Project Completion Sadness

This monologue is transcribed from a video of me walking home from the studio at night on March 27, 2023. I had just completed the last linocut layer of “Every day I become more and more myself” which is the attic print and the final piece of “The Comfort House Project”. I devoted two years to it. That project, and that print specifically within it, are among my artworks that have been best received by viewers and collectors. They were an unmitigated success. But in this moment, it did not feel like that.

“Earlier this week, I promised my friend Will that as soon as I had printed the last layer on the last print in this project, I would go on Instagram live and cry (laughs). And while it wasn’t the last layer, exactly, and I definitely didn’t go on Instagram live, I did cry. I do know myself that well.

I was feeling kind of disappointed and numb, and I called my mom, then I cried. Ha. And it’s not an unusual feeling for me at the end of a print. Sometimes printmaking can be so joyful, so rewarding that I’m literally dancing next to the letterpress. And sometimes it feels like this where I wish I’d made every decision differently and I also know that in a week I will love it and I just need to get out of editing brain and into… I don’t know, a different kind of mindset.

Part of me thinks that it would be great if I didn’t have to deal with those kinds of emotions anymore, in terms of like… they’re kind of perfectionist and that’s not great. But I think that those feelings of “oh, I wish I’d done it differently” just tell me that I’m still growing as an artist and that I will probably continue to grow as an artist for the rest of my life.

(fingers crossed)

So even though they’re not fun feelings to have and I would never want you to think that I don’t like the image that I made because I do and I know that I will love it in a week. Yeah. It’s all part of growth and creativity and I don’t ususally show this side… but it exists.

That’s all.”

For context, this is the print I had just finished: “Every day I become more and more myself.”