in terms of doing art about experience:
experience is a good reference point, a starting point from which to launch discoveries through the art process. it's the beginning because it's what we know and is most visceral. but ultimately, the process should take us beyond our experience. thus, identity, woman, asian american, for example, eventually fall away. we may start talking about our experience as asian americans, but that's not what the art is about - ie. we shouldn't talk about it like we're limited to our identities. it's only an exercize to help us see truths. truths that we will share in our communities.

This summer, while I was working away in the studio 15 hours a week, producing very little, feeling like I was walking on a plateau and going through intermittent periods of clarity and confusion about what I was doing, I came to understand yet another level of being an artist -- a level that has nothing to do with shows, which, though they are themselves a growing and learning experience, can have their own brand weirdness; that has nothing to do with what your friends, family, community think; that has nothing to do with what the art world thinks; that has nothing to do societal and cultural standards of success; that has nothing to do even with your own ideas of what being an artist is, because that's informed only by our limited views.

Being an artist, I realized, involves practicing art sincerely. But there's so much vulnerability for an artist walking that path, and it's so easy to get confused. There are so many traps to cling to, to distract us. Because I think of my art process in parallel terms to my spiritual work, I often wonder: do I need a master to help guide me through the art? Do I need an art sangha? And where's the scripture in this?

But artists have always worked with what we have. I haven't run into an art master, not one who would take me on, at least. And I'm getting better at distinguishing between art as career and art supported by career.

But one thing I realized would be helpful is to define the art practices. That is, those practices that come before the career steps like writing the artist statement, developing the portfolio, applying for residencies and funding, all those things that we already have seminars for.

Art practices may be talked about in casual conversations. They get clarified sometimes when artists get together or are just together. But how much sharing actually gets done and where does it go?

No one can tell you how to be an artist or how the experience will be. You have to learn so many things about your own art by just going through it. But certainly getting affirmation from other artists who are practicing makes all the difference. That's why a lot of the artists who "made it" without going insane in history made it. I'm not talking about the fame part, which has to do with stuff unrelated to art. But I'm talking about the association, the support to keep going.

So the purpose of this blog is twofold:
1)It's a space to clarify my practices.
2)It's a space for artists to share art practices.