Artist Alert: Alice Fox (AKA a RISD Rana)

Just saw this short video about artist Alice Fox in the UK. She has found a focus for her work in mainly using or reusing materials found on the plot of land she is the steward of. Her work is elevated and fine, meaningful and textural. A noble and admirable artist to me and very much akin to my personal sensibilities, her output is mind-bogglingly prodigious, my Halfhat is off to her.

Very natural world, noticing closely and making use of what is available, very sophisticated fine art. It struck me that she was akin to my main character Rana, the wise goat woman with allegorical authority over wisdom and memory, with one important difference.

Where Ms. Fox took her values and talents into an elevated fine art aesthetic, I took a back alley to goofy bugs at a party, a rustic, rough, craft style. More storybook than museum. Paul asked me if I felt regret over not having been to a school like the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) as we always admire the work of people who have degrees from there. It always seemed to us that that school, in particular, took its students into a magical room where creativity and art and the world of art-making were explained to them privately and exclusively. So his question came from years of observing the difference between what they do and what I do (or don't do).

My answer is no. It wasn't in any way possible for me to have gone that route in life. Not in temperament nor responsibility. And I find a certain homogenized quality in fine art education that isn't interesting to me ultimately. So no, I don't wish that I had a proper art education or understanding.

But sometimes I do feel unimportant with my little bugs and such. Even more than my fear of not being able to complete this massive project in the next few years is a visitation of objective perspective that the entire endeavor is perhaps not Art at all.

There were years that I wanted Halfland to receive (eventual) film festival awards or awards from specifically the annual MacArthur Foundation (unbidden) genius award, that would signal to myself and others that I am talented, that I am worth something of actual value in the opinion of learned others. I wanted that so powerfully it used to actually hurt my stomach in a grip of acute desire. But not now.

At some point over the last few years, all that dropped away naturally, like mud dissolving in the rain.

Making Halfland, even these stages of building the sets and puppets, only imagining the end results, is already fully fulfilling.

I was driving my 96-year-old ballet teacher to an appointment recently and commenting that I felt an urgency to finish Halfland or I feared it would remain only a permanent potential. He corrected me, as is his way, that even the thought of something is already something.