A Call to Stop Thinking
In lieu of feeling
Perhaps to stop thinking is to feel.
Perhaps to feel is to embody.
Sometimes, I think too much. I am being called to lean into the unspoken. The grey, the uncalculated, the undefined.
Today is the start of my 4th week at Loghaven Artist Residency in Knoxville, TN.
In the afternoon I had a lovely studio visit with Kelsie Conley, Assistant Curator at Knoxville Museum of Art. I walked her through my art practice, academic background, what I have been getting into while at Loghaven and she asked me some really great questions about where I want to go next. I had loads of my black and white nude photography thumbnails up on all the walls and test prints on the tables because I am beginning to plot my first full photography book. I always describe my black and white nudes as my most intuitive work. I also often share the little insider that I began writing poetry in place of artist statements because of that work. I’ve never been able to describe that work in a straightforward manner because of my personal approach to it, but poetry came easy to me and that method stuck.
I really wanted some perspective from a curator on the institution level what I can be doing differently and what they look for. The answer was honest and simplified. Stay consistent, build relationships through studio visits rather than proposals, and try to see the hierarchy of artist to curator as more horizontal than vertical. I really appreciated Kelsie’s perspective as an active writer and former studio artist.
Where the studio visit ended was unexpectedly moving. After looking through my various works and installation videos and discussing my desire to continue making work inspired by Jamaican ancestry as an extension of Boonoonoonous, she made the most remarkable association. She found it interesting, beautiful even, that I literally can’t formulate the words for my photographic works. She drew connections between the way I spoke about the Jamaica ancestral work and my photography, feeling my heart and energy in those bodies of work as similar. She affirmed the beauty in being so in tune with my heart’s work that it can leave me speechless. She encouraged following the path less calculated and even less informed, she reflected on the power of being in these liminal spaces of knowing and not knowing yet feeling drawn.
I had goose bumps! In that moment I made a striking correlation between my black and white nude photography and Boonoonoonous. Both works, my current Alpha and Omega in my 15+ years of work are examples how I create by feeling first instead of thinking. As a conceptual interdisciplinary artist and lover of education and data it is easy to let those become the driver. Sometimes I can be quite meticulous in my collection and application of all the information. It’s how I create such layered works conceptually; and there is time for that. But sometimes I don’t need to think. Sometimes I don’t need to have all the data.
I never felt pressure to explain my nude photography work because it’s always been divine to me. An embodiment of my understanding of God’s greatest creation with light. With my Jamaica work, my data collection will always be limited because I’m dealing with people who have transitioned, spiritual practices that have conformed or shifted, and narratives that can’t be read but only experienced and felt to be understood. Both works force me to feel and be in the moment. Both works I don’t really prepare for because they drive me. I submit to them my body like a vessel here to transmit messages I don’t even fully comprehend; and I am fully okay with that. This is the definition of divine purpose driven work.
Wow. I had to take a minute because I have never formulated these words before and it’s literally bringing me to tears. I feel like I’m understanding myself and my practice in a whole new light.
I have to do what feels right. That I have understood and implemented that concept but I have only done that alongside calculated steps and strategy and personal KPIs. The real question is can I find safety in solely doing what feels good? I recognize my strategic and calculated nature makes me feel safe, another form of anxiety at play I presume? But what if the strategy was to release instead?
I’m being called to feel more than think. And I’m answering.
Peace + Love
Stephanie