Some Days of my Life - Episode one.

August 14, 2016

This is another entry from one of the old diaries I unearthed yesterday.
Reading the entries - I meet myself again - in this instance in 1978 - 38 years ago.

At that time I was primarily a visual artist and still involved in the women's artist movement. The idea of finding myself as a storyteller had never entered my imagination.

So much has happened since then - and its very interesting, more than interesting actually - to come so close to those days again through my journals, little tablets and blank books I carried with me for weeks and wrote in every day so I recognize and remember them and reading my story in my own handwriting.

Its connecting with myself

I am so grateful for finding this mixed-up collection of little books which are telling me the story of some days of my life.

Especially as it tells me I ws headed toward telling personal stories sooner or later.


February 26, 1978

After Roots 2 and my absorption in that chronicle of a family for over 12 hours of television. Alex Hayley said at the end "interview your family - start with the oldest member."

That's what I have been starting in a sense, with the Granny Collages - looking to the past for material for my art. But so far I have been relying on my memory and more to the point calling back feelings not events.

I also realize that when I start to "make art" I really think of it - not in concepts but as "making things." I think first about something I want to do or to make.

That was one of my blocks in graduate school - not looking at a still-life set-up for relationships but starting in to make something.

Luciano Penay ( a favorite painting professor at American University) says, " thats the answer - what was the question." I arrive at the answer first by making something.

Is that wrong - or not a way to approval for my art-making? Who knows?

Mimi's (i.e Miriam Schapiro) response to my collages - that "they are strong, rich -
Ofcourse she's a supportive responder - so I don't know exactly how to read that - I want to accept it and feel it as praise but I am not sure. And also felt myself wanting, needing her approval - the mother-daughter trip. I want to stay away from that.

Judge my art myself. Evaluate what, where, and how.

Find something I want to make make and then figure out how to do it!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 1982  From a loose page - a small page blue with faint lines.

What does revealing diaristic work have to do with art p other than as a means for self-understanding - to help an artist get to a personal statement - - in art terms?

Formalistic terms are more important to me --
 structure
 color
 space
    and that's okay..