Talking to Ruby has been an essential part of this brainstorming process. She suggested that I create this word-map that shows how expansive my conceptualization is of eating disorders so that I can see all of the space that exists for me to make art inside of.

I have made two works recently that I think are both very successful beginnings of this investigation of how I can authentically but also curiously represent my eating disorder and recovery. The first project is my video Water Talk. I was more interested in the visuals and wrote the spoken word aspect in about 2 minutes because those words are a part of me they were easy to regurgitate. I think the most important part of this film is the end where I explode out of the water, hinting to recovery. Even more interesting is the idea of sexuality, and I wonder how does sexuality interact with ideas of eating disorders? They are obviously related but I want to mine deeper about how.

After much discussion with Ruby, I sat and thought deeply about how to challenge myself and be experiential. I thought about how trusting others in my art is something I have almost never done. I also do not usually explicitly include food in my work. Combining these elements, I had Maya feed me while we were both blindfolded to create my Dinnertime Happening. An important thing Maya brought up during our discussion after the happening is that I am not making art about spiraling deeper, I am making work about me trying to claw myself out of this hole and recover. The happening had a sense of play and mothering which was really positive for both of us.

The happening was messy and kind of gross which made it more interesting to me.

Going forward I want to create more happenings, as well as creating visceral and tactile pieces. I want to play and punch things and be wild in my art so that I can find out about how I make art and why I do. I think I need to look a little deeper inside of myself to see what is going on, but not let that prevent me from going with my gut. I am very excited.

I have been thinking about it literally all the time, and I have tried to record it with this chart but need to be mroe on top of it. I know I have done more than this.

Here are some other things I have been ruminating on

• Can an eating disorder be separated conceptually from its context (being a woman/ living in america/ the news)?
  • If no how can that be shown in art?
• What about typical/ therapeutic eating disorder art turns me off? Why is it so repetitive?
  • What is it about representing recovery is different from representing the spiral?
• Why is eating disorder art so hard to find? Is it actually more common than I think but just less explicit?

Although hearing about her background was already interesting, things got exciting for me when she began talking about her current research into Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the cultural response it had and still has to this day. I had read a summary of her research; however, her speech about it gave the history so much life and it was very obvious how passionate she is about the subject. When she began discussing the visual repetition of certain poses seen in the book’s paraphernalia, her passion began to infect me. I could see exactly how she traveled from interest to artistic obsession with the idea that the symbols of Uncle Tom’s Cabin are still incredibly relevant today.

Whether she creates her own “tom show,” or morphs the imagery into something bizarre, one of her goals that she shared with us is that she wants to find what exactly was so effective about Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the time it was written. Robin seeks to discover how this book created empathy in those who, prior to reading it, had none. By harnessing this imagery in today’s contemporary culture (possibly using images from protests like Ferguson or using live actors) she hopes to move people’s hearts and bring back the empathy that is missing in today’s discourse. I think her audience will be similar to that of the audience that was most impacted by Uncle Tom’s Cabin originally, which is those who are indifferent.

It was very helpful for me to see Robin’s entire process of going about her research so plainly laid out. I could also see the sparks of interest that led to her continued creation, starting with the simple statistic about the popularity of the book’s play adaptation on Broadway. Then when she revealed the visual patterns that she saw in the work derived from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, I saw what a good lead for artistic research would look like. Robin said she was always looking, and I think the ability to constantly look for patterns is going to be a skill I need to develop to further my artistic research.