With Hopkins locked up, I am experiencing a level of focused learning and experimentation that I have fiercely missed. Before returning to school, I spent 7 years working almost entirely from home, mostly on intricately formed or cut paper. I am a socially confident introvert, which makes a shared studio environment incredibly draining (though being a part of a strong community is something I am very thankful for, and I miss clay and kilns and space to be messy within).
I prefer to be alone. I prefer to let my mind wander to possibilities of a material that is rigid and fragile and formable and common. I prefer to sit for 10 hours and make small marks and small creases and small gestures that amount to something bigger when combined, and dizzying when delved into. This is not meditation. This is not calming. This is the way my brain feels the most engaged and the most lit up.
As I self-isolate and simplify my routine, I am astonished at what I can create. And as I work, my mind is not empty, it is working overtime. I am making connections. Connections between the many ways of working, material choices, captured gestures, modular-building, tropical and dangerous, art I have been trying to make sense of. As my hands create folded puzzles, my mind is catching up and solving the instinct- based puzzles I have made in my time at OSU.
There is fear, in this time, there is overwhelming sorrow and worry, as well, but I am choosing to focus on the puzzles I can control. I am focusing on how my mind works when it is fully charged. I am focusing on how good it feels to make, and to shift ideas into a old but new, medium. Paper and porcelain, they really aren’t that different.