I have travelled to get distance, to reset, to be inspired, to escape, to consider, to get lost…but only to find another kind of lost.
Kinds of lost…
I was lost when one day I picked up an artist book at a library, don’t get lonely don’t get lost (2010), by Elisabeth Belliveau.1 I was taking art and academic courses at Emily Carr University of Art & Design from 2014-16 trying to re-focus on my practice. I was an artist amongst many other artists, or wanna-be artists, but I did not fit in. The student body was so young and many of them had already forged friendships during the Foundation year (1st year; I started with some second year courses). It was a lonely and alienating experience. No community where I’d hoped to find one.
I was lost in the second week of my trip to Oaxaca city, when the workshop I participated in came to an end, and suddenly I was on my own. What made it worse was that I was getting sick with the flu. I was in a beautiful city, physically feeling like shit, and then horribly lonely. I realized that I was doing well when I had some structure and was in the company of a wonderful group of women, but on my own I was pitiful.
Was Lee Lozano lost when she decided to abandon art and the art world? One moment she is an artist, the next she is not? How did she define herself post art-world?
I was lost when I was working on a project on loneliness. I interviewed four people on their experience with that feeling, and then transcribed the interviews into zines.2 I had no idea how to go about the project or what to expect from it. I was hoping for something…maybe to feel better or understand myself better in my loneliness. Neither of which happened. That project though, was the beginning of my information collection phase about loneliness—that was 2014. Eight years later, and I’m still collecting information except that I’ve expanded my research into belonging and happiness.
Research says that about fifty percent of our happiness is dependent on genes and forty percent is about intentional activity, what we do and how we think about it. Our living circumstances account for only about ten percent of happiness.3
If you have faulty genes, you’re looking at a 50/50 chance of being able to be happy. No doubt about it, I am battling my genes. Working on loneliness or happiness on your own is tough. It’s a daily battle.
Distraction helps--a way to break the spiralling thoughts and feelings--so I return to the artist book mentioned earlier, and another kind of lost…getting lost in someone else’s work.
don’t get lonely don’t get lost is a compilation of drawings and writing that the artist created while on several artist residencies.4 Part observation (recording moments and places), part lists and reflections (her fan club of female writers and artists of the past), part diary, part poetry. The form of the writing is what it needs to be: a list, a letter, a poem, a reflection, research, prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and fictionalized non-fiction maybe.
Titles, sometimes made up of a single word, sometimes a phrase, seem like cues for exploration:
Love, Towers, Landscape in the 21st century, Escape, Cellos, Costumes…
Drawings, not as precious finished pieces, but as a process, something done while travelling, while feeling. On drawing paper, graph paper, sketchbooks, old ledgers…5
Her fan club of female writers and artists goes like this:
a spell in eight parts
emily carr
emily bronte
elizabeth barrett browning
emily dickinson
gertrude stein
edith wharton
beatrix potter
virginia woolf
Who would be in my list to break the spell of loneliness? Who would be in yours?
For a definition of an artist book, read the Smithsonian’s definition.
Elisabeth Belliveau is an artist born in Nova Scotia and currently based in Edmonton. Link to her artist books here. If you live in Vancouver, the book mentioned here is available at the library of Emily Carr University, search the artist books collection.
A zine is a non-commercial, often handmade, publication devoted to specialized and often unconventional subject matter. It can be about whatever you want it to be. It can be photocopied and of any size, B&W, colour, etc.
For more on happiness research and about the percentages mentioned, read my piece hedonic adaptation.
Artist residency definition from transartists.org: “Artists and other creative professionals can stay and work elsewhere temporarily by participating in artist-in-residence programs and other residency opportunities. These opportunities offer conditions that are conducive to creativity and provide their guests with context, such as working facilities, connections, audience, etc..”
There are also (pictures of) embroideries and a DVD (in the inside back cover) with an animation work called Margaret’s Mountain.