A Gift Never Given is a Blessing at Fjord, Philadelphia

The canvas takes what you give it. Every stroke, scrape, and smear is not only welcomed, but coveted by the surface you work on. You pursue this material exchange in the hopes of a reciprocal evocation. The generosity of your conjuring crawls towards the promise of self-fulfillment. Achievements are vague, but a small gesture of balance would suBice, any indication of a flicker will feed your propulsion. But this relationship is skewed, the energy put in is not what you’re getting out. The brush you use doesn’t belong to you, not like you think it does. It’s a tool of vampirism, a straw used to suck your lifeforce up and out of you. The suction creates a vacuum, which creates a rift, which creates a faultline, which becomes a canyon. Everything can be fixed, right?

Even the deepest canyons can be filled if you throw enough into them. The first step is hoarding. Over time the small frivolous piles around you will start to gain weight, maybe even importance. Before you know it, the unassuming clutter strewn around you will have become mounds, free-standing and formidable towers of information. With enough density these self-assured masses could turn into mountains, rigorous monuments to the passing of time. And a mountain is a mountain, geological marvels no matter if they’re made of trash or stone.

Complex psychologies, memories, and emotions are hard to process. The ease of their excavation is contingent on the depth at which they’re buried. Left alone, they’ll fossilize into the foundation you’ve built yourself on. Acceptance comes from understanding that the facets of your interior life are precariously stacked against each other. The friction of your coiled innards is what keeps them standing. It’s possible the only way to untangle this rope is to unburden yourself of its weight. As it unspools frantically, cascading out of your mouth and onto the floor in a heavy pile, you can have clarity. Your view from on high gives you agency over the splatter beneath you. Oversharing is its own form of exorcism. But as things unravel, they pick up momentum. Unchecked, the trickle can surge into a torrent.

There’s always a chance the best avenue is to keep what you have, holding it so tightly it presses against your ribs. What you have should be treasured, kept sacred. And you’re not ignoring your gifts because you feel the pressure of them every time you take a breath. Besides, any eBort to externalize your inner world will be a concession, bent and distorted by the whims of the real world. Keep things cryptic, hidden in plain sight. Embrace your obtuseness a little more each day. What crystalizes is a celebratory, at times garish, display of self-organization undercut by flagrant optimism. Look into the mirror to see how you want to be seen but look at pictures of yourself to understand how you are seen. Each work is a disaster, a ladder whose rungs weren’t built to bear the weight of the one climbing it. A fall can be unifying, drawing the world into sharp focus before distance robs you of the ability to make sense of it.