Pumpkin Seeds, Research, Broken Clavicles, and Ed West

Last Wednesday was mildly epic both for the mind and the body.

Had a lovely chat with Ed West concerning IP and life in general.

Highlights from the conversation include, but are not limited to:

• me being in a mode of production when I have not played around enough with the different possibilities of creation
• "varnishing everything the same way doesn't make them related"
• What I am essentially doing is a system of edits - a million different variations of how I can edit and bring things together.
• perfecting the level of my craft - cleaner, tighter, straight lines when necessary
• Being an artist or the "clever girl at the party" - love this man.

We also discussed artists for me to look into. I am utterly embarrassed and in disbelief for not knowing Barbara Kruger's work immediately...or having her in mind while making my cards. Ed also pointed me in the direction of surrealist poets (making connections between the seemingly disconnected).

So I headed to the library and got books relating to these artists.

• Barbara Kruger
  
  "JAM LIFE INTO DEATH"
• Jenny Holzer - "Truisms"
• Andre Breton
• William Burroughs

After all this mental stimulation I decided to get myself into a little biking accident Wednesday night and broke my clavicle (Note to self: Don't try to eat sandwiches while biking. In the end Jimmy Johns just isn't worth it). This gave me a lot of down time over this weekend to read these books, but it also gave me little ability to actually create anything.

When I got back in the studio today...I felt liberated (not tied to the rules I created for myself), but also clueless of what I "should" be doing. I began making prototype books using the same text that I used for the cards...some are blank just with title text, others are pamphlet style and have one line of text on each folio (leaving room for image, if needed).

The three pamphlets

"fourteen people within four months"

Different things people said with the date.

"thirteen people within twenty-eight square miles"

descriptions of details of people that I've seen in ann arbor

"eighteen attempts with zero success"

one man's horrible attempt to hit on me while I was reading my book at a coffee shop. my dialogue wasn't even necessary to communicate the tone of the conversation.