finally, a thought

so here i am in Rochester, NY, on a residency. i thought, while here, i'd be posting more, that my thoughts would be clearer, that everything would fall into place after a crazy hectic six months or so. i was not entirely wrong, but i think i thought i'd just switch gears and that'd be it. i know better, really i do. the list is too big. at least now i'm honestly trying ot tackle one thing at a time., instead of 3 or 4. and speaking of that list, its still in my brain and not on paper. something i also know better about, when you write it down you aleviate some worries. i'll do it tommorrow, along with laundry....

Rochester isn't a bad town, and the Visual Studies Workshop isn't a bad place to be. i live in the building where the studio facilities are, and i'm here by myself what feels like 90% of the time. the interesting thing about it though is through facebook and skype and the internet well, i'm not really alone. esp facebook, cos you all are out there if/when i need you, sitting by the computer just like me, emailing, color correcting, watching youtube, etc. and we share. although some part of that equation seems like it should be "sad", in that we're not interating in person, actually i've come to believe its not. if i want to make my work, i need to be here, in front of this laptop, next to the darkroom, exposing cyanotypes for 35 no 40 no 50 minutes, using 5% acedic acid diluted to be a 5 solution in water, yadda yadda. and lucky for me, a whole bunch of you also need to be by your machines to do the things that make you tick. so united we sit.......

and i still have my moments of being 21 again (ok, for me more like 25), staying out talking til 4AM, because at times i can, my job allows for it and i'm thankful. i just can't do it every weekend like i used to. i think its necessary sometimes to give perspective, and remember the world outsidethe 9-5. and, well, the longer i'm here in Rochester on my own, the more my schedule shifts towards a 12PM - 3AM world. this happened the last time i was on a residency, so its not so unexpected.

i'm torn between making work about where i am, and making work that i proposed to make. right now i'm doing the latter, as i thought i would require less prep work, but ultimately its really the same, as the "prep" work i did previously was half cocked. i just got the roll of film i need to use, and because of that i pretty much needed to start testing out everythign iwas doing again. i've been attemting to learn gum printing, but its a beast. i have 12 other things i wanted to accomplish, but all i really want to do is ride my bike around and take pictures.

i know i shoudl take advantage of the reseach library here, especially because i'm going to be a profesor next year. talk about life change.....i still am not sure how this is all going to pan out. well, theres know way of knowing. i bounce between thinking "you can handle this" to "OMG you better get those lesson plans together RIGHT NOW!!!". I've taught 2 classes a semester before, while working a full time job and other stuff on top of that, but this is 15 weeks of classes meeting 2 times a week. i'm worried about keeping the students attention. i don't want them to get bored. the thing i'm not going to be used to is the fact that i will be able to just focus on them...i won't have this other full time job to worry about which takes up 40 hours of my week. weird!!!! but, ultimately, super awesome. unbelievably awesome.

then there's the whole commuting/Providence thing. as betsy pointed out the other day, all our friends have moved outside the city anyway. and its more than just that, so many things are up in the air. who knows if our new landlord is going to renew our lease? other personal issues are up in the air anyway, now they're x2. yet i'm worried i won't be able to make art without the city, without its struggles and strains and ultimately its energy. i've been other places, and the energy just is not the same.

at the same time i do sort of have a weird side "reailty" (shall we call it for lack of a better term). My job at Brown give me a studio. yeah. so, i should just move there, i'm not sure why i'm pussyfooting around that. well i do, i mean providence is not NY, and there was a mall next to the train station which throughly scared the bejesus out of me. but anyway, what if........i can live in a place where i can make music too, bring my drum set back, have it all ready to go. i've always felt bad that my speakers have to live in an apartment, i barely can move the dial to 1/4 before they are too loud (they are HUGE and i got them for free, but thats another story).

alright, anyway, my cyanotype is cooked. more tomorrow