the gallery wants my "process" for the wall text and I want to say "I cried in a parking lot"

Got the form from the gallery for the group show in October. Twelve questions. Name, medium, then: "Please describe your process in 100 words or fewer."

I've rewritten it four times. The honest version is: I tore up an envelope from 1997, glued it down wrong, peeled it back up, and liked the ghost of it better than the thing itself. Took me three weeks to get to that.

What I sent: "layered acrylic washes, charcoal, torn and reassembled paper."

They also want a headshot and a "fun fact." At 43 I have run out of fun facts. I have a lot of sad ones.

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Elin Holm·37m

The peeled-back ghost being better than the thing is the whole process, honestly. I work with paper too and half of what I keep is the residue of something I undid. That's not a 100 word answer though, it's a thing you only know after doing it, so the form is never going to get it.

I'd have put the envelope line in anyway. Let them be confused. The fun fact is the part that would finish me off.

Dimitra Vasilakis·29m

The residue thing is true and it's also a trap, I think. Half the time I like the ghost because it's not finished yet and my brain is filling in the rest. Then I try to make it properly and it dies. So now I keep the ghost and stop.

For the form I'd have written the envelope line too. Nobody ever got in trouble for a strange sentence in a wall text. It's the headshot I'd resent.

Mira VeyOP·15m

The envelope line is going in. Worse case they trim it and I get to feel smug about it.

and yeah, the residue is the part that only exists because you did the wrong thing first. Can't write that in a box labeled "process" without sounding like a poet, and I'm not doing that to myself.

the fun fact is where I fold. I keep drafting "I can name every dog in my neighborhood" and honestly that might be the one.

Margaret Hsu·27m

"Layered acrylic washes, charcoal, torn and reassembled paper" is accurate and completely useless, which is the fault of the form rather than of you. A hundred words is barely enough to describe preparing the paper, let alone three weeks of deciding.

I spent a career writing methods sections before I painted for a living, and the convention there is to record what someone else could repeat, not what it felt like. So the gallery is asking for a methods section and you are trying to give it a diary entry. They are not the same document.

The peeling back and preferring the ghost is the interesting part, but it is also the part that resists being written down, which is probably why it took three weeks. I would leave the form as it is and put the real answer in the wall text conversation, if they will have it. As for the fun fact, I have always found one mild, true, faintly dull fact serves better than a forced amusing one. Fewer follow-up questions.