Install: Day 4

Oh, drama drama. Yesterday was more drama. They left out the comma in my title and I went into fits of rage. So bad that I had dreams of fighting w/people. It scares me, how my anger is a poison that burns away at me. I decided I had to do a full meditation this a.m. and I accessed overwhelming sadness. Not sure what it's about, but maybe the anger is a cover for that. Not enough sleep. Clif said I look REALLY tired today. I'm posting pics of the work-in-progress - the ladders obviously will be gone.

I thought it might be helpful for people to understand the piece better by posting my artist statement:






Aimee Lee
Hunk, & Dora

Nothing in the entire universe is hidden
--Zen Master Dogen

I grew up hating self-portraits. They seemed to condemn my physical flaws and defects in my creative process. I didn’t understand why it was so hard to draw my face, but so easy to draw a bottle opener. As an overachiever, I was frustrated by how long it took to complete self-portraits; I fell behind for the first time in art class while struggling with one.

This is a self-portrait.

I grew up in brick structures: my home, my schools, places I don’t even recall anymore. I still draw brick walls the way I did as a child, in a running bond. After using covered bricks as weights in bookbinding and reading George Herriman’s Krazy Kat comics about a mouse who throws a brick at a cat’s head, I knew that the brick would be the ideal unit for constructing a physical wall that represented my internal defenses.

To display an interior landscape and mythology, I turned to paper versions of original bricks. They resemble each other: ubiquitous and unassuming, yet extremely labor intensive to lay. Those similarities coupled with their obvious differences help me sit with the fact that what I try to hide is often exactly what I want to expose.