Outlimb: "Artist Statements" and Stills

lara odell

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As a means to heal the phantom pain, the limb is shortened, again – as if the limb was at fault. What I can’t say isn’t apparent in the painting, but for me, the desire to escape genre could be likened to the desire to transcend gender. How many times do I have to say it? “It isn’t futile; it’s about futility.” Things that arrive on a conveyor belt, that you eat, half-dead by the machinery alone. “Run your potatoes through a metal sieve, for more iron.” The sun is over-exposed, and as a result, so is everything in its way. Light should be measured by volume, so it can be turned down, to just the right temperature. Editing, erasure, and the paradox of things coming into being. The edges were wet from premature decay, weather damaged. There had been too much handling, you could tell, so we just had to leave it alone. The miracles of progress, of puberty. Industrial suits, protective rubber shoes, insulation powder. Camouflage as therapy. What did you say about contamination? It had a metallic taste to it. Can we shoot a close-up of that? The border was wide, like water, but I can’t remember how it felt when my ear drum collapsed. To stand in the middle of a room, everyone else looking in; it was like being folded into an envelope and never waking up until I arrived. The stillness of travel, the sleepiness of a letter; sealed within a pocket of time. Shopping for the right fit, I extended myself. Please, leave me unattended. An accumulation of earnestness, of vulnerability, apprehensive of the laughs to come. Granted, my pupils can’t physically get any smaller, though I try.

Another year goes by and all I can do is “try it a little differently this time.” Who scotch-taped the broken water glasses and put them back into the cabinet? As if no one would notice. A mute crisis, all year long, everyone inadvertently letting the perpetrator off the hook. Defeated, we resorted to blaming inconsequential household objects, like the electric fan, the heater, the car seat. Another mortifying instance of breathing life into shadows, with an unwanted audience. Paper cut or plastic bag – my body only looks intact. I keep wondering when the hijackers will manufacture synthetic composites, for instance. Chemical reactions, such as states of matter reconfiguring themselves under intense heat. The formation of a monster, so natural that it seems it couldn’t have been otherwise. As if the negative shape was already there, ready to be filled in, and so it was. We made a group decision that the threat of broken glass had been discovered accidentally. It sounds the same, but feels different. “The blood from my wound felt wet on my skin.” Painless affliction – but we still can’t figure out where all the bruises came from. When the inside meets the outside with a clash, better to keep them separate. Who advised me to play with my unconscious like it was a toy, to lie down and prepare for the ritualized self-infliction? “I’m ready.” Language lies and I am skeptical, let down. “The sun is shining slowly.” Why can’t this settle into its own meaning naturally? Aggressive manipulation is not in my nature. Or, is it? A metaphor of a metaphor, a “call for help,” another experience missed. Did you get my email? Did you get my email. Art, like shadows, like memory, is best seen with the peripheral vision. Mirrors attached to my car for safety, my body nothing but appendages, prosthetics. I need reflectors on my joints, too, like a lubricant. The speed of thought. The older I get, the more likely it is that photographs and TV shows will substitute for my personal experience, although it did happen when I was little. Stitching together the broken skin of fruit, another predictable attempt to stall its decomposition. The realization of time moving without you. A broken escalator becomes stairs. Stuck in a rotation of beginnings, I keep passing by my “old” self. Going to the hardware store to get more measuring supplies. Can you pinpoint the topic of conversation? Confessions such as “I saw it coming,” or, “it all happened so quickly,” leave me tentative, unable to rely on my own senses.

Let’s play “detachment.” The invisible order in nature manifests itself physically under the right conditions, and the right conditions are happening all the time. Weather patterns always win – try suppressing the ocean’s push, the body’s purge. It is much easier to appreciate the metaphor when articulated within a frame, rather than as experienced in real life, although people tell me it is the other way around. We congratulate diversity in art because the practice of tolerance eludes us in life – I want to connect, but not with everyone. When art becomes sanctuary, refuge, ideal, a controlled environment with nothing beyond its boundaries, then I can feel equipped once again to venture outside the museum walls, the book ends. What made me think I could be – should be – Art’s spokesperson? Mistakes hover in the sky, and I remind myself to duck under them, for cover. Finding out that the food isn’t dry, but that it is the consistency of my saliva that cannot soften its abrasive edges – my body’s fault, again. To sublimate, like the snowflake. To pinpoint the moment when the first sensations of thirst emerge in the throat, on the tongue – what is “the beginning of pain.” Trying to go all the way back to zero, just to notice, in slow-motion, when forms emerge – I want to see the snowflake’s body develop from a gas, as if out of nowhere. What route does guilt take, and how, beginning with someone else and then ending up in my lap? To weigh the importance, not of a life, but what one does with a life. Too impatient to consider, or rest upon, other possible states – like the bird who migrates on a boat. To travel means to arrive, but I just want to be there. “Emulate the laziness of water and everything will fall into place.” I’m sorry – as an exhausted audience – no energy left for either applause or heckling, I self-consciously induce vertigo with the rain puddle and wait to fall in. I can’t predict the shapes of experience, they arc and resist all on their own. But is that not the reason of art, to see the shape at the end – as birds form shapes in flight, what shapes are they? You could never say pre-flight.

Something in between that holds us together, holds us apart. Like a telephone, a letter, or a TV show. “It was a sky-blue sky.” To become a body, but at arm’s length. We were instructed to make an “authentic forgery,” as if we knew the difference between the two. Trying to locate the point at which you end and I begin, I rely on physical evidence, although I am still not convinced. The prospect of immortality, misread as the price. The metaphor of thawing. Does it appeal to you? A silk luminosity, a frozen tomb to rest your head “for all eternity.” Are they still there? Who will recognize the ghosts when all their living relatives are dead? “You wouldn’t try to put the ocean in a paper cup.” The sun’s mouth, indescribable, but I will try – an iron blanket, a metallic warmth – and like a bitter weed, it swallows me. Transformed into a palatable morsel, I feel forgiven. I’m trying to nurture my inner outsider artist. Language evolves so we can discern between then and now. I won’t have a manuscript because the computer favors the replacement over the original, and I can’t retrace my steps. Ending up in the middle of a maze with art all around, I lose sense of how I got there. Taking the things we have for granted is a survival tactic; we become one with the things we have, so that to lose them would be like losing ourselves.

Inadvertent alienation, social incompatibility, the ever-recurring pastime of making enemies by accident. My experience has taught me to cover my eyes, so you won’t see; and that in order to avoid danger, exhibit the symptoms of someone else’s disease. Inverted camouflage. I thought my attitudes were natural – my mistake. A mutated survival tactic, like chemotherapy or antibiotics – killing as they save. Returning after a time, they don’t seem like my words. Survival of the misfits. The most exotic of all North American moths have a life-span so short, they don’t even need a mouth. To stabilize myself, I use a magnet. Containing the opposing properties within one solid mass, its only expression to attract or repel. To be so condensed. The detritus of suicide attaches itself to the inside of the throats of everyone else, where it grows like a bacteria until they die too. Post-date the poems, so they never end. Can you tell me how to tap into the collective unconscious? The color of health. My secret raw material, like marble or styrofoam, but invisible, in wavelengths, in particles. Driving away from home, driving me away from home. Can we hire someone to be objective? Translate it into an image, increase it in scale, and print it onto a large piece of paper with ink. Luminant baby green and white on my wall, always glowing in the dark.

Even though I was advised not to, I’ll start with a defense tactic, an excuse. It’s a bad example of something else – someone else’s life. “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.” To pinpoint the instant when the viewer stops to look, and then, to register the time it takes to reflect back. “Burned into memory.” I saw that before, but it was better then. While supplies last, I won’t be buying anything “retro.” Do I like my friends more than they like me? Paranoia rings in my ear, and I notice my body’s contact with the air. So, I move to the side, or underneath furniture, if available. Will you write my autobiography? I will paint your self-portrait. I am wary of the point at which irony slips into sincerity – the dangers of what happens when I’m not looking. Technologies of war and the art of deception. What makes one more sacred than the other is how they are used, to what end. Are paintings decoys? At the very least, they divert the attention off me. A blurry surrogate. Most Americans mistake British humor as being sincere, and the current fashions are much too “JFK.” Or would it be more accurate to say, “Tricia Nixon”? How much would it cost to paint the most menacing shape? In a disciplinary tone, “don’t let art get away from you like that,” I remind myself. The unfathomable numbers burn the shape into my body, which extracts itself just before it ricochets away. On the TV screen, I see that the sky’s puzzle has a missing piece that I never noticed before, and all I can do is watch.

“What I would really like to do next, is to get inside the poem and stay there.” The poem exists outside the person. To lift myself, I go back and stand in line. Reading the labels, I stand close and look at the cashier with a slant. I try to ignore that I will end up like that, but I don’t know how to detour my route. My glasses only work if I look through the middle of the lens. Deciding to face the consequences or not. Seems to be by myself. Playing “Russian Roulette” with a video camera, sober. Grown out of my childish habits, an unsought nostalgia for those times remains – the detritus of what once were swollen emotions, like cellulite, stays. Stretch-mark scars. “We cannot be free because the body requires constant maintenance.” The remote control calls me to the couch, and I wait for instructions. “If you’re gonna commit suicide on TV . . . ” and then, white noise. Ending up in the room with unfamiliar types again, we were instructed to “close our eyes and continue looking.” The realization of mediocrity deflates me, unwilling – or, worse, unable. Enable. After all, “It’s not every day that tree sitters are older than the tree.” In the dark, I mistake your body parts for mine, and I realize that I do sex all wrong. Can I borrow the manual? Working from the inside of a mirror reiterates the fact I will never see myself, so I look to you for those answers. Another apology delivered to you, this time, in a miniature paper bed sheet. All the things I do as an adult are excuses for what I criticized as a child.

To be buried in a lead coffin, too toxic to decompose peacefully – it seems that the sentence to suffer can carry over into death too. “The biodegradable garments stick to the wounds undressed.” One size fits all, but paper clothing by its very nature adopts an awkward fit. Does it breathe, does it cry? The minds of the living stop too, stunned – poisoned by the thought alone, along with the invisible ecosystem, unfolding underground. Cooperative – no, collective – terrorism. Traces of albinism and the length of time it takes a tree to notice environmental shifts, like the absence of the other organisms who have gone missing. To be radiated from the inside out, and then the guilty realization of not being able to escape one’s inadvertent contaminating effects. The parable goes like this: I light a match while lying in the coffin to see if I am dead or not – it turns out, I am alive, but as luck will have it, the person who would save me is dead, and lying right next to me. Does the sun provide its own radiation protection, and if so, could you draw me a diagram of its internal armor? We take pleasure in witnessing mediated disaster because it gives us a false sense of security. Recorded footage and the number of times watched, also recorded. “The heart is like the sun,” seems an accurate metaphor – beginning with nothing and inherently toxic to others but not to itself, unless you are an unlucky recipient of “bad genes.” Can we extract that bit and encapsulate it? I might need it later, for instance, for resistance. To pass it by my lips, and then, to swallow. I put “compressed light” in the painting so that it could exist in real life – I wanted to see it for myself, to prove that it does exist. I would like to stay there for longer, next time. The weight of gold, always balanced when held in the hand. Like a bird with hollow bones, we can only imagine its ethereal weight. Like trying to sense the weight of air, we measure its particles instead, always factoring in gravity and pollution. Lead, iron, copper, heat. To mine the body of its elements, conducting the transformation of metals to gas. Not unlike drawing – and its relationship to the memory of paper – the folds and erasures still intact. And I realize that writing is synonymous with collage, with drawing. Everything already exists and you just put things together, like a dating service. If I could provide you with one statement to sum up the whole of my education: “the seeds of its demise are hidden within it.”

I will go to the youth section at the department store and try on clothes that are too small for me. The medicated rub stings my eyes, and the jewelry counter is unattended – partially uncovered. As it turns out, past mistakes are the body’s regrets, which frees up our minds for other things. I paid for my boys’ sized medium shorts with a two dollar bill, the most romantic of all the currencies. Leaving the store, I paused to look at the receipt – that “lying-down” feeling, but in public. If the poster is more important than the event, then it would follow that the receipt has more value than the item. At least, it will last longer. A reminder of something new, something attended, something over, something old, all at once. “A working class face stares back at me from the glass,” and being a blood relative, I backed away. Who will paint the next still-life, the next child-portrait? Looking at a video monitor, “the noises make it appear to be moving.” The contraband room at the airport with its extinguished fruit, endangered animals, expired gun-powder, all arranged – a still-life with visual rhyming schemes, wanting to get closer, but not necessarily physically. Facing each other, trying to breathe in unison. “Children of divorced parents twice as likely to write bad poetry,” the headline read. Later on, I realized that everyone in there buying technology they couldn’t afford might have been there for the community rather than the products. Stores with black leather couches in their living rooms. Home-made. Watching Eric Clapton perform “Layla,” but more slowly this time. Thinking only of his little son falling from a balcony and dying. People were camping out in front, protesting. Or selling candy? It’s hard to tell these days. The most memorable part were the blankets. Outdoors, they were an unassuming spectacle.

10.

“I’d like to see another version, in color.” I tried to erase the shadows, to give the illusion of floating, but you can still see the remnants, which is intentional. Finally understanding what they meant when they said “framing is everything.” Or falling. If I was an artist, I would ________ , just like a poet. Breathing, in contrast to, say, absorption, and realizing that thinking is form, like Beuys said. I was trying to notice how thoughts emerge, what prompts them. What did you say about erasure? Try blocking out the sun so that the solar-powered toy plant can mimic its withdrawal for us as entertainment. Or learning about starvation by demonstration, rather than by experience. It comes to me in pulses, in wavelengths, in rhythms, and all I have to do is plug in content. I wonder, “Is sex a pattern,” like a matrix? Architecture is a fantasy we try to fit our bodies into. It may be more accurate to define an object by how it decays, how it suffers, for instance. How long do I have to wait until I am happy with the results? Architectural symptoms, such as freeway accidents and drop-ceiling stains. Looking at pornography in the Feminist Art Show while the male security guard leers at me, I am caught once again between being my body vs. being myself, and I am tired – I have to live twice as long, simultaneously. To say that an image is “poetic” says what of poetry? I made them two-dimensional in order to trace their motion, before they break apart and die, before they become a landscape. Land mine. Can I call it experience if I watched it happen? To measure temperatures as if they exist along a mobius strip, wanting to locate the point at which freezing becomes burning – freezer burn. Wondering how to express “emergency” without words, I am reminded that the size of a poem – like the size of painting – resides in the viewer’s memory, and that I’m better off if they remember it incorrectly.

View the films:

Outlimb (Blue)
Outlimb (Red)
Outlimb (Yellow)