Introduction
Happy March! This month, we have updates from Leo and Warwick. Warwick also recently launched their own website, check it out here (link)! Our third collective member, Sophiko, is currently on sabbatical until April as she completes her international move. Thanks for reading!
Updates From Leo
I’ve discovered that it’s hard to feel motivated to work on art when you’re by yourself and busy with your job and not sleeping well and have to file taxes and are going to like eight different doctors because of the copious mysterious ailments that have been plaguing you over the past month. Life gets in the way, constantly. But this doesn’t mean I should stop making art, if anything it means the opposite. Life is always going to get in the way. And if I let it, the days will slip by and suddenly I haven’t made anything in months and because I am so out of practice, that it’s hard to get back in it so I give up because it’s too hard and then suddenly I’m 35 and alone at the kitchen table at 3am wondering if I’ll ever make something again. Okay maybe that’s a little extreme but the point is, I need to learn how to carve out time to create and actually stick to it, even if what I make is bad and never seen by anyone. This was why the collective was formed in the first place: to help each other stick to making art when we’ve lost the structure of school deadlines. But in the winter, we let things slip and suddenly it was March. This is my declaration that I am re-dedicating myself to the collective and our agreements. It's in published writing now so I can’t take it back!
This month I’ve been mostly focusing on projects for the graphic design class I’m auditing.
This class has been the perfect thing for me this semester. Without it, I would’ve likely allowed myself to be swallowed up by work and not resurfaced until late May. I like the class because it gives me parameters to work within and deadlines to meet but other than that, I can do whatever I want. I’m not worried about my grade or if what I’m doing fits into my major appropriately, I can make something completely stupid and it won’t affect anything but how the instructor sees me as a person. This freedom has really encouraged me to push myself creatively and come up with project ideas that make me laugh and keep me interested when the frustration of learning Adobe Illustrator sets in. Most of this month has been dedicated to a children’s book about a goose with human feet.
I think I need to find a way to set parameters for myself in my own practice so that I have a place to start when I’m not taking a class. I have to find a balance between no structure and too much structure, so that I don’t feel completely stuck. I also want to focus on finding ways that we as a collective can work on projects together. Whether or not the project itself is a group project or individual work, it’s helpful to have other people to talk through ideas with and help focus the energy on making stuff.
Updates From Warwick
If you’ve ever been in a critique with me, or really any studio setting, then you’ve heard my spiel about making art about joy and for the sake of it. I want to make fun, playful, happy work. I want to make work that celebrates the importance of love, joy, and memory. Joy as an act of community, an act of self preservation. Despite the hours I could spend talking about the importance of finding and choosing happiness, I’ve been finding it harder and harder to find the same spiteful dedication to joyful work.
Sometimes I think I’m a fundamentally unhappy person. It takes very little to tip me over the edge and it's hard to imagine myself sitting in the studio making “happy mugs.” I’m consistently angry. Who am I to think sitting in a studio making fun plates is somehow meaningful with everything wrong with this country? How am I helping? How do I help? No matter how much I try to think my way out of the spiral, it's an emotional descent, not a logical one. The only thing that seems to help is reconnecting with my community.
Over the past couple of months I have been collaborating with a few of my peers & students to create a quilt in response to the death of a transgender student in Oklahoma.
I don’t have the words to describe the devastation that hit me following the tragedy. I was still reeling over the anti-trans bills being proposed and passed around me when I lived in Missouri, and now I was hearing my students quietly say “they were my age.” I’m not sure if they looked to me for support, or if I placed that pressure on myself as a trans adult in their lives, or if maybe I just didn’t want to be alone. We mostly sewed in silence, a few words here or there, sometimes a light joke to break the tension. But mostly it was quiet. We sat and focused on each others company. The community quilt project felt like something tangible. Not world changing, not tragedy undoing, but nonetheless, real to us.
Thanks for Reading, see you at the end of April!
Love,
The Birdhouse Collective