In Confusion and Doubt

The next piece in the queue is whole cloth. I've painted and printed on top of dye-printing. This is a detail.

Today two of my studio mates also raised a new design wall, so we will have double the space to work. This is good. In my dreams we all have room to keep work-in-progress up all the time. I love to leave stuff on the wall, to get a fresh look each time I walk in.

There's been a lot of talk among colleagues and on one of my Lists about identity: both external (branding) and internal (focus). My own imagery keeps coming back to scratchy, drawing-like elements: text, tree branches, the human form. I work a lot with rectangles. I think about fragility, time, the shortness of a human life. I'm not sure how this resolves into an Identity.

So I took special solace to hear a discussion today on the radio about the new book Off the Page, about writers on writing. The writers talked repeatedly about how you just need to keep working. Richard Bausch teaches his students "You're supposed to be confused. I tell them not to trust it if it feels too easy." Think of it as your day job, he said, and persist in good times and bad. "Every book I've ever written was written a little at a time, over time, in tremendous confusion and doubt."