Orient, Disorient, Repeat

5/28/2019

Opening Reception for the Exhibition 'Orient, Disorient, Repeat'
• May 23, 2019 •

My Artist Remarks from the Opening Reception

Thank you for coming. Hi, I’m Mary Pow.

I began this grant process with the simple desire to have more time to create art. I was interested in allowing myself the freedom to be creative. So, I spent much of the year researching the creative process. The social psychologist Erich Fromm said, “Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.” I took this to heart when I started my work last summer.

I decided to throw some uncertainties at myself and see what would happen. I pulled out an assortment of strips of fabric that I had saved from other projects. I started to arrange them and sew them together without thinking of the final result. I played a bit with the idea of back and front, and exposing the seams, which was something I had wanted to try for a while.

I wasn’t sure where this work was going to take me. I started to feel a lot of nervousness at the not knowing. What would the final exhibition for this grant turn out to be anyway? What was I going to do? And would I be a disappointment? It was a scary place to be. Yes, I was freaking out a little bit.

As I worked with my random scraps of fabric, without the solid knowledge of what the outcome would look like, I realized that I was living through the exact things I was researching. Doing something new requires one to be bold and brave. It can be really, really hard to allow yourself to trust the process and see where you end up. To trust yourself.

As I worked, I considered how human beings are such a confusing species. There is this duality to us. I mean, we have two opposing desires: predictability and exploration. How can we desire both? They are opposites.

On one hand, we love to fit things into boxes. We want simple explanations and absolute answers. We want things to be black and white. Plus, predictability is comfortable.

Contrast that with the human desire for exploration. We crave the new. We’re curious, we love to learn, make discoveries, and explore the vast unknown. We like a challenge, but this can be uncomfortable.

I got to a stopping point with the piece I was working on, so I hung it up in my studio doorway and stepped back. I didn’t know what I thought about it. Well, I thought I did. I thought I didn’t like it. I thought: What is this anyway? I don’t know what I’m doing! But then then sun streamed through it, and I realized that it was two-sided. And I had an ah-ha! moment. I realized that the things I was thinking about – the opposing human desires of predictability and exploration cannot be separated. They are two sides of the same coin.

And so, I realized for myself as well, that the only way to get through the challenging part of creating art was to push through the hard parts. If I allowed myself to go through the uneasiness of the unknown, I would find the delight of discovering new things; about myself, about my world, about my art. Once I pushed myself through the discomfort, the unknown became known. Thus, the title of the piece hanging in the window is “The Way Out is Through.”

I recently heard a journalist say, “How you see the world depends on where you look.” Which really resonated with me, as I love to consider all the different ways that people view the world. I can really get myself going, thinking about: what is reality anyway, when we all see things differently? You know, everyone experiences and understand the world slightly differently, and it all depends on what you value; what you notice; how you were raised. There is never a singular way to see the world.

Of course, people tend to seek out and spend time with others who share similar viewpoints because it’s really comfortable to be with others who see the world like we do. But I learned the importance of searching out ways to make yourself see things differently. The way to be creative and uncover new ideas, is to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

The title for my large piece here on the wall, Luster, comes from a novel. In his book The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen writes, “Life had a kind of velvet luster. You looked at yourself from one perspective and all you saw was weirdness. Move your head a little bit, though, and everything looked reasonably normal.” This line sticks with me. I like to think that each person’s reality can be similar to the luster of velvet. If you are able to shift your viewpoint slightly, everything will look different. And if you can open yourself up to other viewpoints, your world can only expand.

If you have any comments or questions, I’ll be more than interested in hearing your viewpoint.

Thank you.