So What Is This, Anyway?

Before I can attempt to describe what the content of this project will be, before I can know exactly what it will look like, I need to start as close to the beginning as I can. I write this down with the intention of making this as understandable as possible to a first-time visitor to this blog because it’s serving another purpose, too. I need to write this out with clarity to make it make sense to myself.At the end of this, in a couple months, I want to have made something that:

• Conveys its concepts to other people
• Uses a mix of text, imagery, form, and format to convey it
• Isn’t just didactic, that’s not just from me to the reader, but something that’s like a cooperative experience between the reader and the content
• Oh and by the way, yeah, I’m thinking it will be a book of some sort. Graphic novel? Not exactly. Regular book? No. Picture book? Sort of, but not only for kids.

I have this material I want to work with, but it’s hard to explain. The primary material of this project is made up of several related concepts (instead of the material being paint and substrate, or clay and kiln, or ink and paper.) Working with concepts is how I was trained as an artist, and it’s actually what drove me to choose the San Francisco Art Institute in the first place. The student work I saw in their catalog wasn’t just art to look at, but art that evoked a sense of something outside itself. Anyway, that’s not what’s hard to explain. Making art out of concepts is conceptual art, there’s plenty of writing about that. What’s hard for me to explain is what all the concepts of my project actually are.But I’m gonna try. Because, how else will I get anywhere with this if I can’t nail down the content? So next up will be my first attempt, probably just one of many attempts. I expect I will add, subtract, and rearrange the ideas as I go along. When I explain what I have on my mind to put into this project, it will sort of be like emptying my pockets and laying it all onto a table. How exactly will the pieces relate to each other? I’m not sure it will make sense, or even that they do fit together.The pieces all come from me, though, and that’s enough for now. ~Maritza