I have created things that I thought were entirely my own, only to later realize how much of them were influenced by everything that had come before me, even before I started making anything,
I have created things and felt the private ownership, felt the particular humility of tracing from something I was proud of back through the books I had read, and the rooms I had been in, and the people I had listened to for years,
I’ve created things using instinctive materials, tools that are common, and a simple language I call my own, called the combination of everything my own voice, yet I’ve forgotten to be grateful for everything it’s made me,
What is the genuine part of what I call mine that I actually created, received, transformed, and returned in a new form that felt original, the transformation itself was my contribution,
I have created things that I believed were entirely mine, it was incomplete in a way that made me hold onto the work more tightly and credit myself more fully than the full story would have allowed to just happen…
I have been conversing with events that existed before my birth, yet I often fail to recognize and acknowledge that my actions are responses to pre-existing elements in the room when I arrive,
I have been conversing with art that profoundly influenced me at a young age became an integral part of my inner world, I often struggle to distinguish between the original structure and my own expression,
I have been part of something much larger than myself, my contributions are about continuing a current that has flowed through all those who came before me,
What would change about how I hold my work, how I hold my doubt, and how I hold the comparison to others, if I genuinely believed that everything I make is part of what’s about to happen,
I have been conversing with the entire history of creation, love, loss, and rebirth, that never required me to pretend as it all started to a greater, meaningful story to say…
I have different versions of myself that disagree on the work’s purpose and direction, though sometimes perceived as failure, was actually the most vibrant part of the process,
I have different versions that see what the work could be in, best and most complete that can only build what the hands, the engine of every attempt I will ever make,
I have different versions at the table of making and I have spent years trying to get them to agree before I begin in truth of the work that emerges from my own mind’s argument,
Which version of me am I listening to most right now, is it the one most invested in the work being alive or the one most invested in the work being safe and finished and done in a way,
I have different versions of myself at the table, between them is long and sometimes painful more than the single version any one of them alone was capable of making...
I have released something I made and watched it become something different in another person's hands that could survive my own intentions for it and go somewhere I had not planned,
I have released something and felt the loss of the private version of it that only existed when it was still mine and the public version turned out to hold things I had not known were present,
I have released something that what the work meant to me, what it meant to the person it reached were not the same thing and that the difference was not a failure of the work's clarity but a sign of its actual depth,
What does it mean about the work I made that it can travel beyond, still be received as something true, and does change my understanding of what I was actually doing when I made it,
I have released something, and as I gradually learn to accept, I’ve witnessed it transform into various forms in different rooms but it’s not a dilution of the original, but rather the original fulfilling its intended purpose…
Watchwords:
Traced the line back through everything I had absorbed,
Interior architecture built before I had language for it,
The work emerges from the argument not the consensus,
The private version lost when I let the work go,
The original doing exactly what it was made to do...
Here is Tikatarot, who dares you to answer the question, “Who am I?”..
As and will always be reminding you to dream:
