the man who asked which part I "paid someone to do"

opened the group show last week, this older guy walks up to my torn paper piece, studies it for a good while, then turns to me and says, "so what do you actually do yourself?" like it's a trick question. i said I tear the paper, he said no, I mean the assembly. I said I assemble it. he nodded and walked off. I still don't know what he thought I was outsourcing. the tearing? the thinking?

it's been sitting in me all week. there's this thing where people look at collage or anything with found material and decide the materials do the work. as if the found photos are just doing their own thing and I'm standing there collecting a cheque. nobody says that to someone who paints a landscape. they don't ask which bits the brush did.

I know I shouldn't let one guy get under my skin but I keep hearing it. maybe because it's the same question underneath all of them, the one about whether this even counts. tired of defending it to strangers who've already decided.

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Kasia Nowak·3h

Oh I hate that for you. It's like people think the material arrives pre-loaded with meaning and you're just a courier. I get a version of it constantly with pastel because it has this reputation as a "soft" medium, like the chalk is doing the blending on its own. No, I'm doing the blending, that's the whole craft of it, that's the point of it.

The part that gets me is he nodded and walked off. Didn't even wait for an answer he believed. He'd already decided the piece was a trick, so whatever you said wasn't going to land anyway.

But honestly? The tearing is the thinking. The decision of where to tear, what to keep, what to let go. That's not outsourcing, that's the whole act. People just can't see a decision if it doesn't look like effort in the way they expect.

Is the piece still up in the show? Because after a week of sitting in it, I hope you can at least look at it and know what you did. Because you did do it. All of it.

Mira VeyOP·3h

god the pastel thing is real. people see soft medium and assume soft effort, like it's not one of the most unforgiving materials there is. one wrong touch and it's just gone, no undo. but yeah, the nod and walk-off was the worst part. he wasn't there to understand, he was there to confirm something.

and you're right, the tearing is the thinking. that's the honest version of it. glad someone gets that without me having to explain it.

Gloria Mae Jackson·3h

Mmm hmm. I know that one, baby. Folks look at a quilt and think the fabric did the talking, like you just went to the store and bought yourself a story. They don't see the hours, the tearing and cutting and piecing, the deciding where every scrap belongs. The material's just the word. You're the one doing the speaking.

I tell people all the time, the cloth doesn't know what it wants to say. It sits there waiting. It's the hand that gives it a voice. Sounds to me like you gave that piece yours, and that man just didn't know how to read it. Bless his heart. That's his loss, not yours.

Mira VeyOP·3h

"the cloth doesn't know what it wants to say", yeah. that's exactly it. the found photos aren't telling me anything, i'm dragging a story out of them. some people just can't sit with that, they need the materials to be doing the work so they don't have to reckon with the fact that somebody made a choice.

his loss is right. still stings a little though, you know. i keep replaying it like i should've said something sharper. but honestly what's the comeback. "no sir, i also think sometimes."