First Critique/Sarah Sze/Lee Bontecou

     Our first critique was on Tuesday.  I left work on Monday, stopped home for a few hours to do what I needed to do, then went to school with the intention of starting in the evening and working all through the night, which I did.  Having twenty four hour access is a windfall; it plugs me into my favorite thing--being able to haunt places. I have always taken pleasure in being someplace that is not my dwelling, where I have somehow been granted access , even if it was granted to me by myself, where I am (mostly) alone, and where I feel like I am haunting the place like a ghost at all hours of night.  The campus becomes more lovely to me with every passing day, but it is at night, when the ground flowers are softly backlit , and the grass and buildings are so beautifully maintained, the asphalt walkways have no cracks, and its quiet quiet quiet...

      I worked all night and completed these pieces. When I showed Susan J.  the Yellow Building, she said it was too literal, so I de-literalized it.  I began and mostly completed this piece, called....I worked in a collaging frenzy until it was time for class.  I didn't even brush my teeth or put on makeup.  It felt wonderful, and when my classmates started coming in before class to their own studios, I was genuinely glad to see them.  I had done enough work, that even if the critiques went bad, it was not for lack of trying.

     Professor Eto was first.  We spend a half hour on everyone, and it was thrilling to see what people had been working on.  All good work.  I was last, and the first thing Eto said was, "this seems like it should be an installation."  My memory always becomes a blur when it involves public speaking, but I spoke a lot about what I had made, and Eto responded,   "it seems like you are not doing what you want to be doing".   Mike S. said, I bet that pile of metal under the table means more to you than any of these drawings.  I told them both that they were right.  I knew it was not a negation of the value of the work I'd made at all. 

     Then I had my crit with Archie.  Again I was last.  I was late because I had run off campus to buy a cigarette and junkfood.  It was raining hard and the sun was down.   The elevator too the 5th floor was slow, and stood there in the blindingly white hallway waiting for clunky thing to come.  When I got to my studio, there was Archie.  He was going through everything, my sketches, my portfolios.  "Where are you from?" he asked.  He keyed into my issues with place.  The white background.  The lack of horizon line.  The facility I have with placing figures and objects in space.  He said my compositions were reminiscent of those who had been disenfranchised.   Then he went on a bit about women and how THEY have always been marginalized.   I kept my mouth shut, but silently revolted.  Our conversation was about "place" and he told me to give this some thought, and he left.