My process is like a jigsaw puzzle.

If I spend too much time taking in media and ideas, it creates an imbalance. Physical exercise and meditation will help set me right, but it is only by processing what I experience that my mind is able to find rest. Indicators that I have spent too much time taking in stimulus and not enough time processing and outputting are, nightmares, difficulty turning off when it is time to sleep, a racing mind and interrupting thoughts.

Can you relate?

A sketch of a cotton boll, made from samples at the RISD Nature Lab. This drawing eventually became one of the images in the paper panels of my installation.

There is a feedback loop here. The negative mindset I describe above can feel like a punishment. But there is an even stronger element on the opposite side of the ledger. The reward comes in the form of studio time. When I am working out ideas in the studio I can go into deep focus and lose all sense of time. I dive into subjects that interest me with no plan for how I might use the information.

The lack of a plan is very important. 

I had an extraordinary professor in graduate school, the artist Leila Daw. She was a great influence and role model for me. At that time, I belonged to an artist’s collective called “The Tea Group”. Sometimes we invited guests for tea and conversation on particular topics. At one such tea, Leila emptied a sandwich bag of jigsaw pieces onto the table, while she described bringing disparate ideas from her art research together. She arranged and made attempts at fitting puzzle pieces together while she spoke. This small performance came closer than I have ever come to describing how I process my research through my studio practice of arranging ideas, noticing similar structures, creating analogies and metaphors, rearranging.

If I had a plan going into the studio, I wouldn’t be open to the rearrangement of the elements. 

I have never been diagnosed with ADHD or even tested for it. But in 2019 I attended the annual conference of Learning and the Brain, and I really resonated with an analogy one of the presenters made. They said that while most of us can hold four things in our working memory, a person with ADHD, confronted by something sparkly entering the room, will drop several of the things in working memory to grab the sparkly thought or idea. The bad news is that learning can be difficult if one can’t hold thoughts in the face of stimulus. The good news is that the folks who drop and pick up ideas, are open to making new connections between dissimilar subjects and ideas.

A visit to Lowell Mills in Massachusetts helped me to make connections between wealth in northern states and slavery in the south, for my Intervisible installation. The threads suspended from the ceiling and connecting all the looms inspired the hanging structure of the piece.

The person with the sparkly idea might discover a novel relationship between that and the ideas remaining in hand. 

When I research several topics at once, I find myself making visual metaphors and drawing representations of systems. I think about things at several scales, ecosystems and individuals, cities and streetscapes. Not all of the metaphors and ideas fit together. But by making artwork, I can see these ideas outside of my head. Because they are images and not words, I can rearrange them in a non-linear, more jigsaw kind of way. I can think about changing their relative size, materials or the processes they’re made from. When I do that, I begin to see sparkly new connections. 

Assembling symbols and images in the paper panels of Intervisible. For more on how these images connect to the larger theme, this essay by Elizabeth Michelman is a great introduction.

There is a rush of joy when I find a new way of looking at an idea.

When I have fresh data and research fueling the work, I’m driven to play in the studio. The artwork is an artifact of this process, not the conclusion or outcome. Each decision about mark-making, tools, materials, and even how the work is displayed and arranged, are expressions of my thought process. 

I can become obsessed with projects and subjects. Ironically, they sometimes make it hard to turn my mind off, but never with nightmares or anxiety. Most of the time, the process leaves me feeling deeply satisfied. It is similar to finding the piece of the jigsaw puzzle that connects several large areas (if the pieces were constantly morphing as you worked). When it happens, the picture finally comes clear.

When I feel the images slide and click into a new “right” relationship with each other, my mind can rest.

Gallery shot of “Intervisible”, Bromfield Gallery March 6 - August 2, 2020.