Post New York post: My trip to New York surpassed and exceeded any expectations – I had an amazing time and return feeling energised and encouraged. There is so much that I want to get on with in the studio … so many things that I want to (re-)interpret in my own ways and materials.
There was something very freeing for me to be in a big city that wasn’t London – where I didn’t have to dash about meeting friends and colleagues. Don’t get me wrong I love do that, it’s just that the planning and logistics are quite demanding and then I never feel that I can give the people that care about and love enough time and attention. In New York I did not have to deal with any of that, save from one every nice evening with my second cousin. If an exhibition took almost five hours to go through (which one did!) it didn’t matter because I wasn’t going to be late, or exhausted, for anyone.
I really ’lucked out’ staying with Doug. He’s not only an excellent Air BnB host but a fascinating artist – Doug Beuebe – who was kind enough to give me a studio tour for an hour early on Sunday morning.
All in all the trip was exactly the kind of energy boost that I didn’t really know that I needed. It was a really good lesson … or rather it taught me a very great deal across a broad curriculum. Something of the American Dream rubbed on off me – the idea that opportunities are out there and I have as much right as anyone else to achieve them. I am suitably mature and intelligent to know that the dream if flawed and that America has never been the meritocracy that is claims, however sometimes it’s important to allow oneself to dream, to believe that dreams came come true. An interesting sub-clause is that each individual has to work to make their dream come true, the state isn’t going to simply give it to you. The American work ethic is quite phenomenal and probably far from healthy … especially against the history of evident favouritism and privilege experienced by the often already entitled. Perhaps it is that very naivety that is so alluring. To misquote Tennyson ’better to have dreamed and lost than never to have dreamt at all’.
