Occasions

Today I begin my 52nd trip around the sun. A little context for why I am thinking about how we assign importance to occurrences, and mark the passage of time.

“Occasion” like so many English words and phrases has multiple uses of course. “A special occasion” or “on the occasion of” or “I had the occasion to,” etc . Occasions- noting and referring to them more specifically- show or reveal the outlines of how we see ourselves in our own story, which is shaped by our relationship to time as we both remember past events and have hopes for the future.

When we refer to “an occasion” we are noting that we have “marked” a moment in time, or, in the case of ceremonies and celebrations, multiple moments over sometimes long periods of time. A painting is a way of marking the passage of time also. I should clarify that I’m talking about how I feel about abstract painting. One of the ways I’m giving in to nostalgia this weekend is looking through my slide library, which I can do because I still own a light table (I just admitted I’m 51). I found images of work I was making in the late ’90s “about” mapping, conflating wood grain forms with contour maps, which are both snapshots of geologic time. I was mostly just pointing at painting as a record of its own creation.

The (poorly photographed) “map” works were probably, OK, *definitely* artist statement cover for my formalist tendencies. Maps and mapping are pretty rich terms for those of us who are part of the first generation of art students to get educated almost exclusively by postmodern era instructors. On this occasion of reflecting about the past, specifically on my college (over)education, I can see, as the artist I am today, how that facet of the development of my practice shapes my relationship to and wariness around plenty of concepts. Not just maps and mapping. I catch myself constructing an argument as if I’m arguing with some of “them,” pretty regularly, especially when I engage with topics like progress and universal humanity. It’s been a bit of, while not rebelliousness (no artist apologizes for *that*), definitely a reaction on my part, which comes with some of the feelings, as the kids say.

I don’t think mine is a unique situation, to value the existence of an institution like “Art” and also to have been drawn into its dynamic of simultaneously venerating and eschewing the past. It’s almost like a parent-child-family sort of relationship to the past and future. Our weird little village is, well… BTW, “yes” it’s totally one of many contradictions that animate and motivate me that I have developed an academic approach of using words, while having and expressing resentment towards the Academy. Maybe that’s just a way of saying I’m bought in on this idea that I’m an Artist with a capital “A” though- I mean the resentment of my elders, not the snootiness. Maybe that too, though…

Anyway, a birthday is an occasion as experience filtered through memories of past, similar experiences. Its shape is sort of wild if you think about it that way. Part of the context for these reflections on the passage of time and memory is that I’m working on a collaborative piece about memory, specifically nostalgia, and the way it is a broken map, but, that’s a blog for another Sunday. Be good to each other lovelies.