Artist's Statement, by Jessi Muhr

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Twelve years I had my first piece accepted for showing at a quasi-local gallery, Studio 29, on the Lower East Side. It’s kind of a funny story, but I don’t feel like telling it right now. Suffice to say, it formed my rather bitter opinion of exhibits, and made me

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As a modern day woman I often feel the need to instill my identity into every piece of art I create, as if it is so fragile and wispy that if I don’t preserve it on canvas it will be whisked away in the next passing breeze.

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On second thought, this may make me sound ignorant and ungrateful to all the suffragettes and feminists who came before me, but being a woman doesn’t much affect my understanding of myself, because it’s not like I have anything to compare it to. Anything I feel or think or make could just as easily be attributed to my being white, or born in the eighties, or from New Jersey. It’s true that most of my work involves some variation on the female figure, and often is impressionistic enough to suggest some kind of identity crisis or reflection, but that’s for art history students or critics to find and exploit, not me, and definitely not in my artist’s statement.

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Shit.

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When I was 15 I entered and won my first art contest, resulting in my painting “Untitled/Mirrors” being featured at Studio 29’s ‘Young Artists’ exhibit, which, logically, was my first step in a ‘career,’ if I may be so bold, as an artist. The painting was, according to someone’s review, an exploration of the concept of infinity mirrors—that is, two mirrors facing one another, thus reflecting back infinitely. Its description is a lot more elegant than the content. Frankly, it looks like a kindergartener painted it. I did it that way on purpose, with some silly sophomoric notion that its crudeness in technique would offset its lofty goal, which for some reason seemed necessary, or maybe just cerebral enough to make me want it to be necessary. Anyway I’ve always tried to paint things that no one can see, even before I had a really cohesive aesthetic. Those were the days when I still liked to paint with the intent of making fun of the artists we studied in class, like cubists. I thought that so much of their work looked like a joke and required so little talent that I could do it too, and I did, filled with the kind of self-righteous irony that made me feel superior. About this painting in particular I also had the idea that since no one can look straight into infinity mirrors without seeing themselves in them, then no one could know what they (infinity mirrors) look like (with no one in them), so any way I painted them I would maintain the illusion of some kind of authority. So, “Untitled/Mirrors” was born out of this adolescent self-important cynicism: ‘I can paint something good and not because I feel moved by the spirit to, but because I’m smart enough to.’

And you can take that to the bank. That’s something I’ve never told anyone that, let alone handed it in for publication. After I painted it, I half-expected my teacher to give me detention for so blatantly making fun of her lecture. Instead she entreated me to send it in to this competition in the city that offered $100, a spot at Studio 29, and a master class with some CUNY professor as a prize.

Like I said, that began my trajectory, by introducing me to the world of galleries and criticism and art degrees. Most importantly, it gave me the confidence to start showing people things that were way more personal to me, work that I spent years on, not just study hall. It felt good, to step out of my shell, to let myself feel something emotional about my art, to replace sarcasm with sincerity. And here I am now, guesting in a coffee table book, apparently successful enough to be considered one of Chicago’s emerging women artists. What have I learned from all this? Maybe that I’ve only won a couple contests since that one, but never for any piece that I cared about.

This is mostly irrelevant and self-indulgent and will probably be edited out anyway. Feel free to make me sound smarter/snappier/funnier/something-ier. I suppose I’m honored that someone values my opinion enough to ask for it in writing, but on the flip side of that coin, I’ve expressed myself as best I can through my painting, so my writing is superfluous. But alas, artist’s statements must be in writing.

I suppose the purpose of an artist’s statement is to give the reader a personal lens through which to view the artist’s work. People like having lenses through which to view things, especially abstract art. I can see why I might be expected to offer the lens of womanhood, given the theme of this book, but the truth is I don’t ever think about that. I do, however, think a lot about the anger and the resentment that fueled the start of my career, about the master class I earned with my vindictiveness, about how the paintings I care most about have never left my studio.

 insert something witty and profound and summational

Post-haste!

Well. I have begun to work on Chimneys, which for so long I have confidently called my novel, again. I hesitate to call it that now. Of course I want to, but I think that can be damaging on asubconscious level. Being intimidating and self-serving and all that. Or maybe, I just didn't have a clear idea of what it would look like, trajectory-wise, so I was intimidated. Anyway, either way, tonight I actually came up with an outline. Complete with cause and effect, and a climax, and everything! I think this is a good first step. I plan to use a lot of old Chimneys in it; I think of this new thing as a remodeled, reshaped, rethought version, that is new, yet made out of things that have been stewing in my head and in my recycle bin for years now.

To be honest, I wish I could say something like 'In spite of myself I'm quite excited to start,' but I can't, because I'm nervous, not excited, and I'm afraid I'll keep putting it off. I don't want to. Should I reread what I have so far and then start? Probably not. I should start from scratch. And what better time than now is there to start?

Tomorrow, of course.

Begin with an unfamiliar sound

In the other room I hear a noise, a sound like metal creaking, above the whir of the fan. I go out into the hallway to investigate. The light’s on in the kitchen. Someone is baking; they would have woken me up if I’d been asleep.

            I stand in the doorway and squint at Charlie, who is wiping down the counter. When he sees me he is not concerned that he might have woken me.

            I’m making oatmeal raisin cookies, he says, throwing the rag onto the microwave. He picks up a mug of something hot and stands in the crook of the counter. I need to know what they smell like.

            The coffee maker gargles. He wants me to ask why he needs to know what oatmeal raisin cookies smell like, but I don’t like being hinted at, so I open the fridge and start poking around instead.

            He is undeterred. I’m in a student film, he tells me. I mean, an indie film.

            Who’s film? I ask, selecting the mint Haagen Daz from the freezer.

            Jon’s. Our old roommate. I play a blind man who sustains a terrible head injury in a car crash, and the smell of oatmeal raisin cookies is supposed to remind me of my childhood. Like, wake me up out of a head funk. Because my dear old ma used to make them, or something.

            This is an absurd plot, and I tell him so.

            Here’s the twist, he says. It doesn’t. The smell, I mean. The smell doesn’t wake me out of being amnesiac. You’d think it would, plot-wise, but it doesn’t.

            Aren’t student films usually more subtle than that? I ask. Like, more cerebral?

            Well, he says, it’s complicated. It’s a story within a story. The blind man, me, is a figment of another character’s imagination. The real part of the film is about a professor who’s having marital trouble. He suspects that his wife is secretly in love with his sister, so he sets a trap to see who she really loves, that night at a cocktail party he’s hosting.

            What’s the trap?

            Well, it doesn’t get that far, because first he has a class to teach. So he’s all tense and worried when he gets on the bus with his students. They’re going on a field trip to a museum.

            I see. Then what? Is the wife there with the sister?        

            No, on the way into the museum one student accidentally falls and hits his head.

            And sustains…

            And sustains a terrible head injury, Charlie finishes for me. Although not as bad as you might think. Knowing about the blind man, that is. The student has to go to the hospital in an ambulance, and a couple classmates go with him, but he doesn’t lose his memory. I don’t think he even loses consciousness.

            So where does the blind man and his amnesia come in?

            In the waiting room. The classmates are bored, so they start telling each other stories to pass the time.

            Like the Canterbury Tales.

            I guess so. But there’s only one.

            So why the blind man, again?

            Well, you know how framework narratives are usually all preachy and moralistic? Like, the inner story is a metaphor for the outer one, and it’s all neat and tidy at the end, and you’re supposed to come away with a lesson, like it taught you something? Well, this is a commentary on that. Because I hate films that do that. And so does Jon.

            So you never find out if the wife is in love with the sister.

            Nope. It’s a whole different approach to literary theory.

            Now I would have weird dreams. I always have weird dreams when Charlie is the last person I talk to before I go to sleep.
            I put the ice cream away, deciding I won’t brush my teeth again because it was mint-flavored. That’s great, Charlie, I say, wishing I hadn’t gotten out of bed.