Creative Insomnia

[Thea Clark]

My work in the studio is spent going back and forth between mining the old ideas and ushering in the new. Truthfully my mind is many steps ahead of my hands. I think I have always lived with  creative insomnia. Restless with things that I've explored before, wanting to push into the unknown, living with the risk and challenge that comes with that territory is easier for me than boredom.

Once I have an idea I have to judge my commitment to it. Is it urgent enough that I must make it? Many things fall by the side of the road. My desire has been to make more and edit less, which requires me to step out of the perfectionist head and into the playful one.

I am making new work examining Weather, our interdependent relationship to it and the urgent sense of an imminent reckoning. What would this look like, what would this feel like? So far I have been gravitating to the use of asphalt shingles, ceiling tiles, coir fiber, synthetic grass, cyanotype, and iron oxide. Mostly I have made maquettes to translate into larger work, although I am also downsizing the materials into wearable scale (the familiar demands attention too.) This work will culminate in an installation at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey (Summit, NJ) in the spring of 2014, curated by Mary Birmingham, called "The Quick and the Deep".

 

In the meanwhile, one new sculpture has found its way into a show,"Rust Never Sleeps", curated by Sharon Massey gallery director of the Martha Gault Art Galleryat Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania. I am looking forward to a residency at the Vermont Studio Center next June to devote to advancing this work.