawing Center for a critique. Accepted by Gallery Korea for a group show in 2011. More generally: applied for more exhibits, grants, and residencies; persisted in my work; wrote in this blog.

Goals for 2011: [Goals should be observable. Some of mine aren't.  Oh well.] Do a residency. Have a critique at the Drawing Center. Continue to improve marketing and networking. Spend more time in the studio. Continue running. Restart meditation. Practice what I preach.

I started rereading Thoughts Without a Thinker on the subway today, which was the catalyst for my starting a meditation practice several years back. Even better, I sat for the first time in months.

Two trajectories are defining my days – one pulling me forward to my work, and the other pulling me down and away.

The first:  I let go of rules I’d made about how to have a studio in my home and asked my brother to put up drywall over my (plaster) foyer walls.  Such permissions sound simple in retrospect; this one took more than two years.  And it closely followed December 11, the anniversary of my mother’s death.  Now, with wall space in addition to my huge table (the envy of all), I have a workable studio.  A few days ago and perhaps synchronously, I was notified that my work will be shown at Gallery Korea in 2011.

At the same time, I feel a malaise that I attribute to a kind of middle-age exhaustion.  I’ve read that this time of life can bring a loss of optimism, idealism, possibility.  I’m struggling with that, because those qualities are fundamental to my character.  I feel betrayed, confused, and frightened by how unfamiliar I can seem to myself.  I’m disallowing my natural responses to the world.  They cost too much, cause too much disappointment.  The tide and the odds are pushing too hard against me.  The word jaded comes to mind, but I reject it.  Tired, yes; beat up, sometimes; down, often.  Those are passing; jadedness seems permanent.

Interestingly, my malaise lifted temporarily while watching In Treatment a couple of nights ago.  The premise of psychotherapy is that each person’s pain is valid, that the moment-by-moment events of a life have weight, and that it is worthwhile – arguably necessary – to look at them.  I’m grateful for the reminder that my sensitivities are intact, if clouded over, for now.

I took this photo of my mother at Hogback Mountain in Vermont in August 1982.  I don't recall anything about the trip, but my family rented a great farmhouse in nearby Marlboro for three or four summers around 1970.  Her expression seems to hold those memories and the painful two years since my father's death, as well as a sadness I always see in her eyes.

When I wrote on the anniversary of her death, I mentioned her father's depression.  (Christopher Payne's book of photographs, Asylum, just shot to mind.  I want it.)  It was severe, and he was hospitalized more than once.  She didn't much talk about her childhood, but she did tell me of a day when her father asked her if she was his daughter, after a hospitalization and electroshock therapy.  How excruciating for a child, to become unfamiliar to a parent.  All I remember is him sitting in silence in a chair in the sun by the window, in an immaculate short-sleeve white dress shirt with his newspaper and cigar.

Mom was much younger than her three siblings.  My sense is that her childhood was a hard-to-reconcile combination of love and neglect.  (Mine too, differently.)  Mom was the first to die; only the oldest, Harriet, survives.  She is 93.  Her and Mom's relationship was confused, as Harriet was 13 years older and had parental responsibilities she never quite shook.  My mother struggled to separate from Harriet, made more difficult by them both being artists.  It's interesting to compare their work; both were abstract painters, heavily influenced by Hofmann, Picasso, and Matisse.  Where Harriet's work is cerebral and linear (she's said to me so many times, It's all about space, Lizzie), my mother's was figurative.  For me, the difference matches the differences between their personalities.

Oh Lord.  I just previewed the post and saw the date.  It's my father's birthday.  He would be 82.

While I'm haunted lately, I'm also detached.  Two anniversaries haven't registered until triggered the day of.  Near misses.  Rather than anticipate the anniversaries, as I did for years, I'm flirting with the anticipatory guilt of missing them.  I have some of my mother's journals.  In one she wrote that guilt is the only man-made emotion.

This charcoal hangs in my living room.  Its clean lines are uncharacteristic of her work (brushier, looser, more exploratory than known), but it's a great drawing.  I see I'm reflected in it, which seems apt.

Untitled (The Fat Lady), Patty Sweibel

Another Anniversary

On May 28, the day before the 30th anniverary of my father's death, I wrote a post about him, and noted my intention to write about my mother.  I'm a little embarassed to say that, until a little while ago, I was unaware that today is the 24th anniversary of her death.  How I became aware is one of those mysteries of synchronicity.

I went running this morning; the lake is starting to freeze.  Gazing out at it, a voice behind me said "Wow, is the lake frozen?"  I turned to see a boy of about 12 or 13 with his skateboard.  "Not all the way through, just in spots," I said.  His response?  "I go away for a week and everything changes."  Well, that was a little breathtaking.

Over the brunch ritual that follows a weekend run, I began reading about Lily Rabe, the daughter of David Rabe and Jill Clayburgh, in last Sunday's Times.  When I read that Clayburgh died November 5, my breath caught.  I've had Jill Clayburgh and my mother on a parallel plane since An Unmarried Woman.  I got very emotional and then just knew today is the anniversary.

I remember Mom being very moved by the movie.  She must have related to Clayburgh's role as a woman trying to solidify her identity apart from her marriage.  While the character was divorced and my parents were together, my father was a dominating presence and the times were such that women stayed home and raised the kids.  My mother was a painter, though, and needed more.  My father encouraged her, but also wanted dinner at 6 pm, his independence, and his way.  In other words, he wasn't about to babysit the four of us while my mother painted.  He wanted to ride his motorcycle.

(Ours Was Off-White)

The struggle between convention and desire was an undercurrent in our household.  Within the suburban model of that era, my family was a bit other.  We had a Jeep Wagoneer in the late 1960s when all the other moms were driving hideous station wagons.  My mother was "seeing someone" way before therapy was common practice.  There she found her voice, which she promptly used to tell my father (loudly) that she was not just his wife and a mother but a painter, dammit, and she needed a studio.  I know this because I heard her from my bedroom on the third floor with the door closed; they were in the living room.  My father cleaned out a room for her to use as a studio within days.  It could be hard to tell, but I know he really loved her.

My mother's strength and self-doubt were roughly of the same caliber. (That may be common among artists; the doubt propels the work.)  As a child of the Depression and her father's depression, I suspect she had a lot more in her adult life than she ever imagined in some ways, and less than she wanted in others.  Jill Clayburgh's character lit up the gaps and the struggle, and that must have shook Mom up.  Had she had more time, I think she would have filled many of them, and it's heartbreaking she didn't get the chance.

I have struggled with this post for a long time (and accept what that signifies), and it's still not there, but it's not going to get any closer.  This drawing of my mother hangs in my dining area; it's signed Amie '61.

Patty Sweibel
March 17, 1931- December 11, 1986

When I returned to the vellum-and-thread drawings today, I saw a note I made last time:  same thing holds them together as tears them apart.  In my Drawing Center portfolio, this got translated to vulnerability and strength seem to come from the same source.  The two are not synonymous, but I think I thought they were at the time and must have been trying to transform the rawness of the first phrase into something more refined.  Why?  There's something self-destructive about my original phrasing, reminding me of Dana Schutz.  It's about being one's own worst enemy and best friend.

Dana Schutz, Self-Eater, 2003

Dana Schutz, Feelings, 2003

Some of these drawings reveal rules as I work on them.  Sometimes it's necessary to use just the length of thread I started with, and stop whenever it ran out.  It would have been a lie to start another.  We can't always foresee what we'll need, especially when we act without a plan; we lose some chances as life moves along, while finding others; and we don't get do-overs.  We make do with what we have, and the limits of making-do press on us to be creative - or at least accepting.

Today's run felt almost wintery.  The wind was up in Prospect Park and the sky was turning that could-snow gray, though it wasn't cold enough.  A few hard-core picnic-ers were out.  The leaves are down; just a few - mostly red maples, I think - still have a substantial number hanging on.  The birds in the lake were all tucked into themselves, bobbing out in the middle.  This year, I noticed a new bird late in the season; I'm not bird-savvy, but it could be a cormorant.

The leaves seemed to fall fast at Prospect Park.  When I went running Sunday it was still quite leafy and colorful; three days later, most trees are almost bare.  The swan family is still a unit; the four signets are almost full size, with only the top layer of wing feathers still brownish-gray.  They wander farther and more independently.  The day was colder, too, and windy, but clear and bright, and the run loosened my mind enough for me to feel - not just know - that tomorrow is Thanksgiving.  This was my almost-favorite holiday second only to my birthday; when I turned 50, Thanksgiving moved into first place.

I don't have many traditions in my life (distinct from rituals, of which I have many), perhaps an outcome of losing my parents so early.  Traditions in my extended family continued after their deaths, of course, but I was thrown so far out of orbit by the losses that I lost my sense of belonging.  Thanksgiving was also my mother's last holiday, in 1986.  She was very sick.  I believe she hung on just to celebrate it, because our family tradition had a lot of potency for us all.

In the mid-1970s, my father found a beautiful, small, off-the-path park while motoring up the Miami River in our runabout.  My parents started a tradition of having Thanksgiving there; we'd bring tables with cloths and real silverware (by car, not boat).  We had frisbees, whiffle ball, blankets to lounge on.  All of our Florida family and close family friends were invited.  It was a great time; the spirit of it was just right.  When my father died in 1980, his ashes were thrown in the river by the park, and my mother carved his initials into a palm tree by the shore.  No wonder she hung in there for a last picnic.  Her ashes are there now too.

I was living north of Boston and began my own tradition of ordering Thanksgiving pies from a farm in Ipswich.  The pies were great but it was equally the ritual of calling to order them on November 1 and making the beautiful drive north to pick them up the day before, alone.  I'd wander the bakery, looking at all the jars of things and dried flowers and petting the farm cats passed out in rocking chairs by the fire.  I'd go outside to look at the farm animals, then back in to warm up.  It was a tradition I loved, even though I was always sad doing it.

The first time I went back to Miami for Thanksgiving was in 2003.  I went to the "new" park, which the family had moved to for convenience.  I went to tell them I was leaving my marriage.  It was awful, actually, between the message I was bearing and the strangeness of what I'd hoped would feel familiar.  The new park was not Sweibel-style at all; it had thatched-roof huts, grills, picnic tables, bathrooms, lots of convenient parking, and a crew cut.  People make reservations.  We liked things more unruly.

Tomorrow I'll go to my cousin's in NJ, which has become a much-loved way to celebrate.

Just Last Night

Ann Waddell, Sacre Coeur Couple

Ellen Eagle wrote me that she'd found the work of Ann Waddell and the students she teaches (in Beijing), and was so enthralled she wrote Ann a fan note; I, in turn, was so enthralled I wrote Ann a fan note.  The photo above is from her blog, with the post:  "Seeing couples has made me a little sad lately...  It's good there are a number of things making me happy."

Reading last week's Sunday Times last night (how great that it lasts a whole week), I saw Sophia Coppola has a new movie, Somewhere. The review of Stephen Dorff's performance says:  "Without work to fill his days, Johnny is marooned on some inner desert island and has no idea how to get away....  When his exasperated ex suddenly dumps their 11-year-old daughter, Cleo, on him, he seems confounded.  But as he and Cleo spend time together, he rediscovers what it means to be responsible for someone else."

Also last night, I was listening to Sinead O'Connor's Theology (I prefer the London sessions) and reopened God's Silence, a book of Franz Wright's poems given to me by Justin Bigos over a year ago, which I still haven't finished.  Each poem is so full; I read some of it and become saturated, then the rest doesn't penetrate.  I reread and get maybe a line farther along then fill up again.  Some I can't seem to digest.  Something in them pushes on something in me very intimately and deeply; I'm being explained to myself in a new language.

The juxtapositions here, juxtaposed with changes in my family and friends, are asking me to check in with myself about my solitude, and whether or where or when it might become loneliness.  I spend most of my time outside the classroom alone, at least 75% of my waking hours.  I'm not lonely, with rare exceptions, but I am aware of an anticipatory loneliness.  I'm very aware of growing older.  Having God the overt subject of the music I was listening to and the poetry I was reading is so far from my ordinary experience it struck me, and made the question of earthly loneliness suggested in Ann's blog and the Somewhere write-up more poignant.  The role of work in my life is not so far from Johnny's.

While the number of things making me happy is substantial and the loneliness factor low, I'm not sure how I feel about growing old alone.  I love living alone - could imagine being in a committed relationship and still living alone - but am not sure I'll always want to be alone.  At 53 in New York City and not getting any younger, will I have the choice?

The paper attachments that showed up on the drawings last week feel to me like building; they suggest gutters or shelves - something architectural that holds or catches and perhaps clogs.  I'm piling small strips of paper in some of them.

This series increasingly seems like studies for work to be constructed, which is new for me (as is being without a studio ... not a coincidence, I'm sure).  In addition to working with the gutters, I'm making tears in the paper as part of the sewing-and-knotting process; the tears echo the cutting into drywall that I started in 2008 but haven't had space to pursue.

Liz Sweibel, 2010
Detail

Liz Sweibel, 2008

I can become intensely aware of my self as I work, and see myself execute these tiny, laborious, precise acts in a dogged, somewhat surgical effort to build a graceful, simple, secure place for valueless shards of paper and leftover thread.  I'm compelled to absurd acts of caretaking that are deeply meaningful for me; all my work bears traces of it.  Sorting through stuff on my studio table this morning, I found some notes from the proposal I wrote for the "Day Job" exhibit at The Drawing Center.

That job came to feel like the hollowest caretaking; no wonder my artwork suffered.  The irony, of course, is that the work I do with discards feels more authentic than the work I did at that college.  My notes say "College Inc.," a reference to a very disturbing Frontline segment.  The DOE's gainful employment crusade may be a too-broad attack on the for-profit industry (LIM, where I now teach, shares nothing with those schools), but if that's what it takes to protect people from being preyed on by scam colleges, so be it.

Onward

Smack Mellon has a one-year studio program I might not have applied for before the Governor's Island letdown, but some reserve of tenacity asserts itself, without my conscious help but with my gratitude.  I selected work for my application to document the potential of time in a "real" studio, so five of the images were sculpture and installation pre-studio-loss in 2007 and the rest digital images and drawings made since.  In fact four of the five recent pieces are from the last month-ish.  They seem to me to point to real space more compellingly than any of the collage series that have preceded them, and so I didn't fret over their newness.  The four I included are below.

Smack Mellon asked for a portfolio script, which turned out to be a wonderful experience of processing the ten works (in 50 words max per image).  The writing was illuminating as it covers pieces from 1998 to the present and had me making connections among them, while pressuring me for precision and conciseness.   It left me excited about this new work and its potential.  I now have three proposals out - the Millay Colony, Gallery Korea, and Smack Mellon - and feel the demons from the Governor's Island rejection are dismissed.

Liz Sweibel, 2010
Thread, colored pencil, vellum
6 x 4"

Liz Sweibel, 2010
Vellum
4 3/4 x 4 1/2 x 1/8"

Liz Sweibel, 2010
Thread, vellum
5 x 3 3/8"

Liz Sweibel, 2010
Thread, vellum
4 3/4 x 4

Another aspect of decision-making is timeframe; I keep decisions close to me and don't get too far ahead.  I don't trust myself to know what I'll want in the future, and fear getting trapped in something that's lost its appeal.  I live more reactively, making decisions when they're in front of me, more or less.

In art as in life:  My work is a process of immediate decisions that responds to what's actually there without a fixed (or any) vision of what will come of it.  I may end up with rubble but it's the only way I end up with work that surprises me.  The work takes the lead; I listen and follow.

About seven years ago, I was asked how decisions were made in my family.  I was leaving my marriage.  Two clear memories crystallized the whole issue and I could say without hesitating that decisions seemed to me to be inconsistent, compulsive, unexplained, autocratic.  I'm not a believer that kids should have an adult voice in all decisions or are entitled to know more than is appropriate for their age and rank, but I do believe their internal processes should be taken into consideration and treated with respect when decisions affect them.

When I was in fourth grade, I was invited into "fifth-sixth," which was a two-years-in-one class that combined the best and brightest from the four elementary schools in the area.  The hitch was going to junior high a year early, which was daunting.  My parents told me the decision was mine, and I took it seriously.  Riding with my mother in the car one day, I brought it up and said I still hadn't made up my mind.  She said, "Oh, we already accepted for you."

As I was graduating high school (I was 16, thanks to fifth-sixth), my father suggested I go to Europe between graduation and college.  While it was a cool offer, it came with no specifics, like how one did that or with whom.  I didn't have a clue, and didn't even know what to ask.  After some weeks passed, he told me the offer was off the table because I hadn't done anything to show I wanted to go.

In between those two events, my family moved from NY to Miami Beach (in the middle of tenth grade ... ouch), with little notice and no explanation.  I just thought my father wanted more sailing time and had come to an opportune time to leave the business he partly owned.  Well, he did want to sail more, but he was also in a bit of a squeeze and leaving town was the smart move.  Of course my parents couldn't share that with a 14-year-old, but the move came so suddenly and at such a pivotal time for me that the silence about why or that it might be hard for me left me feeling invisible and insignificant.

In making my work, I prefer decisions that are reversible, whether I can undo something or redo it. I tend to avoid setting up irrevocable, no-turning-back actions.  I relate that to these early experiences and doubts about my decision-making that I carry with me.  Also, nothing gets lost that way, which may be more to the point.  To make a decision that's irrevocable and erases other possibilities or existences is too much responsibility, too prone to regret or grief, too like the process that cost my family so much in Florida.

When I teach contemporary art history, I need to peel students off the idea that all art is self-expression in the therapeutic sense.  Yet the artist's self makes the decisions, and their patterns relate to something.  I'm reminded of Heide Fasnacht's comments about subverting the self, when I met her at Vermont Studio Center.  Do I do that?  Enough?