Amélie moule: mars

14 avril 2014

Et voici les nouvelles d'Amélie en moulage, édition de mars... bonne lecture!

"How have you been?

It feels like such a long time since I last wrote to you...  Maybe my little holiday in the US prior to the Chicago conference has something to do with it.  Traveling solo, visiting old friends, reconnecting, New York, Indianapolis, Chicago, overnight buses, peanuts for dinner, long walks, soar feet... feeling free... it stirred a lot of things inside.  My mind has been a little out of focus since then and I've somewhat lost track of time...

I remember a particularly unexpected moment of bliss, waking up on the bus in the middle of the night just on time to see Philadelphia's nightscape slowly unfold before my eyes, as if it had been waiting for me, tall and beautiful and calm, and for a minute everything felt in its right place.
And so this month I've chosen a piece of music which, to me, echoes that moment :

(Side note: Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate is one of the most brilliant things I've ever seen.)

Workwise, Chicago meant meeting people, buying tools, finding inspiration and new ideas, but it also meant missing almost 2 weeks in the studio, so I haven't been quite as productive as I normally am (... still, no regrets!).  I've mainly focused on finishing pieces and resuming a variety of ongoing tests.  The tests I won't talk about right now because they will likely be at the heart of my work for May and I want to keep you in suspense til then.  (Hehehe...)

I will, however, talk about the two pieces I've finished, for they leave me a bit perplexed.

First there's the lady-and-octopi piece of course, which you know well by now.  It was already almost finished back in January so essentially all I had left to do was clean it up and give it a lot of loving coldworking care - which I did.  The final result, I must say, looks very much like what I had imagined, and reveals a level of technical control that I didn't even know I had.  There are tons of little things in that piece that I'm happy about.  And yet... somehow I'm not feeling the love.  Despite all the time and care I gave to that piece, it leaves me rather indifferent.  And I really don't know what to think about that.
Perplexity, stage 1.

The other piece, the feet vessels ("Learning to fly"), is the opposite.  I love that piece.  It's so delicate and light, airy almost... there's a sensitivity and a tactile quality to it that I really like.  I feel like it's very "me", perhaps more so than anything I've done so far.  And yet... I feel almost embarrassed to admit that I like that piece.  It's super (too?) simple, it's full of technical flaws, and nobody except me seems to find it particularly interesting.  And once again, I'm not too sure how to interpret that.

Perplexity, stage 2.

So as you can see, this past month has left me questioning myself a lot, and my work too.  Which, I'm sure, is a perfectly normal and healthy thing for an artist, but still an uncomfortable place to be.  With only one month left to my scholarship, it'll be interesting to see what other stages of perplexity I'll go through and what'll come out of it all.
Hopefully being off balance is just a clumsy way to take a step forward?

A story to be continued...

Take care,

Amélie"