ARTIST STATEMENT MESS from SP18 by Eric Wildeman

ARTIST STATEMENT MESS: 7 minutes, time limit helped the unfilteredness 

I wanted to provide the notes I took while listening to the  MP3 because I find they are also telling of my artist statement process. It exemplifies what stood out to me/ what I thought was most important to assist me. Three main thoughts: a studio visit w/o you, informing vs. over-explaining, and disregard your own perceptions of your writing ability

Kaylie Mess

Since I began my work as a technical writer, I find that I prefer to do a lot of my brainstorming on the computer, as I type faster than I write and it eliminates the need for transcription later.

For my mess, I began by pulling four pre-existing documents that I have used to represent myself and my work over the last 14 months (artist statement, teaching philosophy, a mentorship program application, and the abstract from my poetry thesis). Through several re-readings, I pulled out repeated concepts, phrases that I liked the sound of, and moments that related back to my drive to make art. I then pulled and transcribed all of the margin notes that I have been keeping about my work through the Breakaway studio visits and other musings. Lastly, I reexamined for any apparent common themes and compiled them in a list at the bottom of the document.

Below are some images of my mess, but the entire thing can be read in a PDF on Box: https://psu.box.com/s/m71fe0kxz34yfq8nynglembjgfoha1bx 

Soso's Mess.

I typed out key words/short phrases because my handwriting is garbage:

sequins
hierarchy of materials?
classism
fake
American
fantasyland
gender
social class=/=income
Central PA/Appalachia
going nowhere
MAGA weddings, Trump barns and other Central PA strangeness
whiteness
The disappearance/slow death of this culture/rural America
"A Hillbilly Elegy"
The little fires on Pine Grove Mountain
simulacra
ACE's
strangeness
alienation
class
the death of the American Dream
pretending (poorly) to be higher class
sports as social conditioning for later roles in society
sparkly crap
suspension of disbelief
placement of fake things by real things
varying ways of rendering with paint
hermeneutics
artificiality
wonderland
Folger's Coffee & other weird autobiographical shit
Capitalism
I come from people who think Olive Garden is synonymous with fine dining
slippage of meaning
identity
anxiety
intersectional feminism yay

While creating my "mess," I looked at the paintings hanging in my studio and recorded the words that came to mind. I found that the majority of these words broke down into three categories: how the paintings are made, what the paintings look like, and what I'm thinking about when making the paintings. For organizational purposes, I color coded these categories. I also underlined the words that really resonated with my work. These were my favorite words!

example of Artist Statement MESS stage- Mary Cate Freuhan, Breakaway SP17