6 crackers in a minute

There happens to be a myth that all people can only eat a maximum of six saltine crackers in one minute. The idea is that a person does not produce saliva at a fast enough rate to make the cracker powder into cracker paste that will go down easily. Nevertheless, people find some sort of satisfaction in trying to beat the impossible themselves. More often than not, the individual will even try to overindulge with the attitude that not only can the heshe beat this well-established trend, but heshe can in fact go far beyond the limit. 6 crackers in a minute is a piece about overindulgence. We push excess to the extreme in that bigger must always be better with an almost impressive ability to turn off our buffering censoring abilities. We reach a sort of absurdity in re-masking this idea of excess in a competitive realm. What are eating contests, and, seriously, why is that a good idea to eat competitively. What do we prove by winning? What skill set does that promote? Eating six crackers in one minute takes the competition further to a performance. There is also personal competition, and if the competitor is able to accomplish the task heshe wins praise and acclaim from the group.

The piece was physically rather harsh in performance. My face was red and scratched after the first time because I shoved crackers in my face so vigorously. I think this parallels the very real physical harms of overindulgence.

The first time this piece was performed in class, I thought that the critique aspect of the piece was just as interesting and could be considered part of the piece. People just wanted to join in and have an eating contest of their own. People wanted to nibble on the crackers.

Group Project Response

Although I tend to be more interested in how the brain determines our interactions and adapts to various aspects of society through psychology and neurology, I found research through sociological resources to be more appropriate.  Much of the time we spent together, it was to discuss the idea of “community” and discovery of each individual within the group.  Throughout the course of three weeks, we meet in various group patterns, such as two individuals for dinner or three that walked together.  Finally, the whole group met together for a lunch that was later repeated as a performance in class.     

To begin, the idea of “‘community’ is a good warm word frequently invoked by citizens, social workers, and politicians”.  This is something that humans desire to create a justification or even gratified experience toward the idea of belonging cooperatively to a society.  Customs and patterns of behaviors within a society not only serve as a ritual, but determine the social order.  Through the breakdown of these patterns, “‘society,’ [can become]… more ambivalent, invoking something elitist and exclusive.”  This leaves the “‘individual’ [to] often connote selfishness and bracketed with society” (Tuan).  Upon these different layers, I found applying them to our project can create various perspectives on how to understand what I saw as the collective underlying human condition through community, society, and the individual.

Community could serve on a national, even global platform, but for the organization within the group, it served as an educational system that determined our interaction as one unit.  Second, the society or culture built upon the materials for which we individualistically collaborated into one performance.  As individuals, we recognized different ritualistic patterns.  To serve as one community, the individuals were forced or willing subjected to perform in one instance.  These materials help to define the ritual of eating that was centered on the table or as it was in medieval times, the trestle table.            

The individual gives a light into what Tuan referred to as a view of “the existence of the world [held] within each character.”  Although society can build different meanings of the individuals as they individual is often seen as the break from the cooperative whole.  Complications can arise when society is to analyze to what extent the individual’s behavior breaks social order, whether it could be considered individualistic or deviant.  Overall, the project brings to question sociological ideas about our society that could be explored further.    

Tuan, Y.-F. (January 01, 2002). Community, Society, and the Individual. Geographical Review, 92, 3, 307-318.

AMHA: Crocs PetPeeve

This is a pretty straight forward installation. I line the sole of the crocs with pink bubblegum. The contrast of the Dark Blue crocs and the pink, I thought was most effective in showing my playful but true annoyance with crocs. The gum speaks to how crocs litter the boulder pathways with their artificial material and how they leave an irritating, sticky feeling to me.  

AMHA: Mask

The title says it all. Most of my personality is a mask and a false front. Having many thoughts, emotions and repressed feelings behind this mask, it allows me a false sense of belonging and acceptance in the world. It is made out of journal pages from my self-inquiry. Journaling is a tool for me to get beyond my mask self, and to look at the Divine as well as the evil that exist within myself. In seeing the truth about myself clearly and allowing others to see it as well, I feel is the only meaningful way to be. By creating cone shapes out my Journal pages I allow the viewer a portal into myself beyond my mask. They are allowed a glimpse beyond the imaginary front that I present to the world.

I was happy by the way it turned out, although I did not intend for it to be scary. But I later realized this scary repulsive image of my mask, is what believes to be protecting me from painful truths. I felt it was an accurate representation of defensive withdrawal, false superiority, intimidation and pride.

AMHA: Lightsteps

This installation speaks of a universal journey that everything takes towards realizing it’s true nature.  Being my first official installation work, there are many synchronicities with this new path I’m walking as an artist. I feel this symbolic representation of footsteps and candles leading down the cold concrete stairwell of the art building, is also easily relatable to other viewers. My intention with this installation was to inspire a remembrance in the viewer of their true nature. I hoped as students rushed by busily thinking of their next step, they would be confronted by deeper questions regarding their journeys. Where is it that we are going, and why? What is it that leads us to do what we do? For whom are we doing it? Is it for our selves, for money, for others, for recognition, or simply for the joy of it? Each must answer these questions for themselves and are free to interpret this installation from their own personal journeys. For me, it is a dedication to the holiest place inside all of those who have shared their wisdom and guided me on this lonely path.  It is dedicated to the imprints of light of others, that I take refuge in. It was especially inspired by an encounter with a beloved teacher, who has lit up my path towards love, light and my true nature. 

Besides not being able to light the candles inside the building, I thought this piece was a success. I would have liked to install a really long trail throughout the whole building or even outside. 

I Need a Hug

I Need a Hug:

For several months now, my work has slowly evolved into a vehicle for me to engage in a dialogue about loss in my own life. I have never had this before, but within my physical work, paintings and sculptures ect., I have a sort of mania. I keep revisiting certain motifs: trees and black birds.  Rather than seeking a finality or closure or catharsis, I am finally just able to extent this dialogue. Thank goodness!

Extending from some prose written last year (see bellow), this piece sits well within the discussion thus far. I felt incredibly vulnerable dancing in front of these symbols that I associate so much with my mother, and so I needed, and I still need, a hug. Hugs are support. Hugs are confidence. A hug is that needed breath to continue forward. The best hug in the world came from my mother, and I feel that similar embrace in the underbelly of a tree. That space becomes shrine, and it encapsulates me in a sort of womb, safety. I suppose that much of my work right now aims to try and recreate that bubble of calm. I am trying to make that space from my memory tangible.

The other exciting, and more logistical, part of this piece is that I have gotten my feet wet in using Final Cut Pro and iMovie. I have a humongous fear of technology, but I am really proud of how much I learned from this piece. I used a camera for the first time ever! I made a movie! I used stop-animation, and I figured out how to layer moving images. Major thanks go to Nick for your guidance!

A Memory from my Mother’s Garden:

Our land was a living and breathing entity. It was my anchor, a physical realm from which I could venture, like a new animal does his parents, and return safely. The yard in which I spent my child years wrapped me in the comfort of home more than the actual house ever did, and it is in remembering this place that I found peace and understanding. This place was human to me. It had character, and it had flaws. It had a simple and uncalculated beauty, and it was suffused with spirit. My mother threw life into these acres, but not the sort of prepackaged, emerald green that we associate with the manicured gardens of suburbia. Her land was full of freedom and a muted wildness. The air in this place caressed with more open quality, and the wind flowed. It carried a child’s imagination far away and then swirled the thoughts back to the safety of home. The wild grasses and the spindles of our gigantic spruce swayed in this wind.

In the space between the soft ground of decaying pine needles in clay and the underbelly of one great pine tree, my mind could be still. This was a more intuitive place. I was able to calm, and each breath of crisp, Coloradoan air revealed more than any conscious thought. This was a place of my youth; a place where understanding was less necessary, and the bubbles of the imagination became tangible. This place was my home.

Trees have always felt like an equalizing force to me, soothing and harmonious. We had the tallest trees in the neighborhood, and this wise, old pine breathed dreams and memories into my head. This tree, in particular, was the connector of our front yard to our back yard, if such distinctions could even be applied to the piece of earth our house sat upon. It strung together the stages of my life, connecting the wobbles of a toddler following a pair of gigantic hiking boots through its hidden shortcut for the first time, to a first kiss, to the struggles of a young adult, to tears near this womb’s end. This tree weathered the experiences that people brought to its feet over the years. It lived to bear witness, and, as if by osmosis, it absorbed those human emotions so that my mind could be still once more. I was thankful for the tree that took deep root in my mother’s untamed garden.

            During the stillness of dry January air, black birds flocked to this tree. Majestic, they floated through the world with a physical three-dimensional freedom. Miniatures of the planes that my mother flew, they returned safely to their mid-winter, spruce home during this month. Unafraid, they came close to my place at the base of the trunk, given plinths and vantage points from the skeletal arms of my tree. Their dark feathers revealed a deeply rich beauty of teal and magenta. The subtlety of their splendor was tinged with the sadness of their cry, a song that was so human. As if giving voice to their home, the black bird’s song spoke of eyes that have seen too much and echoed the long years and memory of the tree.

            Today, the glint of oil on those sumptuous feathers catches as I pass the dry, burnt red needles of my once spry home. One last black bird lays still, her neck at an exaggerated angle on her final bed of dry pine needles in Coloradoan clay. I close my eyes and am able to breath in the calm sense of freedom that still lingers on the wind of my mother’s garden. In a month, nothing will remain of the great tree that was the vessel of my youth but a stump and those spidery, deep roots.

Waltz for Narcissus

I love social dancing. Sometimes I am so awkward in social situations because I feel like language often fails as a form of communication for me. I don’t know what to say, or I have an intense fear of judgment. When I go out social dancing, however, I am able to engage in a more visceral form of expression with the people at the dance. There is no need to talk. Perhaps this is a more contrived type of communication, but it is so much easier and more natural. My native “tongue” is the Lindy Hop, just because swing is the type of music and dance with which I grew up. Within the history of black dance in America, I see a trend of taking parts of dances that have come before and reacting to the tone of those dances. So much of vintage swing, however, is parody. We poke fun at ourselves, the people around us, and also swing laughs so much at the other dances (or “languages”) that affect our own. Sometimes dancing fits with me so well, that I begin to lose my awareness of my partner. If there is a mirror (or not), I am frequently so happy dancing with only myself to the rhythm and tones of the music. From this history of mockery and from my own vanity, did Waltz for Narcissus originate. Sometimes the best dance partner in the world is myself, and sometimes indulging in that self-absorption seems like the only possibility. This piece is a practice in experiencing that luxury and excess and vanity; it is an outlet that breaths contrast into the other parts of life and allows space for humility in that disparity.