You looked like a swimmer

After a few twelve hour work days, this is my first chance to post about my trip to the MoMA and The American Folk Art Museum last Friday. As I meandered about and inundated myself with the act of looking (as opposed to seeing, which we do all the time) I did something out of the ordinary for me and my sketchbook: I wrote about it.

I feel compelled to share it with you, if only out of a desperate desire for more honesty and more transparency between artists about their work and their process and their thoughts and their inspirations. Here are mine:

"I'm not sure if I'm on the right track or if I'm light years behind. As an artist, I must take comfort in the inherent uniqueness of my work being that it comes from ME and I DID IT. The things I like in these great works overlap with things I love in my own. Logically, I know this is normal, and possibly even a good thing. Themes and stories and patterns that occur and reoccur in art and history are great -- standing the test of time indicates that the content deals with questions of humanity-- yet, I find myself wondering how I can compete with the likes of ERNST and JESS and DALI? With the bookmakers, printmakers, and drawing-based artists who have years of experience, time, funding, training, patronage, and practice?

YET I CONTINUE TO MAKE.

I take comfort in the inherent me-ness of my work. I take comfort in the practice itself. and I take comfort in the knowledge that great artists make crap too, sometimes."

Here are some pieces I enjoyed and wanted to share:
Mona Hatoum (medium: paper and hair)

Rivane Neuenschwander- I love this. The colors, the idea, everything.

MAX ERNST and a biology poster. one of my most surprising finds. and strangely encouraging. (as in, if he can take an actual biology poster and dissociate it from its content this much, then I can definitely use organic-inspired elements and not have them just be illustrative)

I would love to hear your thoughts.

(all photos from MoMA's website)