Wednesday, July 24, 2013

resurrecting the blog

A Year of Making Things began as a place for me to share my process and research as I completed my Masters in Fine Arts;  A degree that I believed would re-invigorate my need for a studio practice.  What happened instead was enough time and space to develop a practice in the post-studio moment I am sharing with many other contemporary artists.  Through my research I came out the other end of a graduate degree in fine arts, not necessarily in need of a traditional studio.  I barely had one in grad school after all.

When I began in Philadelphia at the University of the Arts in 2011, I had enrolled in a program which only granted me studio access during the 8-week summer term.  After that I was left to my own personal space in my home, or in collaborative, teaching, or residency spaces I could secure.  By the time I transferred to the University of Cincinnati to finish my degree at DAAP, I had condensed my studio needs into a small storage space, and the availability of my sometimes-functional Ford Ranger.

I re-titled the blog "A Life of Making Things" because the original year is finished, (the year was 2012), and continue to use the word 'things' because I realize that while my art practice doesn't always involve making a sculpture or drawing, it does always end with some thing that I document in some way.  It does not make sense for me to have discontinued this blog.  Without it I continue to compulsively snap photographs, often with no where to put them.  Over the past six months I have continued to make work, organize events, share studio time with other artists, all the while taking thousands of photographs that I keep as digital files and never look at.

The process of selecting images for a blog is one version of my sketch book and without it I feel saturated with images and ideas, not sure sometimes where to take action.

In the meantime I have created an artist website where I have images and descriptions of finished and ongoing projects.  Its my name because I thought that would be the easiest way for people to find it.  Not super creative but I didn't know what else to do!  You can see that stuff at corrinamehiel.com

I'll begin to document my process again here as I make work.  Feel free to contact me anytime at corrinamehiel@gmail.com.


Dishwasher full of clean dishes found open at the scrap yard,  2013