Last spring when I participated in the Cambridge Art Association's portfolio review and I was busy doing the elevator speech for the reviewers, I described myself as a cannibal artist.  I've always known what this means to me, but I've started thinking more about the meaning for other artists who feed off their own work.  Is it a hunger/desire thing?  Is it a ritualizing of the creative process?  Is it self-destruction?  Or self-destruction with the positive spin of rebirth and regeneration?  Is it mirroring our world's self-annihilating tendencies?  Is it a disorder???  I'm intending to check out the Leonardo Drew "EXISTED"  exhibit at the Decordova this weekend with some of these thoughts bouncing around.

Here is a secret about using old bits of one's own work...at least it's my secret...I'm not sure how it relates to anyone else's process.  I think there is a child-like, magical-thinking tendency to imagine that bits and pieces of former work quiver with some unseen force...the way something from the past is like the portal to another place.  Re-working old bits of art for me is like starting out with a ritual, embedding the new work with a narrative, a presence, a quivering, unseen spirit.  And this search for that barely-there presence is related to hunger and desire I think.

There's also the visual element:  looking for that perfect fleshy pink with just the right dash of line while trying to evoke the overall feeling of decay, trauma, fragmentation.

What I hope to capture in work that's constructed with bits and pieces is absence and presence combined.  I think this is related to regeneration...like when you look at a baby's face and see a deceased ancestor in the shape of the baby's mouth...seeing the dead and living in one moment.  I don't know if this is how I'll experience the Leonardo Drew exhibit, but I hope it makes me quiver.

From Peter S. Wise, a participating artist, here's a wonderful video montage from the opening reception.

It's late, but before sleep I need to write a little bit about tonight's opening of In-Between at the Worcester State University Gallery.  It is very exciting to be a part of this inaugural juried exhibit of regional artists' work.  This show marks the beginning of the gallery's new focus on what the Worcester Telegram calls “expanding its role in the cultural landscape” -- highlighting regional artwork and contributing to the cultural vibrancy of the city of Worcester.

There was a big turn-out tonight with a lot of university folks present and a lot of enthusiasm about this show and the gallery’s new mission.  In this context, (despite my usual shyness) I was especially happy to accept a 2nd place award for my piece, What Ascends, What Remains.  I also got the chance to meet some of the other exhibiting artists, some of the fine arts faculty and the gallery director, Catherine Wilcox-Titus.  

My own vanity aside, there was something special about this exhibit.  Choosing 52 pieces from over 350 submissions, the jurors achieved not just a stylistic vision, but a palpable sense of honesty and authenticity.  I couldn’t help noticing how people pondered over these works, even in the commotion of an opening.  Maybe it’s something about the conceptual meanings of “in-between” that brought out true and open visual explorations.  Maybe it was in the jurors' eyes to try to find work that reveals as well as cleverly obscures.  Maybe a university gallery by its nature has a certain commitment to depth that can be a bit harder to find in the larger art world.

If so, this gallery brings quite a gift to Worcester and the rest of us.