I am on self-imposed exile from my studio (which didn’t stop me from coming in today to tweak this piece that didn’t need it) because I haven’t left it for a breather in months. I’ve been telling people I’m on winter break, finally. But now I’m realizing that I have no other reason to be alive or living in Madison, Wisconsin than to be in my studio puttering. Because it’s the end of day one and I am already very, very bored. It’s easier to have a meltdown when school is not in session.

I don’t know if I am actually having a meltdown or not, but I do know that if I sit there in my messy studio and try to make anything right now, my brain is going to make a tiny yet permanent popping noise and then I will have to drop out. I don’t necessarily even feel that stressed out or anything; I want to keep working but I know I shouldn’t. There’s nothing to think about right now, I am a mushy void at the moment. My belly keeps telling me no, go home and wear the same shirt for two days and watch shitty movies on Netflix.

So here’s this thing I made for the review show we have up. As with most things I make, I am undecided. One minute I’m cool with it, might even like it, the next I am all “ew, what is this, this is awful”. The usual. The show kicks total ass by the way. Really, it does. We got lots of great compliments for last year’s show, and tons more this year. It’s because we’re the smallest class of the three years and therefore all the cream rose to the top of the admissions pile.. yep.

Lots of people liked my ceramic swan…. I will say that I fucking love that ceramic swan, so much that when I stupidly shattered the first one I immediately made a second version (that never happens). I actually love that whole stack, but maybe not so much the other. Maybe that is most of why I am divided about this piece. The other one is the one I kept poking at. But anyway, that swan is a ‘my bougie Illinois cousin and I playing Swan Princess on her parents’ glass coffee table circa 1995′ ceramic swan. Upper middle class beige berber carpet. Fake flower arrangements that served as great nooks for plastic swan figurine drama to play out. My bougie Illinois cousins were just like Ash* in that they had ALL the toys I really wanted and never got and I totally resented them for it in that completely pure one-track-mind way that little kids have.

Some of the stuff that’s in that last picture dump is things they had. These were cousins I only saw once a year (if that) because our families didn’t really care enough about one another to make the effort to get together, even though they only live two hours from my parents. When I went off to college it was like they felt they could stop pretending and we haven’t seen them since. I feel like most of that made it in there somehow. Me rolling my eyes, which I do a lot, about a lot of things.

Which isn’t to say that this is a personal piece.. not at all. I have little to no connection to these people, and a lot of people at the time had that same Pottery-Barn-before-Pottery-Barn-was-Pottery-Barn type of living room set up. It’s more about the numbers and that sense of identical decor than my family history, most of which sucks to the point where I can talk about it really clinically.

The head of my degree committee (Paul) said today that he liked it, and I asked if he was just saying that because sometimes I wonder if he would actually tell me if he didn’t like it. But then he said “it just feels right” and I kind of believed him after that because that’s exactly how I felt about it too. I realized when he said it that that had been most of my objective right there, to just make it feel right, to make something click. Parts of it are wrong, we agreed. But I guess something is going on for other people too, it’s not just me. That swan stack. 100% rightness right there. And more people confirmed this at the opening this evening.

That’s my biggest fear about making work like this, this way that is more subtle than anything I’ve done. When does it stop becoming just a pile of crap to other people? What is the tipping point? I’ve always felt this need to make it obvious that this thing I made is art or decorative or something, just in case my work doesn’t get there. And I’ve always kind of hated that about myself, that need to underline it. That is the next thing I want to beat out of my system.

I will say these things:

1. I watched Glee while I was painting benches on the last piece. On hulu. I was blown away that such a show existed. I have the soundtrack.
2. The whole thing reminds me of an overgrown Kids Bop/Kidsongs compilation CD (that is a huge huge huge burn), and I cannot stand how earnest everyone is about every damn thing. It makes me gag. Especially that girl who leads all the big hits.. you can tell she grew up on Broadway in how she handles herself around her main co-star (must maintain eye contact!!!!!) and if not for the lungs on her I would hate her guts for it because it makes me squirm. The whole show is just awkward.
3. But I love how transcendent it is, and I get shivers when they really get going. These people can just go on wailing everyone’s favorite pop songs and I don’t even give a shit if they can act or if there’s a plot or not. (So there’s the usual love/hate relationship I have with most of my favorite pop cultural relics.)
4. This is kind of an unrelated mini-sequel to the piece that’s in Milwaukee in that instead of thinking about suburbs in a systematic way I was thinking about the 9.9 million viewers (or something) who tune in to watch episodes of this show. Most of them live in the suburbs. And have suburban living rooms. And shop at Target. And maybe they are women who buy those 100 calorie packs of snack cookies because they might be a little overweight. And are looking for that perfect relationship and for someone to love them, but are instead sitting at home watching Glee and pinning all their dreams and emotions on a tv show instead of being proactive about it. In some ways this piece is just about lonely, imperfect people connecting on eHarmony.
5. The suburbs feel like a total cliche and I don’t think I’m very happy to keep telling people that I’m working with them, but let’s be honest.. they are so rich in things that I like to think about. I could make work about “the suburbs” for the next ten years and not run out of things to say. But like Glee, that idea makes me gag. Feels like it’s something to cross off of my list, what with that research paper I wrote and all. Maybe that’s premature.

I think that the feeling I want is infinitely more subtle and insidious. I am still trying to figure out how to manipulate objects that are already so loaded with meaning and sign and give them a sense of humor and my own brand of pathetic. But it is encouraging to know that this piece did a little of what I wanted it to (on very short notice too).

* Someday a large box will arrive on my doorstep from Omaha, Nebraska, and in it will be an entire childhood’s worth of Barbie accessories and My Little Ponies and Littlest Pet Shops and that part of me that spent a childhood playing with cardboard and lustfully cutting out sections of the Toys R’ Us catalog will be able to die happily.