Interlocutor

I’m thinking about un-disowning some of the paintings I did at MICA.  I dragged them out of the closet to look at them, since I wasn’t sure if I wanted to include one or two of them in my little introductory slide show thing at Windsor (for a point of reference as to how crazy I am, I’ve actually been rehearsing what I plan on saying every night when I’m lying in bed–this is just like a five minute deal, and all I plan to say is “Hello, I’m Steven. I’m from Florida and I got my BFA at MICA,” and then cut to slides. Really, not something that needs rehearsing). I figured it might be useful, but really? I’m just looking to prove that my work did have some kind of “edge,” at some point, anyway. Clearly I have little else to do with my free time other than fret about all the ways people might not like me.

Anyway, it isn’t that I really lost faith in the blackface paintings. I stopped making them because the circumstances of my life changed, and I didn’t have the stamina for that kind of work, anymore. Also, I had to leave all of my oil paints in Baltimore when I came back to Tampa. And they were kind of Baltimore-specific, anyway. Granted, critiques were a headache–painting faculty who could only bring themselves to talk about paint handling (my biscuits? oh, that burned them); that guy who referred to me as “that guy who painted himself blue; dozens of people who couldn’t stop telling me how funny they were, and one or two people who just told I was a racist, pure and simple (that was actually the only criticism I got that could potentially be valid–I hope it isn’t, but I can’t say I didn’t see it coming)–but I only took them off my site because a) they don’t really… mesh with what I do now, and they would have been distracting; and b) I didn’t really want to talk about them anymore.

But looking at them again, now, I’m kind of taken aback at how good they are. I’ve been out of oil painting for so long that it’s a bit shocking to realize that I am (or was) actually quite good at it (I apologize, my modesty tends to falter considerably as regards my work–I assure you, gentle reader, that it’s always a shock when things turn out well, but I don’t care to denigrate what I do for the sake of decorum–I spend quite enough time trashing everything else I do. I’ve also been known to find ways of working my SAT scores [1500] into casual conversation, but that’s just because I’m kind of a dick sometimes). The paintings have darkened a little in the last three years; some of that will go away with a little sunlight, but I think it makes them a little handsomer. In any case, I don’t think they’re ever going back on the portfolio, but they are on flickr, now.

Unrelatedly, I downloaded Fergie’s solo album. Mostly so I could listen to “Big Girls Don’t Cry” over and over again without having to hit the “watch again” button on YouTube. And somewhere in the chorus there’s some little synth fall that sounds, for the life of me, like my cellphone ringtone. It’s driving me bonkers. Not bonkers enough to turn the song off, though.

May 13

Oh, but it’s all up and down today. I don’t remember how I fared last Mother’s Day, but this time around the constant barrage of last minute gift-idea and weekend-sale ads are really getting to me. Mom’s been in all of my dreams for at least the past week, but it’s really not so bad. The dreams used to oftentimes be quite violent, and she’d usually be quite sick in them; I’d wake up in real distress every time I had one, doubly so because not only were the dreams themselves unpleasant, but I’d have to remind myself each time I woke up that she was really gone. The ones I have now seem to be getting more mundane–pleasant trips to whacked-out dream-time shopping malls, airports, hotels and whatnot (I don’t know why it’s always large public places; probably means I need to get out more), and she’s appearing healthy and at her old weight. It’s actually nice, like being able to spend time with her again.

But still, today’s a bit rough; I’ve been rollercoastering between giddy excitement and protracted sobbing jags. We’re stepping up the packing and cleaning process: dad seems to want to have the place ready to have movers (for an estimate) and a realtor in by the end of this coming week. We’ve got landscapers coming in this week; repairmen are coming to fix the tile and deck around the pool. It makes sense, I suppose. The plan is to move to Oxford some time in mid-June, so it stands to reason that moving would be in high gear. Still, it’s patently bizarre, preparing to permanently move out of the only permanent “home” I’ve had since… 1994, I guess we moved in? Much more so because it means I won’t have a place in Florida to come back to. What’s more, deciding what to keep or pitch of my own belongings is harrowing enough, but I suspect that packing mom’s office, which has been more or less untouched since she died, is going to be considerably worse. Because, though I would really like to keep all of the old books on paleontology and palynology and whatnot, it’s clear that neither I nor anyone else is ever going to read them.

So, anyway, Mother’s Day + moving + grad school have conspired to put an edge on everything.

Yesterday I got an email with my TA position and preliminary committee (new media with Sigi Torinus. My friend Susan speaks highly of her; I’m just worried that I’m going to be mostly in the way, since I know little to nothing about “new media art” except a fair amount of the software). Also, for the first time I know the names of the other people who’ll be starting the program with me. Sadly, my efforts at Google-stalking haven’t yielded much. There’s one guy, who I think is more or less my age, who has/is a band, and another guy who has paintings up at the Saatchi thing, who seems nice (that assessment being based on the fact that I think he “looks friendly”) and just graduated with his BFA. I wasn’t able to track down any of the three women (Nadia, Marzenna, and Henrejeta–such good names!). Well, one girl was on Facebook and had a one-line mention as a theatrical set painter. Didn’t friend-request since that seemed… weird, somehow. Her profile picture was her (I assume) in a geisha costume and makeup (…). So not much to go by. My not-so-secret hope is that there’s at least one keener in the group who’ll be all “yay! let’s all get to know each other! and be best friends! an give each other pedicures!” so that… I don’t have to. I hadn’t thought until now to try and track down the second-year candidates; that will be next on the agenda. We were also instructed to put together a CD of ten or so images to present when we get there, but every time I’ve tried to think ahead that far, I’ve started dry-heaving.

The reality that I’m going to be moving somewhere hundreds of miles away from everyone I know, to a program with only eleven people in it, is starting to set in. Cam called midday and I actually cried out, “but what if nobody likes me?” in between sobs. That’s something that only people in sitcoms say. But really, what if?

Anyway. It’s clearly time to return to my personal Lord of the Rings movie marathon, because if I think any more about any of these things, or, indeed, the ottoman-humping youtube videos, I’m going to get a migraine. Because miming the boning of furniture while wearing… surgical masks and latex gloves (as shown in the second link), it absolutely and utterly beyond my capacity to interpret.

Getting things rolling

So, after going over the outline of the student visa application process for the umpteenth time, this morning, I finally decided that there was no way in hell that I was just going to wait to submit my application at the border. Because that would be insane. Even if nothing is going to go wrong, why chance it? Also, this way, I don’t have to actually call the consulate to make sure I can submit at the border. Two birds with one stone, double-avoidance.

So I have my application printed out, my acceptance letters copied, and my “passport photos” taken, printed and cut out. Some people might have, I don’t know, washed their hair and/or faces before taking the photos that are going to serve as their primary form of identification for the next two years, but not I. I just didn’t want to risk having the border office think I was using forged documents because my photos showed a nice,  clean, well-kempt, young man, when I’m entirely unlikely to project that kind of image in person. Ever.

Dirt off my shoulders

I’ve been feeling a measure of ungrounded panic for the past couple of days. It could be moving-related, in some capacity, but I’m pretty sure that as soon as that gets resolved, I’ll just find something else on which to fixate. The website for the Canadian consulate in Detroit assures me once more that, really, honestly, I can just show up at the border with my application form and my check made out to them and enter the country without any problems. We’ll see if I can drum up the resolve to actually give them a call, today, or if that will wait until next week, or if I’ll just assume that everything is all-go and never get around to calling anybody ever. I’m clearly not going to be able to put this to rest until somebody tells me, literally tells me, that I’m good to go. Several times. Can’t Windsor just send somebody to pick me up?

I need an assistant. Not at all because I’m in any way shape or form busy, but because I’m just not that great at… life, and need to have arrangements made for me if I’m ever to get anything done.

In pleasant news, however, I got word yesterday that I’ve received something called the “President’s Excellence Scholarship” for an additional $3000. Adding that to the half-tuition scholarship I’ve already received, the $8,000 GA position (unsure if that figure covers one year or two: in either case, given the number of hours I’m actually expected to work for it, it will still be the highest-paying job I’ve ever held. That’s a little bit sad.), and likely the remainder of my tuition waived (word on that comes later in the summer), I’m doing quite well, support-wise. Of course, because I have a problem accepting that nice things happen either because I’ve earned them or “just ’cause,” it’s all making me a little bit suspicious.

I need to get out more.

Gah!

So the contact point at the graduate college assures me that I can just apply for my Canadian student visa at the border, when I move: I should be able to make out a $125 check, present my official acceptance letter and some paperwork that demonstrates sufficient funds for a year and be good to go. Given how poorly my last attempt at entering Canada went, this seems like a terrible idea. If customs in Winnipeg felt the need to search my luggage and my person for over an hour just so I could visit for a week and a half, do I really want to show up at the border with all of my stuff and ask to please live there for two years without a visa already firmly in hand? It seems like a poor, poor idea, but that’s what they’re telling me I’m supposed to do… nervous!

If I hear one more Doogie Howser joke…

Classes are winding down for the semester, which means that, more and more, the only focus of my attention has been the forthcoming (temporary) move to Ohio, and the transition to grad school after that. With the application process over, I’ve had to turn to other areas onto which I might project my neuroses; I have chosen, for the time being, to allow my age to be chief among them.

Of course I can’t know until I get there how old the other people in my class are going to be, I do know that there are only going to be four of them, and I am almost certainly guaranteed to be the youngest of them, and it may be by a considerable margin. There’s no real reason for me to suspect that I would have any problem working in an environment where the other MFA candidates were all 5, 10, 20 years my senior, but it’s nevertheless something about which I feel terribly self-conscious, if for no other reason than, whether it proves to be something that ever comes up or not, my age is probably going to set me apart from the group, and that’s not something I feel is a good thing.

Beyond that, there is an expectation (and this is even more prominent in Canada, where people seem to wait an exceptionally long time between getting their BFAs and beginning a master’s program) that people coming into the MFA program have cultivated some degree of distance from their undergrad work, spent some time within the broader art world, and cultivated some of that dreadful psuedoqualifier, “life experience.” Never mind that I spent what will be almost two years away from art school, about as distanced as one can get from it, in fact, having been completely isolated in this house for the entire time, and I think that people who bandy about their Great and Impactful Life Experiences usually do so as a way of bullying others into believing that what they have to say is somehow More Important than anything that anybody else might have to contribute, it remains true that I have zero art-world experience. And, at the end of the day, I don’t really feel like a “grown-up,” at twenty-two, and I will be in a decidedly “grown-up” environment, starting in September.

This is only compounded by the nature of my work itself. Susan at the MFA office assures me that my work was “almost universally well-received” and even hinted at “interest in [my] work” on the part of the local gallery and the artist-run centre (time will tell if this was an empty pleasantry or if there is actual interest at either place), and I’m certainly confident in the quality of what I’ve produced since 2005, there’s a part of me that worries I’ll be easily dismissed. Plenty of people have assured me that anyone would write what I do off as merely “cute” is not someone whose opinion I should be holding in high esteem, but Windsor is an awfully small program, and I worry that I could theorize and cite art historical points of reference until I was blue in the face, and there would still be people that just see stuffed animals.

But all of this is really of little consequence until I actually arrive on the scene and can assess the situation firsthand. I’d probably also feel a great deal better if I were still making things, presently, but any actual production of work more or less halted when the applications came due, so I’ve just been left to obsess over what’s already been made, rather than work constructively on anything new. Clearly, I need to tend to that.