Guest Artist. California College of the Arts, Graduate Fine Art course “Practice Practice Practice: On Repetition and Social Forms” for Dr. Julian Carter

She showed us how to see our ropes as archives of our time together. Each individual twist is a record of our attention in the moment it was made, the changing clarity along each length is a testament to duration and our growing skill. It tells us about the thread that pulls from the past into the present; and so we looped back to our readings and their narratives of death, survival, and return.

The students were so happy to have rigorous, focused time to think and talk through ideas–and even happier that they got to follow that with shared studio time to take it all into their bodies in quiet parallel play, hands busy, senses softly open. Midori and I stitched that class together through trained intuition–conviction almost amounting to passion–unapologetically nonlinear perceptions of time–and crossed fingers. Oh and 1/2 inch strips of rag.

Julian B Carter, Ph.D.

California College of the Arts, Program in Critical Studies