A friend, who is a Friend at the Minneapolis Friends Meeting, called me today and shared Carroll’s quote with me. What struck me about this quote is that it addresses an experience and the concept of time. I have read in several places that, according to quantum physics, time is not a linear analog; instead, it is one moment stacked on top of another, and we experience time all at once. Therefore, our planning and setting of goals is a form of remembering a time in the future. I know, deep, huh? I am not a physicist, but these concepts inspire my work as an artist.
Door05192024, Mixed Media, Pen and Digital, Hendricks 2024
I’ve got this theory that the giant majority—like 99.9% of all humans toiling creatively—are small potatoes. We’ll never be rich. We’ll never be famous … nowhere near as famous as we should be. Yet, we struggle on, undeterred that most of the world considers us to be small potatoes … if they consider us at all.
~ Ayun Halliday’s, Creative, Not Famous: The Small Potato Manifesto
Keep on Truckin’. It’s an image inspired by a song with the same title.
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”
~ Yoko Ono, Japanese multimedia artist
The Second Life grant was the first grant I applied for since my retirement from Minneapolis College. It was awarded to me in September 2023; I expected it to begin in January 2024, and the parcel was offered starting in October. So, I am happy that the grant was an extension of another Second Life installation I did previously titled Being Male.
I chose to do a labyrinth as a challenge for my 3D modeling skills and my fascination with building an enclosed environment. A maze is a place to lose yourself; A labyrinth is where you go to find yourself. The lighting, too, fascinated me because an artist can create a mystical environment within the Second Life environment to play with light. Quakers, as well as many spiritual-based communities, believe the Light exists within us. My installations created in or with Blender and in Second Life influence my drawings, and my drawings influence the 3D installations as well. Ideas and theories of the existence of the multiverse influence both.
During the last few years, my husband and family have supported me in transitioning to my retirement career. My meeting and the Friends in my faith community have been vital to me, too. And I must add my friends in Second Life.
“We don’t abandon our pursuits because we despair of ever perfecting them.” — Epictetus (the Daily Stoic)
Choices, Investigation, and Perfectionism
I am currently working on completing this project for my grant, but confronting self-doubt. The self-doubt I find is almost as hard to overcome as the desire for perfection and overthinking.
