Katarina Weslien – Circle of Clarity

I

Asked to write about what I considered failure in the studio, I readily agreed, understanding that failure is integral to any studio practice. As I searched for Natasha’s initial email, however, I realized she had asked me to write about being stuck in the studio. Why had I equated “stuck” with “failure”? It’s a telling trick of memory. Correcting this recollection was a realization and turning point in terms of what I want to share here. Being stuck encompasses a different set of challenges: doubt, feelings of ungroundedness, and a lack of confidence in the present moment.

I’ve practiced Buddhist meditation since I stumbled on a ten-day silent retreat in Thailand forty years ago. Over that time, I have come to observe feeling stuck as a transient state, like others, realizing that nothing is permanent—clusters or knots of thought and feeling, perhaps least of all. So, in that spirit, and with that view, I want to explore a (component) process—often a nonverbal experience—and to share my intimate relationship with “creative blocks” and their alternation with periods of free-flowing process. In other words, I don’t see a block as a stopping point but as a moving through or a pause. The house I live in had the name “Idletide” before I moved in. Idle-tide is the time between turning tides, a slight pause, an idling between movement. Blocks, however transient in hindsight, became particularly consequential during my preparation for a recent exhibition at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) in Rockland, i forgot to remember, currently on display until 4 May 2025.

Let’s start there—with a trio of anecdotes that illustrate this alternation, in the sense of what may flow easily and what may feel or appear “blocked.” Two years ago, I was asked to mount an exhibition in the main gallery. Having said yes, I went into the space, not new to me at that time, with the presupposition that it was difficult and might be overwhelming. Intimidated and challenged at the same time, I wanted the work to be an equal to that main gallery space. The very vastness of that gallery, designed by Toshiko Mori, initiated or invited constructive thoughts about what I could do. I was not stuck. I knew I wanted to meet the space by creating a choreographed installation, in the true sense of affecting movement through it, that had a relationship to the light and expanse of its open 2,500 square feet. And I wanted to see how I could make another kind of space within it, without relying on the walls to hang individual works: by constructing a (sub)space defined by large-scale tapestries—as a distinct zone subdivided for the purpose of changing the pace and choices presented to the visitor, I would be able to create crossings from one liminal experience to the next.

Starting by building an architectural model: three-quarters of an inch = one foot. My thinking was to make a space-within-a-space, utilizing tapestries to disorient the viewer; to fill that delineated subspace with a material presence and a haptic openness; and to challenge the familiar sensations of both proximity and material. I wanted the viewer to actively participate, walking over thresholds and experiencing the alternating disorientation and openness, modulating those sensations/reactions for themselves, and controlling the cadence of experience for themselves. How to accomplish this was another matter. Working in the three-quarters of an inch = one foot scale makes anything (apparently) possible. I made felt walkways, used dowels covered with watercolored rice paper to be forty feet long and twenty feet high and filled the space with glass globes that would, in real life, be ten feet in diameter, imagining the space as an installation experience rather than an exhibition of individual works. All of that had flowed. But then after a few months and hundreds of photographs to imagine various zones in the main gallery, I was stuck. Blocked. This stuckness was not about what to do next, but rather a feeling of having diminished and lost the compelling energy of the main gallery—I had needed to shrink the gallery to “tame” it—and in doing so I made the task and the architectural model too small. Had I unknowingly but literally reduced and attenuated the thing I feared? Made it so small that it no longer motivated/compelled me?

So, I had to scrap the three-quarters of an inch scale and start over with a one inch = one foot model. You would not think this shift of scale would do much to change my process, but in fact that extra quarter-inch generated the fear/uncertainty to resurface. I like that feeling as I make—maybe it’s not fear but more excitement about the unknown, going after a sensation that only making can help realize. I believe that “work comes from work.” Movement, shifting perspectives, new juxtapositions, creating different areas in the studio for various activities, and in this case, using my camera to view the elements of the show from different angles and scales, and imagining the body moving through the gallery, the camera being at eye level—trusting this process helped me navigate the blocks that appeared in the model-making process.

II

For the CMCA installation, I was trying to reify feeling that mirrored the moment I was living in and wondering, how could I engage with the present without being didactic? A central concept in my Buddhist training that has guided me in the studio is that everything in the world is worthy of our attention and that the quality of the attention we provide determines the intimacy we allow ourselves to have with our surroundings. Remembering this teaching was key to moving through the obstacles. I knew I wanted to produce large-scale Jacquard tapestries—historically made to visualize a narrative depicting military, cultural, religious, and mythological stories; immortalizing people and events that embodied the era’s beliefs and values and, at the same time, providing insulation and warmth. Fast forward to 2023, I imagined a narrative employing seemingly conflicting contiguities to reflect on the dissonance of our particular time.

As a strategy against blockage and getting stuck, I often work on multiple, interrelated parallel processes. I can start one thing at home and, at some point, bring it to the studio where other work is happening; like two strangers, they meet for the first time. Initially, they occupy the same space keeping their distance, and a relationship begins to form with time.

In one such instance, in the summer of 2023, I had a residency on Brier Island in the Bay of Fundy, Canada. I had started several watercolors since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and wanted to continue this work on embroideries for the duration of the residency. The problem was I had not found a suitable material to embroider on. My friend and artist Sandra Brownlee, also on the residency, gave me humble cotton warp, hand-spun wool weft antique blankets. The history embedded in this cloth matched the vulnerability of what I was trying to find in the translation from watercolor to the physicality of cloth. The blankets were worn, moth-eaten, and stained from many years of use. The blankets had a history, and I wanted to care for them with repair. Searching Nova Scotia, I found more blankets before returning to Portland, Maine, where my studio is, and started examining and weaving a second layer of red crosses where there were moth holes. This process continued for over a year. It flowed. My assistant, artist Elana Adler, and I examined and embroidered outlines of extra wear on the cloth and sewed knots where there were stains. This became a language of repair and care. After a year and a half, my studio was full of these embroidered blankets, the rescaled model for CMCA, along with samples of Jacquard weavings and floor-to-ceiling felt netting.

The studio was packed. So many layers of ideas bumping up against each other! Again, I found myself struggling with trusting my instincts. I was over-planning, over-preparing for the possibility that the nine-by-twelve-foot standing tapestries might not be enough and would not be able to meet the CMCA main gallery.

Even with so many hours invested in work on them, I had never considered including the embroidered blankets in the show; I felt stuck in my limited perspective. This was when I realized the importance of calling in a trusted friend for feedback. I prefer not to have anyone in my studio with suggestions when I start a project; I need to navigate that and find my footing. Only when I have a clearer sense of my direction—at least an inkling of it—does inviting another perspective become valuable. But when none of my own actions gave me the answer, I asked for help. Brian Dunn and Elizabeth Zeeuw have been close to my process for years, as editors on two projects, Walking Kailash, an invitational project about walking with compassion, as well as co-editors for the catalog of my exhibition, What Did You Smell When You Were Away at Speedwell Contemporary in Portland, Maine. When Brian came to the studio, he said, “I think you have two shows here.” It took me a moment to realize he wasn’t saying, “I don’t think they should be shown together.” What he meant was “you have two shows’ worth of material and need two spaces within that vast space.” I realized the large-scale tapestries and repaired blankets could coexist by having their own zones. We quickly began cutting foam core and making a mockup of a ten-by-ten-foot room for the blankets as we continued talking and photographing the possibilities of where this ten-by-ten-foot room, now called the Felt room, could be in the main gallery.

Working on a model can be misleading, as I mentioned above; yes, at that scale, anything seems possible, and that had become a block. However, the scale also allows for rapidly shifting ideas. I imagined the Felt room high up in the ceiling, much like a tree house, and then moved it around in the model until it landed where it would be a visual connection as you entered the actual installation. Eventually, due to issues with ADA compliance and funding for construction, I ended up with stairs instead of a ramp, three feet off the ground rather than ten. This shift happened from a conversation, observation, and a deep dive into what was in the studio. A helpful and clarifying look to discern what I already had in front of me but couldn’t see. Letting someone into the process is an intimate thing. I have had wonderful people helping me along. I haven’t always acted on their observations, but it has always given me something to push up against. If one is lucky, the right question will come at the right time—a question that un-blocks.

III

Back in 1991, I did a workshop with Meredith Monk, who was working on the opera Atlas, to be performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She told us she was stuck in her process and decided to try some of the material she was working on with non-performers. She realized this after performing a ritual she had done for years when she couldn’t decide where to go next in her process: she walks outside, finds a spot where she will not be disturbed, draws a circle on the ground big enough to sit, and steps inside. Before stepping in, she clarifies her dilemma and vows that she will only step out once she has come to a solution, or at least the next step in her process. Sometimes, it can take minutes, sometimes hours. I adopted this “circle of clarity” practice, as I call it, the moment she told us about it and have used it ever since. I have always done it on the beach, where I can draw in the sand, write my answers, and photograph them as a record. Sometimes, it’s a black-and-white, fork-in-the-road kind of issue. Other times, it’s accepting conditions as they are, realizing I have no control before stepping over the threshold into the studio.

EXTRA GIFT

Ever since I first came across John Cage’s “10 Rules for Students and Teachers,” I have passed them on. The list is said to have been originally written by Sister Corita Kent and popularized by Cage. It helps us understand the importance of constantly creating, learning, and sharing.

Rule 1: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for a while.

Rule 2: General duties of a student—pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students.

Rule 3: General duties of a teacher—pull everything out of your students.

Rule 4: Consider everything an experiment.

Rule 5: Be self-disciplined—this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.

Rule 6: Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail; there’s only make.

Rule 7: The only rule is work. If you work, it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things.

Rule 8: Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time. They’re different processes.

Rule 9: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.

Rule 10: “We’re breaking all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.”

 

Helpful Hints:

• Always be around.
• Come or go to everything.
• Always go to classes.
• Read everything you can get your hands on.
• Look at movies carefully, often.
• SAVE EVERYTHING—it might come in handy later.

—John Cage