This is one of those crazy posts that come out of disturbed sleep patterns.
In four hours, I'll get up, have a shower, make coffee, have breakfast, get a lift with the wife across town, go to the gym (gasp yes), and go to work....
Meanwhile I've been making work, preparing work, installing work for the show on thursday night...
(btw I'm in a group show called "Addition Erasure" that opens at VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery on Feb 18)
And part of me is so amazingly excited to be making work, and to see it come together, and part of me is tired as hell, and frustrated at how hard it is to sit down and spend HOURS and HOURS on making small crazy things, when I've got to get up and go to work, and maintain a life as well.
In previous shows, I've been able to drop everything for a week or two and immerse myself in materials. I've also come from a position of a sustained practice.
This time, I feel like I've hit the ground running - dragging my fingers and increasingly failing eyes to their limits. Desperately trying to catch up and create a body of work in a short space of time.
Once this is over, I go back to my regular "hobby" occupation of writing research papers!
and I'm wondering where I'm meant to find the time, and what I've done with my life, and what I'm doing with my life and what I want to do.
this is nothing new.....
but my day job is an intense stimulating research position, in a field that is different to my own, so my own PhD research is pushed somewhere to the background... and then there is my somewhat lapsed art practice/career which I'm still pretty invested in and ideally feeds into my own research.....
And I don't want to let go of these interests or this expertise, and I don't think I can be happy with art as a hobby (just noting my rapidly decreasing interest in drawing once it stopped being linked to anything else apart from the moment of its practice is proof of that)
and I wonder how I'm meant to be doing all of this when I haven't even had time or energy to read a book, for.... AGES
Is this standard post-doc dilemma?
My Blog List
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Goodbye Event Mechanics!3 months ago
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Farewell Newton Harrison2 years ago
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launch of new website and fundraiser7 years ago
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And, close.9 years ago
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Art and Breakfast10 years ago
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closed for renovation10 years ago
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The Yams on the Whitney and White Supremacy10 years ago
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Jeweller wins with dramatic dead deer11 years ago
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on Mapping and the value of it11 years ago
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Roaches without borders11 years ago
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The Chromatic Typewriter12 years ago
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The amazing Grace Jones13 years ago
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The Distinct Body Part 214 years ago
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Can art save the world?14 years ago
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Epilogue14 years ago
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یک سال سکوت14 years ago
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VD, or not VD...14 years ago
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Welcome to Art Life 2.014 years ago
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The Work of Mourning14 years ago
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ECT15 years ago
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Apology to Roadkill Redux15 years ago
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Happy Birthday, Mr Darwin15 years ago
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A week of sickness16 years ago
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4 comments:
i can't tell you how many times lately, i have left an exhibition, put a book down, finished listening to a song and had an immense feeling of panic. i call it my art panic - panic that there's never enough time in the day to do what i need to do for my art practice, so it can be the kind of work it needs to be.
perhaps this comment is becoming a post on its own, but i wanted to say that i hear ya. i really do - it's like all that tension from the intensity of research has bounced us out at the speed of light and we're trying to figure out how the fuck to control it.
BTW - your work is fuckin' fantastic and i want more of it. more!
Hey Margaret feeling it too - its like how can you have it all given that all also feels like so little to ask because all is maintaining an art practice, a research practice and having a stimulating job. And I constantly feel like I'm putting one on hold to do the other and struggling with the competing demands of all of them - at the moment trying to write essay of friends work for publication, curate sculpture season for work, and work on exhibition coming up in Aug and also finish peer review paper I have been writing on and off for 8 months now. But I don't just want to have one, because I know there has to be a way to do them all cause they are all feeding into each other... Its like to try and do them all you have to amend your time scale from short to long, a marathon rather than a sprint towards maintaining all on a mutually satisfying trajectory - And I don't even have a wife or the het version of one - So bugger me am impressed at what you're managing
If you manage to use anything that you did in your PhD, then you are already winning. Mostly they get put on the back shelf and another project takes over. Then one day you find it in a box and wonder how you managed to write it all then forget so much so quickly.
I WUZ HERE X
Hello Marg, just wanted to let u know that I dropped by. Read a few posts. Didnt want to be a lurker, so Im leaving a comment, even tho I dont have anything to say in particular. Except that it really touched me when you said you remembered my writing from 20 yrs ago and you think Im brilliant. Wow!!!!!!!!! I am driven to create, and I try to say things in my own way. Your praise is great to receive! I love your writing too. And you ARE brilliant. Ive also loved having a look at your paintings. So full of life and colour! Im proud to call you my friend. Love, xxxooo Michaela
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