During the critiques I interview the person.
Ojai Mitchel, A graphic designer on campus was excited about my investigation of Gender. I only showed him drawings on my studio wall of empty squares arranged as diptychs, grids, and triptychs. I filled in the blanks by talking about the formal arrangements of the squares, I also talked about how gender could be talked about in these arrangements and the different mediums I thought would properly express my idea.
He liked the pursuit and thought it was relevant. He agreed with my ideas on the formal issues of arrangement and the messages i thought the mediums carried. I asked him about his views on masculinity and femininity and found that he felt most masculine when he was not talking about pooping or other things considered "rude or disgusting" to be talked about in front of ladies. We rooted his influence on masculinity back to his childhood in Jamaica. He went to an all boys school. We went off topic and talked about his color and about the transition from Jamaica to America. "I woke every morning and saw the prime minister who was black. I had never once doubted the power of my color. I think it's an American thing."
I began to think more and more about the role of authorship as related to the roles of gender and race after this interview. I found it hard to separate his childhood and experiences with his family from his ideas of gender.
I spoke with Athena Tori about a painting I had completed of tooth brushes in our bathroom. She liked it and said it worked well and that I should make more of other objects. I argued that the painting was too expressive and that I was looking for something less expressive. She thought that it gave my paintings a unique style that was indicative the progression of my paintings. I agreed, but still did not agree that I should make more. We talked about the simplicity of depicting gender with colors. Pink for female, blue for male. We also talked about the romance that the objects had in the painting. I grew to like my painting from our conversation, but I still did not see painting as a medium for my thesis any longer. I brought up photography and felt as if it would be the answer to my trouble with the paintings. The camera, which I had designated before as a tool for portraiture was now free to work topologically. Athena and I looked at images and discussed the Bechers. The idea of travel was introduced into my ideas and I agreed to ride with Athena in her car to pick up logs over an hour away.
My original intent was to document Athena to try to "show moments of masculinity," and to explore her ideas of "the Failure of masculinity." I wanted to show the struggle of her feminine form attempting to pick up heavy logs. Our previous conversations about Topology were still on my mind during the travels. During the ride I took pictures of shopping centers that we passed. I noticed that they were gendered and started to think about how gender can affect city planning. The billboards we passed stood out as gendered too. Shops with first names, gendered. Plazas with first names, gendered. All the pictures I took were lost during a download.
Jeremy Fisher frequented my studio and talked with me both about my ideas and participated in a couple of interviews. He was one of the first people to see my video on Gender. It was arranged as a diptych for immediate visual comparison of cartoon characters displaying masculinity on the left and femininity on the right. I made the choice to start with cartoons I watched as a kid because the process was laborious(I had to watch a lot of seasons of cartoons to find moments I remembered seeing). Jeremy also liked the direction I was going in and suggested that I rotoscope out the characters to separate them from the background which he considered distracting. I tried it out and disagreed. I liked the aura that whole picture gave. The sense of place and time. It was about the interaction of the character in the environment.
Athena Torri came into my studio and viewed a video I made of Britney Hollinger. She liked the shots, but suggested I not go handheld. I agreed, but defended myself by mentioning that it was a deliberate process for me. I was using a new camera and really wanted to get the weight of it in my hand despite the uneven compositions and shake that came as a result.
I talked about my thesis often outside of the studio. I did not enjoy being in the studio. I made a lot of the work and thought about the work outside of the studio. I spoke later with
Susan Trovas about my thesis in the company of Jill Lerner and Athena Torri. They were interested in the idea, and also thought it had a fertile ground to work with. Susan and I began to talk more about the possibilities outside of Masculinity and Femenity. We considered everything from the single person who had no one to compare gender with, to the accepted european models of gender roles that were begining to be noticed in American culture: women working and men taking care of children. I mentioned to her an interview I had done with a middle aged woman who was married and had no children. The husband did not work but also did not participate in daily house chores. He exclaimed that house work was reserved for women. She works full-time, cooks, cleans, and pays the bills. Susan and Jill were a great addition to the conversation. They were able to help me see some issues that might arise during a conversation about gender roles. Mainly related to culture, time, and age. Again I was reminded of the engrained beliefs that people obtain at an early age from social interaction, culture, and direct family values and norms.
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