Watched Pot: Summer, seperation anxiety, strange transitions, and project progress...

Summer has been strange. It hardly feels like summer in a traditional sense, save the heat and restless energy. It's been about two weeks since I've been back from LA, and everything is ill-fitting. I've been held up in my parents house alone for about a week now, and I can slowly feel myself unraveling. I'm trying to figure this grad-school housing business out, and the stress is unnerving to say the least. I find myself awake into the wee hours of the morning for no apparent reason; stitching, scribbling, or staring at a screen. Each day I wake in darkness, sun leaking in through the small cracks in the blinds, trying to motivate myself to get out of bed and face the day. I hide for a spell, awake but trying to convince my body to black out again. Each day people expect more, and more adult actions from me. It takes me awhile before I can get on my feet, swallow my fear, and do my best to act responsibly. I think much of this is a result of being trapped in this small, stifling suburb for the month. Much of it is fear for the future, and anxiety over the past. I normally like to try and be where I am, and enjoy the moment without losing myself in the past, or fear of the future. It's hard, but I admit that I have gotten better about it. Lately, however, I find that I'm not enjoying where I am. I feel trapped, and motionless. It feels like there really is no beyond or behind in a strange sense...just the purgatory of small town Ohio, and the thought that this stale sameness might go on forever. All of that aside, however I've been making some slow progress on a few projects. I went wandering around the suburbs during record heat the other day, and took a lot of pictures of suburban homes. One after the next to catalogue the face of the midwestern small town, and the erie one-after-the next sameness all these suburban homes share. I will make drawings of them and explore this peculiar phenomenon that gave birth to me, and is responsible for many of my odd sensibilities, and reactions to things. It's funny what you fear when you're lost in a suburb, VS what you feel when you're lost in a city. In the city you worry about wandering into a bad area, or meeting someone without the best intentions. In the suburbs you wonder if people are watching you from behind the tinted windows of their homes, and SUVs. You wonder if they think you look suspicious with your out of place outfit, and small red digital camera. Why are you taking photos of their homes? What is your intention? Are you a threat? You hope someone doesn't call the police. I guess in the city I worry about someone mistaking me as the victim, and in the suburbs I worry about someone wrongly characterizing me as the villain. What a strange shift from place to place.

Anyways, here are a few projects I've been slowly making progress on over the past week: The first is an embroidered map of the US. I will make little fiber state pieces to pin into the states I'v visited/lived in. Sort of a cute/fibery take on sticking a pin in a world map where you've been. The second is a flip-book companion to Andy Warhol's 8 hour film "Empire". Which is literally 8 hours of footage of the Empire state building at night. It vibrates, and the lights shift slightly, but it's eerily similar to watching a still photo for 8 hours...without actually doing so. All that said, the flip book is an art-school inside joke of sorts. The map is still in progress, but please do enjoy the unflattering iphoto documents of both: