Organic Thoughts – Kay: In Residence

2 minute read. Content warning: None.

What does that holding vessel look like for you? (2)
What do those memories feel and look like to you? (4)

chatGPT Summary: Kay reflects on the morphing nature of memory and self, visualizing memories as varied, changeable vessels carried along a wooded path, and plans to explore this theme further in July.

Vancouver, on occupied Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil Waututh territory – Time is a path, experiences and interactions are natural and unavoidable, and memories are packages and proof of that. I see myself, morphing and ageless or perhaps more accurately ageful, as I walk a wooded path, its way barred with gnarled and rounded roots, unsymmetrical cubes of stone and rock, and toppled branches and trunks. In my hands, I carry a box, also morphing from one that feels at home in this natural setting — made of wood or stone, sometimes covered by a rounded lid on hinges — to a plastic one that would be more at home in my studio, carried from there and ultimately to return, easily stacked and stored. I pluck pieces of rock and earth and matter as I am interrupted, intertwined, tripped, and caressed by the objects that come into and across my path. These go into the morphing container in my hands, always big enough to hold that which I put inside.

Image description: a set of 4 boxes, sketched onto a scrap of long, uneven rectangular watercolour paper. The boxes range in material and type, with small swigged arrows pointing to each other. On the left is a round-lidded wooden box, next to a uniformly rectangular grey box with a flat lid, next to an angled box that flairs up slightly near the top as it meets its lid, and finally, a cardboard box taped closed. The page is set on a gridded cutting mat near scattered pencil crayons.

I am not one thing, and I will never be one thing. Because of this, my memory is shaped by an inconsistent maker and an inconsistent reader. There are sharp pieces within the amorphous blob that slip in and out of my mind’s eye as I consider memory. I pluck or form something from that mass, a specific memory piercing, slashing, or dully formed and heavy, and when I return it all melts back to dust and ooze and atoms to be shaped into something new when I next conjure it to mind.

Technology note:

I continue to test the use of AI within my writing and artistic practice. I used chatGPT to create a summary for this blog, and Grammarly to assist me in spelling and grammar.