I mentioned to a friend the other day that the more I learn about dreams, the more it feels like I’ve barely scratched the surface. It’s been so fulfilling to write about them, in ways that I can’t describe. Maybe I haven’t had that in writing before, where I hit a vein that really gets to my core. Writing is changing my relationship to dreams, and vice-versa; I have a series of dreams about twitter going back a year, it’s like my dreams are very gradually and gently tweet-mentoring me. I continue to be surprised, and it only gets better.

Tuesday night I attempted to begin a short chat about my recent work at NFTuesday, but there was a problem with the projector and my work was rendered invisible, so it was postponed for another time. It was awkward but I can’t even pretend to know what the right order of things is anymore, it seems the universe had better ideas than me about timing. I’ve been a bit awkward in general over the past couple months, what with sharing more digital work and putting out essays and trying to figure out how to do all that, plus the rest of my plate, but it’s growing and I’m very, very grateful.

It’s a feel when a pallet of raw material arrives with a plonk, and just sits there, awaiting transformation into… something.

Back in 2014 when I was spooling up for A house made of air, a flatbed truck arrived one afternoon and dumped 55 sheets of 4’x8’ plywood off the back end. It landed with a ka-bam.

Richard Swayze, the artist-craftsman advising on the feasibility of the sculpture I had in mind standing up properly, looked at me like I was nuts. He cocked an eyebrow that asked, pointedly, do you really intend to rip an absolutely mental amount of ply into this multi-hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle you’ve (somewhat vaguely) proposed? I did. He didn’t know me yet; there was an I’ll-believe-it-when-I-see-it-Kristin vibe. I looked at me like I was nuts too. So it begins.

Wish I had a pic from that day. By the time of the above work-in-progress shot, the stomach-churning pile of ply (at left) had dwindled.

This one shouldn’t be so difficult, are my famous last words every time. But really, this one should be much easier….

Pictured mid-coffee break. People wax on about the flavortudes of wine, which is a topic I should theoretically know something about, having been to idiosyncratic wineries on a majority of continents. It’s very nice, is my opinion. Coffee, on the other hand, is high-stakes and a matter of the utmost discernment. I get wistful thinking about 2013-era Kuma, in those days a did-it-when-he-felt-like-it roaster’s roaster (literally, that’s who my roaster friend fan-boyed for) in Seattle whose beans bloomed like liquid magic. We never know what the next cup might bring.

As we know I love a consult, so I reached out to Sasha Chapin for writing coaching and he lit a fire under my atmospheric ramblings.

First, I had to throw open the doors and windows of sayability in the house of my own mind.

Second, I knew he was going to tell me so, and then he told me so—write a stupid amount very, very fast with absolutely zero regard for quality. Which I did. Turns out that’s liberating, even fun, who knew. Well, Sasha did.

All that’s gestating, work-in-progress, but it’s no doubt the speediest 20k words I ever did see.

Side note, I’ve always kind of idly wondered why I made a blog tag called “epigraphs.” I did it without much conscious intention, which is a feature, because in the creative process things shouldn’t make too much sense. I mean, if it makes sense at the start, you already get it, what’s to discover. Dig a little deeper. Anyway, while writing 20k words very fast, without adequate time to censor myself, after how many years I finally encountered my writing denial, shook its hand, thanked it for its service, and realized I really am supposed to write a bunch of stuff after the frontispiece, lol.

For reals, I had no idea how much I needed a tuned pro to read what I was up to and zoom-call-encourage more of it. Seeing the best in each other is a gift. I hope to be pretty good at doing that for others, steadily getting better. Though my biggest thanks are for all you, who day in and out do it too.

Surprise visit this week by a curator from Milan I haven’t seen in years, aka serendipity. Rambling around the usual places yet with her eyes, always learning from how different it feels to see art with different spirits. Then of course the chicest woman I know ropes me into trying on the next cute black satin jacket and we’re swapping favorite songs too loud on the 10 at sunset.

Parts for new sculpture and irl Mirror Chain coming off the cnc table. Metal chains are bent or welded to make closed-loop links; I’ve neither option with mirror sheet. Instead I went for a simple design with two alternating types of links: One link is a closed loop, and one link has a gap that slots to build up the chain. It’s funny how ideas emerge — the resulting chains have a binary pattern rhythm, a more interesting variety of views as one walks around them, and overall a different feel than conventional links would provide. Next solo show is sculpture, opens in October. Next architectural digital work is TBD, and whilst I grapple with its seeming impossibilities, who knew that the exploratory convos and doors they’re opening would be so much fun.

Over the past year I’ve stumbled into an occasional hobby: When I come across someone standout in an area I’m mildly obsessed with, I reach out for a consult in whatever and ask a bunch of questions. So I did this last month, it was ridiculously great and life-altering, then the expert was like, ‘oh I have a new book out today.’ Later as I searched for this new book, the first thing that came up was an entirely unrelated book in a diametrically opposite field—but by a different author who has the exact same name. It turns out this utter gem of a tome, rare and obscure, by said doppelgänger is exactly the thing I didn’t know I needed, like some key to a hidden door of questions that’ve been quite shut. And as I read the one author, I can’t help but think of the other and how eerily linked their ideas are—separated by a generation and a continent, one an inquiry into mind and the other math. Who knows what’s percolating there, but as I look back each of my larger artworks hinged on marvelous serendipities, so thoroughly and so strangely that I’ve come to regard a nose for information as among the most mysterious, and essential, of senses to cultivate. Threads even better appreciated with coffee, particularly a single-origin Guatemala with chocolate notes.

Spring in the studio, feeling the lols and maybe another art mail season coming on. Ever wish you could just chat with your favorite people for hours? Making new sculpture, bugged by the eternal Constantin Brancusi and a digital idea I don’t know how to do, promising, that’s how it starts.