I am an artist and elementary school art teacher based in Lewiston, Maine. I recently started my MFA in Visual Art at Vermont College of Fine Art in Montpelier, VT. Because of my graduate studies, my work and my reasons for making my work are changing all the time. The following is from my studio plan: 

 

 

This semester, I will be making several groups of drawings that address issues of control, chance, and synchronicity. I will work on one group at a time, and will use a set of predetermined rules to guide me in what I draw in that group. During the drawing process, and especially in the planning stages of each grouping, I will be open to and seek out events and imagery that seem synchronistic to me. These events and images will become the main source of my imagery, and will be abstracted into the repeating units that I will draw. 

 

One of the main critiques I got during the residency was that my drawings were formally appealing but did not convey the emotions that I had used as starting points. I began to question whether that communication was important to me, and also wondered how I would draw when I felt more positive about my life. I have concluded, at least for now, that the process of drawing is the important thing about my drawings, and that drawing from a more playful and external place will be emotionally healthy to me. 

 

I am making huge changes to how I choose my subject and imagery, as I will be working from abstractions of observational drawings instead of from purely abstract or formal elements. I got feedback from several people about scale, and so I will work at being more deliberate about how big I make the pieces, or I will at least experiment more with scale to try to determine what will work the best for what I am drawing. I will push myself to work much more quickly, while still making well-crafted work that is meaningful to me. 

 

One of my long range goals is to integrate my lifestyle, which is working toward self-sufficiency and leaving commodity culture, into my studio practice. By seeking imagery outside of my own head, I feel that I will be using more of my visual resources than I have previously.  This very much relates to the creative problem solving that I employ as I work through challenges in my day to day life. I am also excited to bring more positive energy to my studio practice. 

 

This work will be important to me personally because it will be a complete change from the emotional chaos and distress that generally starts my drawing process. I have been feeling more and more constrained and discouraged by that process, and so bringing some playfulness into my studio will be emotionally healthy for me. 

Through my explorations of media, scale, and source material, I will hopefully be closer to understanding what my art needs to be. In relation to society, I think this work will encourage the view to slow down and be more observant of the synchronicities that occur in their own lives. 

 

I walk approximately one hour each day to get to and from my job as an art teacher. As I walk, I often see things that catch my eye, or things that remind me of something, or things that seem significant in some way. I plan on pausing and really observing these things, and trusting that my feeling of recognition is telling me something important. I will sketch these things as I see them, and when it is time to start a new grouping of drawings, I will go through my collection of sketches and search for another feeling of “rightness”.