A thaumatrope spinning toy printed as part of my upcoming thesis exhibition

Well, folks, I’m back in Chicago for my final semester here at Columbia. I’m exactly halfway through my thesis year, which means (gasp) it’s time to start actually making all of the stuff I’ve been talking, theorizing, planning, pitching, arguing, and of course, stressing about for the last few months.

I’m a big planner—to a fault, in fact. I need a lot of mental space and time to muddle through ideas before committing to them. This can be assuaged a bit by annoying everyone I know about those ideas constantly, effectively crowdsourcing the solutions to my artistic problems. But often, I just need a lot of time to sit and think. And then, well… I need even more time to execute the project. I’m not afraid to admit that my rate of production is glacial—which is why two semesters seems like no time at all to put together an entire exhibition.

A blank mockup of my upcoming book’s double-sided structure: a historical structure called the “dos-a-dos.”

Now that the halfway mark has come and gone, I feel that the planning stage of this three-ring-circus of a project should be completely over and done with. But to tell you the truth, I’m still adding new components and concepts to the project as I do them, every day, and it is driving my nervous little heart to an early grave. How do they do it? Those artists who go into the studio and “see what happens”? How do they “just experiment for a couple hours and keep what works”? Where are their scrawled-up little notebooks, their two bookcases of primary source material, their computer desktops so cluttered that icons have started stacking on top of each other? How can I join their ranks?

Ready or not (and I’m sure you have perceived that I’m not), it’s time to start creating. It’s difficult to tell yourself “this cannot be the Sistine Chapel; this has to be done in three months.” But ultimately, I think it’s healthy (both mentally and artistically) to allow yourself smaller-scale projects, projects with deadlines, and imperfect projects. Thesis can seem like the work that will determine the trajectory of your entire career, but in the end, it’s just one project at the start of it.

My thesis project will have two major parts: a book and an exhibition. Over the next couple of months, the book portion will slowly come together from different printing processes and materials—but the content, at this point, is set in stone. Tomorrow, I will use carving tools to cut into linoleum blocks for the very first hand-illustrated pages of the book, which will be just as final (though “setting in linoleum” doesn’t really have the gravitas of “setting in stone.”) I may not have gotten all the time in the world to plan, and I may not get all the time in the world to make… but gosh darnit, I’m gonna have something to show for it all at the end of May!

A photograph of my grandfather, used in my upcoming book. I feel I can relate…