April showers
On getting sick and what it means to be an artist
Down with the sickness
Late last week I started battling a pretty yucky cold. It seems like some vague mucas-y sickness seems to pop up about once a year now for me, which is getting annoying. I always get frustrated with dealing with a sickness, it never seems to come at a good time. I’m very thankful that it was something minor and that I was able to get a paid day of sick leave, but I unfortunately had to miss the Passover Seder with my partner’s family that I was really looking forward to. There’s always next year though ❤️
There’s always a lot of feelings that come with getting sick. I get frustrated with myself, assuming I didn’t do enough to prevent this (I should’ve been masking at work, why don’t I take vitamins, etc). I get bored, especially when no one is hopping on a discord at 2pm on a Saturday because I have nothing else to do except go on my computer. I start to think “well I’ve got a bunch of free time; I should be doing creative stuff like writing” but naturally I don’t have the energy and that makes me feel guilty. I get a little sad, feeling almost childish that I just want someone else to take care of me instead of having to figure out how to do it for yourself. There’s of course the FOMO, I make so many plans for myself and I hate to have to miss them. But I take the time for myself, I slow down and eventually I’m thankful that I did slow down and give myself time to recover.
Coming out of it on the other side, I am grateful that I got to take some time to just rest. Forced relaxation is good, I don’t take enough time for myself to just slow down a bit. Being able to sleep for most of a day guilt-free is pretty nice. One highlight of the weekend was when my partner came by to drop off some homemade motza ball soup and mashed potatoes. Eating those leftovers made me feel so taken care. Also, I got to watch two lighthearted comedies this weekend. I watched The Jerk and Top Secret (rip Val Kilmer) and I highly recommend both of them!
Now that I’m on the mend, I’m especially thankful for my health. Going forward, I’m going to start masking up again in public spaces. I started to fall out of masking for a bit because I ran out of KF94 and couldn’t afford to buy new ones and then once I could afford it I just didn’t. There’s still a lot of sickness around and it’s clear that the US Government will help protect us (thanks RFK Jr.), and we have to do what we can to protect our communities. It’s something small that does a lot, so I encourage everyone to continue to mask up if you can.
Redefining your artistic practice
A couple years ago, I was seriously considering getting an MFA. A lot of my post-grad years were filled with imposter syndrome. I felt like I wasn’t doing enough as a filmmaker, constantly comparing myself to others. I felt like my career was languishing and that I wasn’t creating enough, that if I didn’t make something of myself as a filmmaker soon, that the vague opportunity of being an artist would disappear completely and I would live some depressing, unfulfilling life. I had a chip on my shoulder that I had to “do something with my life” but I had no clue what that “something” actually was. I was asking myself what my artistic practice and purpose were and I figured more school would answer that question for me. Luckily, I decided against it for the time being, as I didn’t feel comfortable commiting to something as long-term as an MFA. Well, I mostly didn’t want to commit to living in Virginia that long.
As I have contemplated these questions and consumed more of the world around me, I became inspired by others that have helped me reshape what it means to be an artist. They are
of Pedestrian, who turns walking into his artistic practice, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, the New York City Department of Sanitation Artist-in-Residence, and Gou Miyagi, Japanese skateboarder extraordinaire.In Alex Wolfe’s newsletter “Pedestrian”, he writes about the art of walking, of being a pedestrian. In a modern world designed for cars that spreads people further and further apart, pushing people to the margins, walking is a radical act. Modern American society is so fast-paced and walking gives us an opportunity to slow down, to appreciate the finer details.
Getting into his work has given me a much larger appreciation for walking. I’ve always been pretty invested in urbanist ideas (I often joke that not getting a license until 22 is what radicalized me), but he doesn’t just use this letter to spout off dreams of an idyllic walkable city that we may achieve someday. He writes about what its like to walk somewhere now, what you pick up on, what you may reflect. He hosts group walks and tackles larger-scale projects like walking the entirety of Long Island, from Brooklyn to Montaulk, but he presents them accessibly, without any crunchy pretention of an outdoorsy through-hiker. He walks where people aren’t “supposed” to, along busy roads or other inconveniences and reflects on how that makes him feel. It feels incredibly present.
I particularly liked his 7 day pop-up newsletter “Lotusland” that he did in 2023 chronicling his 7 walks around Los Angeles. A city that is infamously “unwalkable”, or so many claim, as it is so clearly built for cars. It’s refreshing to follow his journey as he gets the know the city on foot: climbing the hills, chatting with locals, eating the food. It’s a really delightful read.
Mierle Laderman Ukeles is an artist most known for her manifesto Maintenance Art Manifesto 1969! Proposal for an exhibition “CARE” and for being the New York City Department of Sanitation Artist in Residence. I’ve been drawn to her work for a while now, what I find most interesting is the conversation her work has over the definition of art. She has been defined as a performance artist, environmental artist, feminist artist, but she has stated she most prefers to just be known as an artist.
She main thing she wants to talk about is the invisible labor of the world, the “maintenance”. To her, it’s the work of a housewife or of a public servant. My favorite line of her manifesto is “The sourball of every revolution: after the revolution, who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning.”1 She says she wrote the manifesto “out of a sense of great desperation”2. She graduated from art school and was a mother now, mostly focusing on keeping up a home. She was pondering her role as an artist. She talks about how there is so much outward stress on creation, but invisible pressure to maintain, “show you work--show it again/keep the contemporaryartmuseum[sic] groovy/keep the home fires burning.” She touches on a stress we can all relate to, to balance everything, to juggle a million plates in order to show accomplished we are while somehow keeping it all together. Her work is characterized by cleaning, dusting, scrubbing. It’s manual labor, it’s something we’re all familiar, that we all dread, that we don’t value enough.
I find this manifesto to be particularly inspiring and interesting. I can definitely relate to the desperation she felt when creating this. Art school is a wonderful environment that fosters creativity, having the space to be surrounded by artists and create art, but then after that you’re thrown into the real world and suddenly everything gets in the way of your art. She couldn’t focus on her artistic output because she had to focus on real life (raising children, maintaining a home), and realized that this focus was the artistic output. I really admire her for carving her own niche, creating her own space in the art world, because no one else will do that for you.
I just stumbled upon Gou Miyagi through my instagram reel recommendations, was almost serendipitous. It was some clips of his part in Rob Taro’s TIMESCAN 2, and they were some of the most original, out-of-the-box, innovate skateboarding I have ever seen. He challenges every preconception you may have as to what skateboarding is as a sport. It’s more than just getting the most kickflips, spinning the most off a pipe. It’s an artform. It’s a conversation with the world around you. He approaches a wall, pops his board up into a wallride with a handstand and keeps tumbling into a somersault while his board slides down and he lands on his back and rolls down. In his TIMESCAN 2 part, he skates the seemingly unskateable. He runs up to a rail in the middle of a grass-y patch, tightrope walks across it, then drops onto the board and 50-50’s back down. You just have to see it to truly grasp how stylish it is.
In a time where skateboarding is getting more and more sweaty with addition to the Olympics, it’s really refreshing to see someone approach it as the counterculture artform that it started as. I never was really great at skating, I can barely ollie or drop-in, but I’ve always loved the culture. It’s nice to see someone doing it for the love of the culture and seeing the love he gets back from the culture.
One of the most beautiful things featured in his TIMESCAN 2 part is the consistent shots of Gou picking up trash or wiping off the rails. He has such respect for the space around him. It has served him for this part, and he wants to serve the space back. He mentions in a Thrasher interview that a lot of the places featured are just spaces he gets to go to on the way home from work. He talks about how much he cares for these spots, how he doesn’t want to lose them so he shepherds the area. His unique style is also shaped by this philosophy “when I am sliding down handrails on my butt, I do this focusing on wipe cleaning the handrail with the fabric of my pants, and I feel this trick straightforwardly accomplishes leaving the spot cleaner than before I arrived”3.
There’s something beautiful about how all three of these people approach art. There’s a lot of deliberate care for the world around them in all of their practices. The idea of understanding what matters to you most and what you want to say. All of their art practices are rooted in repetition too, whether that’s just putting one foot in front of the other (I think of the consistent laps I like to take when I take my daily walks), the wiping and re-wiping that comes from consistent cleaning or the hours of trial and error spent trying to land one specific trick on a skateboard.
Learning of all of these artists and pondering their art has done a lot for me in re-contextualizing how I approach the world as an artist. I’m a filmmaker, but I’m more than that too. Is this blog part of my practice? Is my toilet instagram part of my practice? Is riding my bike part of my practice? It all can be if I wanted it to be. An artistic practice is an amorphous concept, never needing to be tied down; what makes something artistic is the mindfulness attached to it.
I’m in a much better spot now than when I was first grappling with this post-grad imposter syndrome. I still don’t fully know how to define myself as an artist, but I’ve become a lot more comfortable with that, and I’ve realized I do not need to define myself around some vague timetable of success. Knowing this helps me break down whatever barriers or preconceived notions I have on what I need to be doing to live a fulfilling life.
Recommendations
Before Gary Numan: How Synth-Pop Became Synth-Pop Revisited, Trash Theory - Lately I’ve been on a huge music youtube kick. It’s a fun way to fill up time, and I particularly like this guy, learning more about my favorite artists or genres and feeling cooler for it. I particularly like this video, every song referenced can be compiled into one of most fun playlists ever.
Mouthwashing, Wrong Organ - If you’re a fan of psychological horror, I highly recommend this. The aesthetic is amazing, with unique, crisp, stylized graphics and a deeply affecting story. It feels like the first true successor to Hideo Kojima’s atmospheric masterpiece PT. It’s rather short too, I finished it in about 2 hours, which is a huge plus for me honestly. I’ll probably be replaying it soon.
Facebook Marketplace - I’m trying to make my primary social media time browsing marketplace. It’s the funniest website ever. I’ve found an Austin Powers Heinekin cardboard cutout for $40 in Malvern, PA. A custom 1998 Chevrolet Astro Cargo Minivan painted like the Mystery Machine for $9,000 in Friedens, PA. I bought a copy of Metal Gear Solid 1 for original Playstation from someone who turned out to work at the same place as me. It was exhilarating to walk through my building with a copy of MGS and read the little booklet during work hours like a kid riding home from Best Buy.
Manifesto For Maintenance Art 1969!, 1969 - Mierle Laderman Ukeles, https://www.wikiart.org/en/mierle-laderman-ukeles/manifesto-for-maintenance-art-1969-1969
Tohu Podcast: A Conversation with Mierle Laderman Ukeles, 2020 - Spotify, https://open.spotify.com/episode/1zoHYgYQNVHQOFOqCKfG9l?si+gsvEjM_MSOCkHPli4hrPDw
Meeting Mr. Miyagi: Gou’s Return to the Spotlight, 2023 - Rob Taro - Thrasher Magazine, https://www.thrashermagazine.com/articles/meeting-mr-miyagi-gou-s-return-to-the-spotlight/
Thanks for the kind words, EV. I'm glad my work means something to others.