Re: Our Crit

I guess I haven't been looking at our blog too often, which I now realize is a shame. But here I am and I read Nico's writing after his and Alexi's crit and remember that I've been wanting to answer Alexi's question about why I make art for a long time.

Thank you, Nico, for responding to your crit here. I have prepared for many crits, lived through them - mine and others', learned from a few, but I have never read someone's post-crit writing. Maybe I have done a little of my own... I think it may have been so long and perhaps the crits were so nerve-wrecking that I didn't have the wherewithal to reflect back. I don't know. In any case, I liked reading what you wrote - how it relates to your work, specifically, and how it relates to being a maker of artwork, less specifically. I think you're right that you and Alexi are a bit like a band making up songs and riffing off of each other, off of yourselves, off of everything, really. I appreciate that way of thinking about your work and relating to it.

Another way you guys are like a band is your energy level! I am amazed, each time I see a band in action how much energy they have. Ever since I was a little kid getting woken up by the Rolling Stone's "You Can's Always Get What You Want" on my clock radio, I've wondered how musicians can generate/experience the level of energy they need to do the work that they do - to channel the passion that they seem to channel, time and again. I wonder the same thing about you two.

I think your realization that there is nothing wrong with making work simply because you want to see it is valuable and insightful. I appreciate that thought and am mulling it around as it relates to my own work. I love seeing my artwork... though I spend most of my time seeing it in my head, in notebooks and in boxes and tubes as storage. I wonder what part of this drives me as an artist - is it a need to make? A need to see? A way of expressing/letting off steam? A process? I also wonder how much of my urgency for making gets relieved by my paintings and whether or not this detracts from my need to make other work? Anyway, your writing led me to (re)consider these thoughts - useful always, but particularly as my crit is tomorrow.

I really appreciate having been around for conversations before you and Alexi began your current work, while you've been making it, and seeing you present it a couple of different ways. It is such a rare experience to be so present through someone else's process, I think, and it has given me a lot to think about in comparison and contrast to my own process. I don't really have too much more to add in response to your post right now, but I'm going to keep thinking about it.

Thanks again,
Jessica (a.k.a. Sod Houses)