figuring it out

birds...myself...my family...movement...suffering...returning...promising...breathing...cycles...submersing...surfacing...witness...muteness...depth to shallow...practice...birdwatching...watching.

how do i get from my immigrant grandparents to birding and using my body to make art? in class, last night-a discussion about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, in architecture specifically, using a field of similar or even identical forms to create another, greater, more complex form out of which a figure emerges. like the great mosque in cordoba or a tribal complex in new mexico, the final product is not given all at once and is only possible with many contributions. in such a system the individual is only a fragment, not the all-important ARCHITECT...i find this perspective entirely comforting.
i've been searching for singularity of purpose, for a unified practice of artmaking to somehow reveal itself out of my whole life so far. ha! i may as well go searching for the ivory-billed woodpecker! totally missing in the process the immense mystery of the fragments that make up my existence, the contributions, the connections. i need a re-territorialization of my own awareness of myself as an artist.
ok so
i plan to update my website this weekend with link to this blog.
www.artic.edu/~mstrau