A Monday of reading and reflection, and then driving to Aberystwyth. Morning prayers and meditations were good and intense as yesterday. After, with my second coffee and while the rain was covering the bay, calling in low thin clouds, I have been reading more from Tim Ingold's book Making. Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. The more I read it, the more it clarifies how I see my practice. And by this I mean: I am interested in the process, the observation of the process. In this sense, I see architecture as exploring space, volumes, distances, the in-between in a sort of psychogeographical way; the placing in space, the choosing of a position / location; archaeology to me means exploring, unearthing, preserving, archiving; I am thinking of the excavation process as my finding the material, wondering who used it before, who handled it, what was it used for before?; art and creativity to me are the working with and understanding of the materiality.
The anthropological framework provides me with the methodology of paying attention. In this sense, as Ingold beautifully puts it, I am not working to create an object, but I am working with the object; I am interested not in the final piece but in the practice. I observe that and I allow that to transform me. Whatever you see that I make are only the results of my anthropological process of observation and awareness.
Here is also video of his keynote presentation at the Art of Research in Helsinki in 2017.
A must-watch!
This uncovering of my practice and defining its limitations is intense. This is why I was so grateful to my dear friend Kerry G who sent me a quote from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way:
“The process of identifying a self inevitably involves loss as well as gain.
We discover our boundaries, and those boundaries by definition separate us from our fellows. As we clarify our perceptions, we lose our misconceptions. As we eliminate ambiguity, we lose illusion as well.
We arrive at clarity, and clarity creates change.”
And this is the Truth: this residential has changed me. I got to a level of clarity I needed before heading towards my next crit at uni next week, the York Open Studios in April, and then the final show, and hence the end of my BA experience.
And then what? Where? And how?
One of the options I have been journaling about was to start again a new series of The Artist's Way myself, once back home. Part of me is questioning if I am putting too much on myself with university, the spiritual mentoring, the course in supervision, and life in general. I don't have to make a decision now, but you know, if you have been with me for some time, how much I love the process of The Artist's Way, so...
And yes, being St. Valentine, I cannot help but share my favourite love song ever: Quanto T'ho Amato in the live version by Amalia Gré.
And I will close by sharing my...
piece of paper evening #10
onwards+upwards
mx