Reflection

Reflection

An identical first draft was submitted to both Advanced Workshop in Creative Nonfiction and Writing for Artists because it crossed the divide between visual art and writing. I wanted feedback from both artists and writers, to verify that it worked in both areas.

March 26 was the class workshop review for Advanced Workshop in Creative Nonfiction. April 4 was the workshop review for Writing for Artists.

As a result of the feedback received, the writing for Writing for Artists for Project 4 – Curatorial Proposal was substantially shorter than that submitted for Advanced Workshop in Creative Nonfiction, and focuses solely on the exhibition proposal. Extra components from Advanced Workshop in Creative Nonfiction were form additional web pages for the Social Media Promotion, providing gallery history, biography and artist’s statement. Since the original draft naturally fell into three disparate components, this split was not difficult.

However, the writings diverged substantially. While Writing for Artists remains a proposal. Advanced Workshop in Creative Nonfiction is definitely Narrative Nonfiction, incorporating the future (the idea), the past (The Irving Sculpture Gallery) and the present (my current house). This writing actually led to a revelation that why I dream of, I already possess. All the present needs is more space, or less stuff. It reminds me of the son who helped his father tidy the garage by building shelves. Having finished the shelves, there was nothing left to store on them. All of the scrap wood had been used to build the shelves,

Being a non-credit student and free from grading, providing one submission for two classes is a luxury that I can enjoy, although the length of the submission satisfies the combined requirements of both courses.

My goal at George Mason University is to create a merger of sculpture, writing and music. Writing across the divide is how it appears that I may achieve it.

The goal was to create a proposal that is itself the work of art, an ambiguity.

The ending about burning the paper is to give control back to the reader. This idea comes from Mary Ruefle essay “Someone Reading a Book” where she recounts a story about Somerset Maugham reading a book as he travels across a desert by camel. As he reads each page, to lighten the load, he rips the page out of the book and throws it into the air. The question is “who has the more memorable experience, Somerset Maugham or the one who came after him.” The man on the camel who reads the book in order, or the man following who reads the pages “in some strange new order”.

I really like this concept of chance narrative uncontrolled by the writer, a reader’s narrative. When we look at objects, our eye randomly fixes on details and it is our mind that creates comprehension. I think this randomness in the writing more closely relates to the way we actually see the world.

My idea of burning the paper is also a play on the concept of memory. The reader gets to decide if the essay describes something in the past (burnt), or something to occur in the future (retained as a proposal). Most of my recent writings, when the object is destroyed, reference fire. In my youth, I was a fire bug, more a pyromaniac than an arsonist.