Allow What Comes

Allow What Comes is a public, gestural offering of movement and mark - making. Informed by “quantum entanglement,” the work considers reality amiss of predictability. According to quantum mechanics, atomic particles intertwine without “hidden variables,” or means o determining their connections. Without predictability, how may we counteract, manipulate, or prepare for what wraps us in? 

“Behaving in all possibilities at once.” 

Through the “Art of Being” movement workshops, conceptualized and facilitated by artist Ayako Kato, I’m engaging in an ongoing process to uncover embodied knowledge, a working through of the subtle terror that arose in picturing these uncontrollable “entanglements,” as they exist in everyday interactions.

In my movements, the viewer sees the body gain a recognition of its “self,” a sense of being. I shape my body into resemblances of my “drawn” figure which emerges consistently across all my work. Here I am, yet again, engaging in a new predicament. In this awakening to self - awareness, I choose openness and release. 

Noticing the utensils available to me, I turn to the page, improvisationally mark making with cyanotype chemicals. In this space, I enter a visual dialogue engaging the inner, intuitive self, the outer performative self, and surrounding entanglements in a continuous, critical process: allow what comes, feel, and respond. After the marks are made, the paper is moved to an area with light for exposure and returned to the studio to be rinsed, fixed, and dry. 

Points of collision, without prior notice, responsiveness, release of control.

As I worked through movement in which weight shifts through a decisive, “dig in” and push from the ball of the foot, I returned to awareness, a deep feeling within the body, accessing instinct. As I practiced “sculpting space” through wide circular movements, I accessed intuition  and improvisation, as means of negotiating an entangled space. Through this work, I came personally to a restored sense of self - assurance in relation to others, a gleeful awakening to the possibilities entanglements may bring. 

Allow what comes includes a series of cyanotypes made from mark - making on transparencies with ink. The marks parallel the resonating forms which emerged in workshop.