hiatus

Not that anyone’s noticed [1] but I haven’t put anything on this website in five years.

On behalf of this public facing, professional artist website, 

I’ve inculcated the belief that I need to maintain a certain image. 

In other words: There are things I’m not supposed to say here. 

This website says, implicitly, “only one aspect of my life is on view.” 

Plein air sketch in Pogonip Park, winter 2002. Charcoal and white conte on pale gray paper. Handmade sketchbook. My whole orientation shifted around that time and now, almost a quarter century later, it seems to shifting again, with rhyming intentionality to the "before times."

But then there’s a break from correct behavior. Rupture. 

This website parked here in silence, saying nothing, indicates 

a crack, a fracture, a misalignment.

So I’ll make it explicit: I had a big crisis. Not a midlife crisis, more of a breakdown 

(although maybe these types of crises are on are on a spectrum, they’re related). 

I fell apart, it was painful. And fascinating.  Agony. Delight. 

Maybe you won't be as surprised, as I was: It turns out when I fall apart, 

even as I’m falling apart, there’s new growth. Breakdown plus reconstruction or emergence? 

Along the way, I’ve lost track of what it is I thought I was supposed to be doing, 

what I want to be doing “as an artist.“ 

Meanwhile or moreover, I’ve ignored, dissolved, trashed any number of professional 

and casual art relationships. All sorts of connections gone quiet. Something in me 

needed to flee. Not enough … resilience? to prevent that flight. Possibly the right choice, 

a commitment to stepping away / out of. Yet I made work during the five years when 

I “stopped being an artist."

I wonder what this artist-who's-not-an artist does with a growing pile of body of work, 

which skips around among materials and refinements and intentions, has no context beyond 

my processes or attention. It’s not work I would show publicly, or even share with close friends. 

Not right now. 

When I think about it, I’m relieved that I continue to explore with whatever uncertainly.

A blessing to not know what I’m doing or why I’m doing whatever it is. 

Maybe I’ll run out of time, my life will end and I won’t have figured it out. 

Maybe my sons will have to sort through the hodgepodge. 

(Sorry, fellas. )

***

For decades

—age 19 through 52–

I believed my notion that 

I was building a body of work 

and that when the work shifted out from under me, as often happened, 

it was shifting relative to some prior work and

there was somehow continuity. 

Now I’m not so sure. feels like 

a lot of skipping around.

I thought I was building 

an art career. It sure looked 

that way to me—and to others—

for a bunch of years. But now 

I’ve visibly, should anyone look,

dropped out.  

I suppose I could reconnect,

but why?

I am truly confused about showing "my work," at commercial or nonprofit galleries. 

The ongoing art conversation doesn’t make sense to me. 

I fell out of that context and apparently I’m not climbing back in. 

Perhaps because I hunger for art that’s meant for ritual and ceremony. 

To bring ritual and ceremony into art spaces seems to work ok for others, which I appreciate. Perhaps my explorations around art include locating or developing, ideally with beloved collaborators, our own ritual or ceremonial experiences. Maybe we're already working on it! 

In the meantime: what I’m currently making? 

Continue making it for now. 

It’s feeding me. 

The relief of not having to explain it or 

justify myself or or or or… So it could be 

that I’m hiding. Maybe that’s OK 

for now. Let the work pile up. 

Then I’ll see what I want to do with it.

________________________________

1. "Not that anyone's noticed..." — well, maybe someone has noticed, just no one said anything.