Finding my voice...

"finding" a voice is a strange idea. Almost all of us are born with a functioning voice that we learn how to use. We use words related to communication when we talk about artists' works -- voice, language, vocabulary, message, etc... So, could voice be about what we want people to know or learn from us?

Children aquire new words at an amazing rate when they are first acquiring language, increasing their vocabularies by hundreds of words per day. We aren't quite as sponge-y in our acquisition of techniques. All techniques are is words. It's how you employ those words-techniques to communicate with the viewer that is uniquely yours.

My friend Kris keeps telling me to write every day, think aloud on paper; that it will help me to define/refine what my message is. Steve Klein told me to do the same thing. This summer, as I was writing my little statement for the Pilchuck auction piece, I recognised that the work I am doing relates to the experience of being human, the emotions, the inner struggles, the psychological structures we create to make our worlds safe. Interestingly enough, I started looking at those things long before I discovered the language of art. I was an undergraduate when I began studying psychology. I then threw myself in to working with homeless youth. I still think adolescence is the most interesting age of humans, painful, ugly, beautiful, inspiring. There is nothing like watching a young man or woman discovering what he or she wants or who he or she is. In some ways I think I am still aquiring vocabulary for the work, but the message is there -- it's about becoming human.