I wonder if physicists, elephant midwives, or psychic advisors ever (like me) weigh the possibilities of walking away from their jobs, thinking they might rather do most anything, besides prance around as professionalized specimens of whatever their callings happen to be?1  As the 2007 College Art Association Annual Conference rolls around, it’s name-tag time again in the academic art world, and I have been thinking about life as an artist, and how working in academia since grad school has altered my perceptions since the last time I came to New York for CAA. 

Then, in 2003, I was still an MFA student at Georgia State.  I lived with two or three roommates, some assorted animals, and a couple dozen Evil Knievel motorbikes in a warehouse on the railroad tracks east of downtown Atlanta.  My GSU teaching stipend of $600/month more or less covered the rent, lentils, cut flowers in the winter, and some weird pants.  I was working on large participatory installations like the 100 Names Project and the Internet Mandala Project, which involved a lot of sleuthing around (who could tell me the names of 100 people born or deceased on a certain day in the city? what’s a good, cheap way to dye playground sand? are there different versions of the Names of Kali & the 99 Beautiful Names of God?)  Many of my materials were free: found, donated, or recycled through the City of Atlanta Materials for the Arts program.  When I came to CAA for job interviews, staying at the conference hotel was out of the question, so my then-boyfriend helped me find a tiny single room at the midtown Y.  I’d tromp from the Y to the Hilton in my hiking boots (a blizzard had just dropped 2 feet of snow on NY), coat-check the boots, and spend the rest of the day teetering around the conference on lady-shoes. Each evening, I'd sit around in the sauna back at the Y with the old ladies & listen to their days' news. I was sure I wanted to be an artist, and teaching, preferably college teaching, seemed to be the best way to support myself while making the kind of work I wanted to make.

[Click here for a Brief Timeline of my Postgraduate Professional Adventures. Or skip it. Your pick.]

I’m not so sure now about the connections between teaching and artmaking, or even between artmaking and professional art-exhibition. Basically, four years out of grad school, I am at the stage of feeling as though my feet are pointed in one direction, while my eyes search elsewhere, for something dearly desired, but not well defined. I remember hearing once that while the Ox-Herding Pictures at first seem to describe a linear progression, they're really more like checkpoints in a landscape we travel again and again. That's a humbling thought, if you happen to be at a high point in your life, and it's a comfort, if you happen to be feeling pretty verzweifelt. Clarity, channeling inspiration into action, occurs in the neighborhood of doubt. Doubt, mulling confusion into inaction, occurs in the neighborhood of clarity.2

So where are the bright places in the Ox-scape, then? New Haven based artist Aidan Moran sent in this photo (L) to the Rat, which points to some good landmarks from the last couple of months' wandering, namely: the John Armleder show in Geneva at MAMCO, the Walton Ford show at the Brooklyn Museum, Dom Night at Gavin Brown's Passerby Space, E.V. Day's G-force at Deitch Projects. Each of which more or less mandated laughter in art galleries, even if not all gallery-goers followed through.

In a larger-narrative sense, Moran's photo also reminds me of Dave Hickey's discussion of the institutionalized art world in The Invisible Dragon.4 He argues that believing something (like art) to be tediously good-for-you does not set a foundation from which to enjoy it. Perhaps this relates to some problems I have experienced with teaching. Does taking classes in art make art good for you, and thus not pleasurable? Truly great students are able to risk real pleasure and real authorship in their artmaking. Meanwhile, some chomp the bit all through college on their way to the "real world," while others consistently second-guess themselves (and their professors), approaching their coursework as avid grade-seekers. Many simply seek their joy elsewhere, in the entertainments of the day.