Studio Letter No. 003
The Toll of Hidden Labor
This past week felt like a complete blur, as I navigated the final days before my work got packed for my upcoming show, A Dreaming Hour. After nearly a year of conceiving ideas, planning, strategizing, and making the work; it’s heading off to it’s temporary new home (Cranbrook Art Museum) and I am left with the remaining exhaustion that consumes me after I finish a body of work.
One of the most interesting aspects of being an artist is that most people don’t often think of what we do as “work.” For some reason, the labor of artists is often relegated to being “fun” or you find yourself being reminded that you should feel lucky that you get to do this. While I find the practice of gratitude important and DO agree that I am insanely lucky…. sometimes these sentiments tend to reduce the very REAL labor, time, money, and sacrifices that not only build, but sustain this as a career and livelihood.
It’s on these days, as I sit in my studio watching the art handling team pack up my work; I find myself reminded of how little that labor is ever seen and yet the product of that labor is so easily consumed.
These are all just thoughts as I find myself ruminating on the closure of yet another project. But despite it all, I’m very excited about this new body of work and am looking forward to seeing the ways that my practice expands as a result of some of the new aspects featured in this series. Images of the work will be over at akeabrionne.com in a few weeks! But I will expand more on that later.
On the slower side of things, here are some of the rituals that found rhythm in my practice this week. The developments were in fact slow this week but that’s exactly what Studio Bri is about, so that’s great. As most of my time and energy was consumed with my deadline, I didn’t have as much time to play around with ideas, but I was able to make some time to continue working on some smaller projects:
Abstraction as Resistance
A few months ago, I began working on what I like to call “color studies.” These are small pastel drawings on wood paneling and they have been a fun exercise in allowing movement, gesture, and rhythm to create dynamic studies of color. In these color studies, I use nothing but oil pastels and glitter and I give myself a small amount of time to create a piece, sometimes as little as 1 minute to ensure that I am not overthinking and am simply creating, for the sake of creation itself.
These color studies have been such a fun way to reengage some of the initial senses that we explore as children; color, shapes, lines, color, and texture. Most of the works pictured have found a home and I’ll soon be shipping the remaining pieces out, but it’s been great to spend time with them over the past few months and see the ways that playing with simple visual elements has become one of the most grounding aspects of “making” as of late.
Soon, I’ll be increasing the scale and working on larger abstractions, but until then, I’ve had an amazing time thinking about the ways that scale impacts feeling, emotion, and even the level immersion. As I have begun incorporating pastels into my newest jacquard works, it’s been nice to work with the pastels are the main medium and I’ve enjoyed the level of play that it’s created. It’s funny how changing your tool can allow you to remove some of the preciousness surrounding getting it “right” and just focusing it getting anything out at all.
At this point in time, most people know me work for my jacquards; but I am a photographer as well! Both my undergrad and grad degrees were in photography and a lot of what helped build my career were my self portraits and that portraits I’d take of my family.
I’m excited to be coming back to this foundation and this past week I built the set for my first self-portrait in four years! The image will be on view at the upcoming Cranbrook show, but I’m excited to share a behind the scenes snippet of the set that I’ve built (pictured above) and it’s also a sneak peek of some upcoming opportunities to have a form of my work in your own home (so stay tuned for that)!
Music On Repeat This Week
(In No Particular Order):
So Caught Up by The Teskey Brothers
L’lle neu by Hikaru Hayashi
Santee Alley by LA LOM
Are You Lonesome Tonight by Elvis Presley
Lo que Siembras by Danay Suarez
What I’m Reading This Week:
It’s been yet another week of minimal time for reading, but I was able to take a few moments during my allocated break time to start a book on textile art titled, Slow Stitch: Mindful and Contemplative Textile Art by Claire Wellesley-Smith.
I’ve been thinking about the ways that I can allow for slower and more contemplative rituals within my own creative practice and this book has given some great inspiration for how to explore that with stitching as a meditative practice. Hopefully next week I will have some tests to share with you.
That’s all for this week’s studio letter. I hope you’re well and I’m looking forward to writing to you again next week :)
~Akea <3
