Giving and Thanking

We spent Thanksgiving at the Ranch, and friends of Ellen and David came to celebrate it with them. We were invited up to the main house to join in with the meal and merry-making. I took pan-baked brussel sprouts which were so yummy and got lots of compliments. Leslie Dick and her daughter were amongst the merry-makers and it was lovely to spend some time with them. Leslie was really impressed with husband too.

I omitted to mention that a couple of weeks back, the Semiotics class looked at Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida. Ellen asked me to choose the reading excerpts from the book for the class and to deliver my interpretation on the readings in class. It was a bit of an honor to be asked and a great experience. Of course, I got the pacing all wrong in my delivery but Ellen jumped in and helped me out when more explanation was needed.



I have had many, many meetings recently and I shall try to give some kind of a description of them. I met with Kerry Tribe, who is incredibly fast-talking, but charming, warm and gave some interesting thoughts. She was just around this semester as a one off and I regret not working with her more. Michelle Dizon is visiting faculty (Allen is taking a year out, Billy had this semester off and Kaucyila is having next semester off so there are lots of visiting faculty this year) and everyone adores her. She is extremely softly spoken, gentle, considered and polite. She seems to have a gift of being able to get into everyone’s headspace. I think CalArts should really make efforts to keep her. I had a wonderful meeting with her and really want to do an Independent Study with her next year. Martin Kersels has been a wonderful consoler, he’s great at bringing soothing and forgiving words to the situation when you think maybe your whole work is a big mess.

Although Leslie Dick has a brain as sharp as a tack our meetings feel like girly chats. By that I mean, I un-load my feelings of inferiority to her, she brings me uplifting and hilarious anecdotes, often very personal, as she is so wonderfully open. She said in one meeting that I was ‘smarter than 90% of the people here’, which I doubt, but I appreciated the sentiment. I give her my ideas, she builds on them and gives them back to me and I reciprocate. Leslie easily gets into my area of thinking, very much like Kaucyila, with whom I swap lines from 1940s musicals and film noirs. Kaucyila gets really invested in my work and to some extent a kind of defensiveness comes out sometimes when I tell her about my criticisms and discussions from others – comments like, ‘What is relevant about the 1940s to now?’ Kaucyila has given me a bank of quips to deal with such lines of thinking. Patrick Killoran met with me the other week and he saw my show last year. He came in and told me what a great show it was and gave me his read of that work. That started a really probing conversation about my work and as I was the last meeting of the day he talked to me for an 1 ½ hours instead of the allotted 45 minutes.

We had a lottery at the start of the semester for meetings with the visiting artists and I managed to get two – one with Marnie Weber and other with Joan Jonas. Here’s a thought I’ve been thinking: if I were studying in the UK, I wonder what artist’s names would come up most in my meetings. As I am here two LA-based artists crop up the most – Marnie Weber and Andrea Fraser. I was really excited to meet with Marnie, and she was very generous in our meeting and related my work to her work. Joan Jonas was nice, but she was pushed for time and essentially I seemed to tell her all about my work, she asked me further questions then just said, 'great'. The visiting artists have to meet you and perform in 45 minutes and that either works or it doesn't.

I love working with Natalie. I think Natalie and I have great rapport. And I think to work closely with someone on your work; you need to feel that you can trust them. Natalie is great at listening to me talk about my work then pointing out the flaws in my thinking. She spotted a huge flaw recently, around my preference for the still image in relation to issues around women in representation. She really encouraged me to look at that so I’ve been reading a lot of theory and writing my ideas down for her in order to really get a handle on what I think and why its relevant. I’ve been doing a lot of spider diagrams.

I talk with Ellen when we ride to and from school together. We talk about all sorts on the 40-minute commute, but my thinking on my work is one of the recurrent themes. She is really supportive, but she knows Natalie is on my ass so she gives me encouragement and we put our heads together and try to come up with some answers on my work. On the days that I do the commute alone I have audio books on my i-pod which Ellen gave me. It’s a wonderful way to read novels without looking at the pages. (I just finished Lolita read by Jeremy Irons – his dulcet British tones are soothing)

There is a lot of tension and stress floating around the MFA2 Art & Photo people. My support system is husband, the ranch and Lily. Husband copes really really well with the situation – I know many people are experiencing tough times in their relationships due to the stress. Not here. And that’s credit to Husband. Lily is the most kind, friendly and sweet natured Springer Spaniel. (Sometimes I just drive home praying she is at our place so I can give her a big cuddle. The other night she stayed the night here as she does sometimes. She stays on the sofa but manages to find her way onto our bed before morning.)

I was shocked to find out how many people are on prescribed medication for the stress. (It is very American to pop a pill if you are not brimming with happiness. I think that there is a huge pressure to live some kind of an ‘American Dream’ and if things go wrong psychiatrists use medication in the first instance. I find it all rather sad and feel very thankful I am a Brit and am allowed to be mardy sometimes. There is no friendly slang for being moody here and I think that is another symptom of what I am talking about. I miss the word mardy).

CalArts is all about the artists in different fields working under one rough in order to swap ideas and collaborate. Collaboration proper doesn’t happen all that often, but skill swapping and favours do. I’m really excited as I am getting singing lessons as I photographed a singer in 1930s style. I want to be able to sing for a video I am doing that will be in my thesis show – singing and dancing an excerpt of Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasures in Narrative Cinema. Also, I’ve put together some text to do with my cigarette cards/dancers project and I hope to work with a really sweet designer next semester to produce book(let) of the work.

Friday was the last Post Studio and the class went for a meal out together. I came back from the toilet and everyone had left! I missed my opportunity to say goodbye and thanks to Michael. I enjoyed the class, but I did not do as well in it as I first thought. Funnily enough, the conversations hit on areas where I have no expertise - philosophy, Kant, Foucault, Adorno, and stranger still, this seemed to connect to feelings I had around being expelled from school at 16 for not being academic enough. I eventually got some confidence back, but I'm the girl who likened someone's work the the moment in 'This Is Spinal Tap' when the stone henge copies get lowered onto the stage and they are something like 10 inches instead of 10 feet high. I am that girl. I had a meeting with Michael on Thursday and I was nervous about it so I blurted out at the start of the meeting that I did not know if I was Michael-ready yet, and he said, ‘I’m not sure if I’m [Tallulah] ready yet’. The meeting was all too short, but he thought that I might have a case to argue in my work. He really is rather special. I mean that.

Yesterday some people in the class came out to the ranch for a spot of orange-picking – I thought it may be a nice idea as I take a bag or two of oranges along to class so its become a bit of a theme.

Dad is coming to visit on Sunday, 21st December to 1st January and I’m so excited about to see him and show him the ranch.

No Information In Advance of Need

- is the CalArts school motto. Which is rather interesting.

It appears a lot has happened since my last post. America has a new president elect. Saint Obama. A new regime is so needed that election night was an emotional affair, friends and teachers were declaring they would leave the country if he didn't win. You win some, you lose some - in California, the much opposed, but Mormon funded 'Proposition 8' was passed. The one about gay marriage.

Halloween came and went uncelebrated, this year it occurred to me that Halloween is just not as nice as 5th November so we decided not to do anything. We were house/dog-sitting in Silver Lake again and a couple in their 20s came round asking for treats. We had to give them some of our small chocolate supply. On chocolate, most American chocolate, or 'candy' (a word which conjures up cheap, coloured sugary tasteless stuff to me) is inedible, and certainly gives no pleasure. However the fantastic shop 'Trader Joe's' which I shall miss, does a large bar of Belgian chocolate which we make sure we always have in.

I survived Post-Studio! Being under the spotlight for 4 hours was draining and afterwards I had that feeling of 'fine, I'll never make any work again, its all so shit'. But I recuperated and reflected and realised that it was a great conversation where people who don't speak regularly spoke and people discussed the work insightfully and generously. There were some negative points, but I was grateful for them. I took my 'Art Encounters' sound piece. Michael Asher was kind about my work too. He is so funny in class, he has a habit of swinging on his chair, shutting his eyes as if asleep, then opening them and giving an assured epiphany.

American English has a word that I have certainly never encountered in British English - 'docent' - 'a person who acts as a guide, typically on a voluntary basis, in a museum, art gallery or zoo'.

I enjoy staying in Silverlake (back again now to pick up dog, then back to the Ranch for Thanksgiving). Last time I was here I went to a free LACMA talk with Amy Adler, Alex Slade and Penelope Umbrico. We are, however, staying at the ranch, having looked around for elsewhere to live. We found nowhere cheaper or as private, or as large. Additionally, Husband needed to find employment and he looked around for work in LA, which he would have done, but not enjoyed. Ellen and David needed another full-time worker on the Ranch, and Husband loves working on the Ranch and with Gerado, so he's pretty much working for our rent. This does mean that money is a little better for us and we should drive to LA each weekend for art openings etc. Another LA resource I want to explore is the Academy Awards archive and library.

However, last weekend there was a wonderful day of museum interventions at LACMA in collaboration with experimental gallery/space 'Machine Projects' which I was desperate to go to. Fires nearby resulted in road closures that made our journey 4 hours long. Any enthusiasm was pretty much drained by the time we got there. Ellen even had an opening over the road, but that barely perked us up. An opening at 'COMAspace' - and exhibition from Art MFAs who graduated this year made the evening more fun.

On Sunday Husband was invited on a special horse-riding trip: with Gerado and his Mexican friends. An all male affair with beer - they run out of Bud Lite and had to ride into town to buy more. They rode along the river bed and periodically galloped fast. Husband, a novice, kept up with the riding and drinking. He enjoyed it despite the afternoon being pretty much conducted in Spanish. Now he wants to learn Spanish and get a cowboy hat.



My 'Thesis show' - the exhibition I create that is the culmination of my research here, with a coherent set of ideas that are resolved in it, is scheduled for the week of 21st February. I am currently trying to resolve my work for it, but I keep hitting on problems. I have a pile of books around me and I think they all contain the answers I need, but I want the information now, I want to be able to scan each chapter (like a scanner) and absorb the points and know the arguments. But alas, I must sit here, isolating the most pertinent chapters and reading them, notebook, dictionary, pencil for underlining and page tabs to the side of me. I want to figure it out. I had a meeting with Natalie yesterday and she got to the heart of my conflict/incoherence. A lot of people I meet with are wonderful and have a great read of my work and give me really helpful leads. Natalie will not let me get away with anything and I love it. She asked me to put my ideas into writing and refer to theory. I think this will really help.

No information in advance of need.

Connection and Dissolubility

There are moments, where everything seems to lead to a single point, and there are other moments where it all just drains away. I'm talking about the art-making process of research, connecting and overlaying ideas and then resolving the work. On that final point, I'm not there yet. When connections connect, then continue to connect and connect and connect it can feel rather like being on some conspiracy theory chase. Do they really connect? Or have I just lost any discernment?

Last week we had the MFA Mid-Residency Exhibition. For it, I decided to continue my investigation of text as art, the next step on from Fuzzy Pictures, and produced an MP3 of my voice, describing art encounters (see tumblr). I was thinking back to a conversation I had with Mentor/Genius friend and recalled 'Stendhal Syndrome', then I was talking to her about Freud's Apres Coup/Deferred Action and discussed this with Leslie Dick in relation to the work. I was reading Saussure and Barthes for Semiotics. Then I was reading 'Reading For the Plot', and pretty much all the above turned up the in first chapter. Which freaked me out. In the space of days everything I was encountering was repeating itself elsewhere. This can mean you are onto something and of course, it can be a red-herring. How does one recoup from such an overload? Well I went from a swim in the school's pool. I did that thing where you lie in the pool just looking up, floating. The sky was cloudless, and for a moment everything connected, before it dissolved.




I have that kind of tight feeling that I am not getting enough done, making art is taking too long, I'm making mistakes, correcting myself, taking time, but I want to go faster. I'm thinking about how I could apply for shows and send work out there into the world, but then I want things to connect properly before I do. My brain is constantly pushing and pulling me. I want to do this, I want to do that. I cry frequently...

Husband and I are currently house sitting in LA, for Kaucyila again, and I'm rather enjoying it. There is a buzz to LA; although motor-based, perhaps its more of a car purr. The LA buzz/car-purr is so hard to hear sometimes that it can feel like the act of hunting the buzz can be too daunting a task. Not so this time. We've had fun. I think we are really thinking about moving to LA for next semester. On Sunday I went to a screening of Liz Goldwyn's Pretty Things documentary film, exploring the lives of the 1940s-60s queens of burlesque. Of most interest to me was Goldwyn's subject position in the film - the film is cut with photographs she took of herself in collected burlesque outfits, learning burlesque dance routines in dance classes and from the queens themselves. It was very interesting, the research and area being rather aligned to one of my interest/areas. I bought her book 'Pretty Things' afterwards and spoke to her briefly, about emailing her. It would be wonderful to pick her brains. She was in conversation with Charlotte Cotton at the beginning too - Charlotte always being both lucid and humorous - with a new short haircut too.

Onwards with my artwork then, back to my ghost towns work - I'm counting down the days now to my Post-Studio cruxifiction on 14th November.



Husband has his down days, away from his home and friends, but this week he has been mountain biking and has been much happier, albeit with heat exhaustion! We got our car now, small engine and the seats go down, so he can put his bike in the back.

Yesterday there was a black widow spider underneath my door handle to my studio. I saw the red hour glass on the underside of its abdomen and everything.