Evolutionary orientation
When I was a kid my father seemed to have a fascination with human evolution and ancient peoples. I remember he read Donald Johanson’s book “Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind” and excitedly talked about it each night at the dinner table for several nights in a row. We took several trips to the Southwestern US to visit Ancestral Pueblan sites, like Mesa Verde, Canyon de Chelly, etc. We was a geologist for the petroleum industry and I think from that he gleaned an interest in fossils, the history found in rocks, and the amazing ways that humans had inhabited the rock formations on the Southwestern desert of the US.
I had always had a deep interest in how everything around me came into being, but especially anything human-made, so there was certainly an overlap between his interests and my own, and I his excitement impressed upon and transferred to me in a lot of ways. During my teens and much of my 20′s my interest was more in socializing and other things, but my work with coiled basketry and cotton rope rekindled my interest in human evolution in my early 30′s. I understood, or at least had some strong hunch, that the roots of the techniques and materials I was using were quite ancient, and I wanted to get an idea of just how ancient. Quick spoiler alert: we have no real answer, but some of the most current evidence goes back around 50,00 years ago.
While making that type of work I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts and audiobooks, and gravitated toward science, and nonfiction in general. Carl Sagan’s books and Cosmos series helped me to get an understanding of Deep Time, Big History, and Deep History. These concepts profoundly effected my understanding of everything, and will continue to give me goose bumps and shake me to my core.
Later, in 2014 or 2015, I read Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, after reading Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee the preceding year. These really lit a fire in me. My knowledge of human evolution had been quite basic, something like the deeply flawed popular 1965 illustration, “March of Progress”. I now see that most people, if they believe in evolution at all, also seem to carry this basic understanding of human evolution, and of evolution in general, which is unfortunate. Anyhow, reading those books introduced me to the idea that not only had numerous other humans species existed (as the genus Homo), but several of them existed concurrently with us (homo sapiens) for many thousands of years.
So, over the last 10 years I have read at least a couple dozen books, and watched countless documentaries and videos around this topic. I can’t seem to get enough of the subject, and have been seriously considering getting another degree in anthropology, though I’m quite hesitant. Through all this reading there have been many changes in my perspective human culture/behavior, past and present. There’s obviously an infinite amount to talk about on the subject (literally, as there will never be “answers”), but one thing has been on my mind a lot lately, enough to take the time to write this.
In speaking and writing about evolution, there is often (maybe even mostly) usage of words/phrases that imply either an intentionality or the sense of being consciously directed by a force/deity/higher power. Perhaps more often, words are used that imply something happened instantly. Of course this appears in most of the articles and videos in mass-media related to evolution, but I’ve noticed in many books written by experts in biology, anthropology, sociology, and other related sciences. It always irks me because it seems to undermine the very idea of evolution, and thwarts much of the effort to educate people about evolution. Some examples of these types of words often used to describe evolutionary phenomena, which I find to be problematic:
-strategy (like an animal has an evolutionary “strategy” for survival) -tool (used much like “strategy”) -design (obviously implying some intentional shaping my an outside force or conscious internal force) -created (used in a way that implies active, intentional creation) -suddenly (this is often used in a way that implies things appeared within one generation of even a few years; or that they appeared one time in one place) -missing link (lots of writing about why this is incorrect) -using the word “developed” or phrase “came up with” in reference to some biological feature in a way that implies that an animal or group of animals consciously decided to change their genes. -first (as in “the first neanderthal”, the “first dinosaurs”)
If you watch or read anything about evolution try to notice this type of language. You will probably find that it is everywhere. Even when an author is trying to be careful to be accurate, they’re often thwarted by the same pitfalls in thinking about evolution and the nature of how everything came to be as it is. Evolution happens very slowly, over many generations. Genetics and archeology have shown us that there is no purity of species- that all living things are an incredibly complex and always changing blend of ingredients from many sources, and those sources were also all incredibly complex blends. There was no “first” Neanderthal, or dog, etc. What we have defined as a species came about through a gradual series of changes over a very long period of time. Its not like suddenly a Homo Habilis female one day gave birth to a baby Homo Erectus. Evolution is also basically random and chaotic. The biological traits and behavior of living things were not designed, strategized, or created, given tools, or given abilities. Those traits and behaviors developed randomly over many generations, through the chaos of time and nature. Traits also tend to fade in and out multiple times, very gradually, across time and geography, blending together in complex ways. Furthermore, changes in traits and behaviors brought about by human intervention (such as the many breeds of dogs, or different types of tomatoes for example) are not considered natural evolution. Those are referred to as “artificial evolution” or “selective breeding”, but are often confused with the process of evolution.
Beyond this, there’s a general attitude that evolution = improvement. This seems to arrive from the old idea of evolution as “survival of the fittest”, which sees evolution as a process of “weeding out” species that aren’t well-enough adapted to pressures in their environment. This implies that evolution is a process of optimization, and that the current/latest form of the species is the “best” or most finely adapted or perfected to their specific environment. We don’t have to look much further than our own homo sapiens bodies to see that this isn’t the case. Our bipedalism introduces so many potential orthopedic problems, causes us to move quite slowly, etc., that if evolution were a process of optimization our skeletons and musculature would be very different.
I’m not a writer, so I’m sure there are many weakness in how I’ve tried to make these points, but in general I hope the idea is getting across. I’m also not an evolutionary biologist - so I’m sure some of what I’ve written is incorrect in a number of ways. There’s so much more to say about this topic, though, and maybe I’ll expand upon this in the future. Learning about evolution has taught me as much about how humans currently tend to, or want to think about and explain the world than how the world actually is/was. My issues with this says a lot about me specifically, perhaps - how my brain works, my insecurities and fears, etc.
ancient architecture Ark of Bukhara, Uzbekistan
Source: i0.wp.com
Making a "Phil" Mug on the pottery wheel — narrated version
Source: youtube.com
One time in grad school I was sitting in on a review/critique of work in the sculpture department. We were reviewing an installation that was situated in the sunroom of a private dwelling space on campus. The installation was made so that what appeared to be sections of the wood floor had been raised into the space upon curved steel rods/supports. In undergrad I had studied both art and architecture, though most of my time and effort was directed toward the architecture work. My friends, colleagues, and teachers in the art department there generally related to me as a non-artist (not always of course) and I always wished I could have been more a part of the world/scene/culture in the art department. I chose to attend Cranbrook for grad school because I was given the impression that the architecture department was essentially a sculpture department and my work could be whatever I wanted, and for that time I would emerge with an MArch degree which would help towards my goal of getting a teaching job. I was excited to connect with the artists in other departments, especially sculpture, and being able to sit in on their reviews felt like a privilege and something I had been really looking forward to, like a place were I could feel more “myself” perhaps. During the part of the session in which the discussion had been open for comments from anyone, I commented that it seemed like the wood was being lifted up towards the sun (the roof was a pitched window-wall/skylight like you would expect in a greenhouse) for some reason, and the form of the supports suggested some kind of plant-like root system that was emerging from the ground, seeking light. The professor/department head leading the critique, who seemed to be highly respected and loved by her students, followed up my comment with something to the effect of “uhhh.. ok let’s stick with what’s actually happening here”. It was delivered in a tone that was slightly mocking or questioning my experience of the work as fantastical, silly, weird, crazy, etc. I remember noticing other students looking at me to see how I would react to her comment, with looks of concern. As far as I knew, no guidelines for comments or ground rules for the critiques had been given that would have made my comment out of bounds. I turned red and felt like an idiot, an outsider, an impostor, inept. I didn’t speak in any of the sculpture department reviews after that, and for years questioned my abilities to understand art, or that maybe I wasn’t experiencing it in the correct way. When im invited to speak about others’ work as maybe a guest critic, advisor, mentor, etc. I have to put aside a great deal of anxiety, impostor syndrome, and self doubt, but afterwards it all comes back and I question wether everything I said made any sense, was helpful, insightful, etc. I absolutely love discussions about art, design, and the nature of everything, but they also feel like a trap.
My first time at Haystack was in 2015 and I was fortunate to be leading a basketry workshop there. During the same session there was a visiting artist who was a renowned and beloved illustrator, though I was unfortunately only slightly familiar with her work before that time. Leading up to the session many colleagues had expressed envy that I’d get to meet this artist, that she was one of their heroes, etc., which made me feel like it was indeed a privilege. Sometime toward the middle of the session she hosted a brief drawing workshop on the deck of her cabin at haystack. I was excited at the opportunity to attend, and it felt like it would be a special highlight of my time there. During the session we did some drawing, doodling, or sketching exercises from prompts given to us by the artist. If I remember correctly we were prompted to draw a floor plan of our childhood room, and then write about a significant experience/memory of our childhood room. For me one memory from my childhood that I think about often is a thought-game/fantasy I used to have in which I imagined that I was locked in my room and being watched via camera looking through the AC vent in the ceiling, which broadcast my every move to some authoritarian or deity-like figures somewhere else. In order to be let out of the room I had to arrange every object in the room in a very specific position, which was never revealed to me. It could be that I had to place my toy race car on top of a pair of shorts (which had to be folded or crumpled in a very specific way), which would be positioned on the left edge of my dresser, which had to be angled out from my wall at a specific distance and degree, which was a right angle to my pillow, which was leaning up against the bed with a variety of other object placed around it, etc. etc etc. essentially it was an impossible, never-ending guessing game, but there was a sense that there was a specific way things had to be, which others knew but which I did not know, and that my ability to escape the situation would only come about through accurately intuiting or figuring out this infinite guessing game. This fantasy game led me to create all kinds of interesting installations and object arrangements in my room, spending many many hours doing so, fantasizing if they were “correct”. Sometimes, after hours of arranging, I would go open the door (there was no lock of any kind on the door) and find it would open freely and I would either be reminded that it was just a game, there was no one watching me, or I’d pretend that I had finally won. In both instances, I felt free and stepping out of my room felt like a captive animal being set free, back into the wild. I would take a big breathe of fresh air and appreciate everything around me, my freedom, my expanded environment, much more deeply. For the exercise at haystack, drawing the floor plan reminded me how the placement all the furniture and objects had such a significant importance for me because of this game. I wrote briefly about the game next to my plan drawing. Afterwards we were asked to share about our drawing/writing. I shared mine briefly, and the artist made a comment suggesting that I was crazy, sort of a “you need to get your head checked” type of comment. It wasn’t delivered in a teasing, light hearted, or joking way, but rather with a kind of surprise, concern, there’s-something-wrong-with-you kind of way. She quickly moved on to the next person. I turned red and felt embarrassed, like a weirdo, and questioned if maybe I really was mentally “not well” somehow. I tried to brush it off and continued with the workshop exercises quietly. I tried to not do anything too personal or revealing or unusual after that.
Sketching and delving into the fantasy spaces of my mind for a long time after that felt questionable and I wondered what would be a “normal” or better way to sketch or draw. That started to bleed into other areas of my work in some ways. I didn’t have resentment towards the artists for their comments, but instead I still held them in high regard. They were older, vastly more accomplished, well known, experienced, and celebrated than I ever will be, so I took their reactions/comments as meaningful. They must have been right, and there must have been something wrong with me.
These are just two instances that stand out in my memory, and they popped into my head today after reading something David Berman wrote about his childhood nature that resonated with me. I guess I’ve always placed a lot of weight on what others say, think, or communicate, to a level that affects me in profound and often unhealthy ways. Coming from artists with such shining reputations, these kind of experiences, wether my experience or memory of them is accurate or not, have shaped me in cumulatively and have enveloped the sharing my work and thoughts with a huge amount of anxiety. Of course, there are so many other factors that have also contributed to this and im not singling these out as “the” causes. A few months ago I was evaluated and formally diagnosed with ADHD and I’ve since come to understand that a big part of this anxiety, feelings of being weird/other, inept, or inescapably “different” are common for those with ADHD or other neurodivergent minds. It’s apparently very common for people with ADHD to gravitate towards more creative careers. I’m not writing this about ADHD, but my new knowledge about how my brain works has me reviewing these types of experiences I’ve had and is helping me to experience them in new/different ways. I guess those two experiences stand out in my life as offering numerous insights into my experience of the world, the complexities of social interaction/structure, human behavior and creative output. I’m working to be more accepting of myself and my brain, and not so affected by the views of others; and im wanting to use this space as another channel in which I can expose myself rather than hide in fear.
Earlier this week marked 19 years of vegetarianism for me. The last meal in which I intentionally ate meat was at a small Mexican restaurant in Peoria, Illinois in 2002. I was with my friends Dustin and Vanessa. We had driven from Tulsa, Oklahoma (our hometown) to Milwaukee to see a bunch of hard air and screams bands play at “level plane fest”. Level Plane Records was perhaps my favorite record label at the time, and most of our favorite bands of the moment were playing so we hit the road. It was a very very long drive. I can’t remember if we went non-stop of what. Dustin would remember. Anyway, over the 2-3 years leading up to that point There we’re more and more vegans in my life and my understanding of the relationship between humans and the rest of the world was evolving in a way that saw humans as highly destructive. That hasn’t changed much, but it has evolved further to a more nuanced thinking… I’ll write about that more at some point too.
Anyway, in Milwaukee we hung out with a bunch of these big bearded and tattooed hardcore dudes. A lot of of them were vegan and just absolutely loved food. I saw how being vegan wasn’t a sacrifice for them, but actually an Avenue to appreciate food more. They celebrated their food so much and seemed to enjoy it more because it wasn’t harming other animals. I should say that I 100% think of humans as animals all the time, and this way of thinking is part of why I wanted to stop eating meat. Yes there are differences between us and other animals, and one of the main differences is our relationship to food and technology. We have reached a point in our history, technology, culture, or maybe even evolution, in which we could exist almost entirely without consuming animal products. We have excellent alternatives for just about every use of animal, and I felt like I wanted less of my money going to support the wholesale slaughter of millions of animals, and less of my money supporting the treatment of animals as instruments of capitalism in which their genetics are bred to maximize profits, etc.
I say less of my money because I have never found that going fully vegan is easily sustainable in my life… at least yet. I actually think I could probably be vegan now more easily than ever, especially in New York City, but I’ve developed a balance or level of harm-reduction that I am comfortable with, proud of, and that works for me in many ways. I have never wanted to play “end game” with my reduction of animal harm because I honestly don’t think it’s possible to follow that logic to an end that doesn’t involve suicide. Even vegans know this, but unfortunately some do fall for the trap of all-or-nothing thinking. I think especially when you are young peer pressure, and social and ideological fervor tend to overcome thinking and acting in moderation. It’s really all about finding the level that you are comfortable with, and that sense to you. I think I knew this for years, but sort of subconsciously I felt that my approach was the most sensible for everyone. I didn’t understand pescatarians, flexitarians, freegans, or meatless Mondays. Nowadays I think these are wonderful and amazing.
I also didn’t initially switch to this diet for environmental reasons. It is now well know that factory farming of meat (especially beef) and the various fishing industries have caused and are causing catastrophic environmental and ecological damage, some of which may be impossible to heal. But in 2002 I didn’t know about those factors. All I knew was when I ate fried chicken, I absolutely loved it, but if I saw some veins and tendons near the bones I would start to feel nauseous. I could not get past feeling like a cannibal, or that this life was slaughtered without consequence just so I could have a greasy salty meaty meal. I wasn’t the type of person to see a chicken and think is was adorable and want to hug it. I have also been a long time critic of aesthetic value, at least in my head, especially when it is applied to humans, animals, or plants. Just because something is cute doesn’t mean we should put more effort into saving it, or value ugly beings less. This is adjacent to ableist, eugenicist, or racist thinking and I always felt suspicious of it, but only in recent years have I started to become able to verbalize my feelings around that. So yes, my vegetarianism intersects with my aesthetic sensibilities. How could it not?
Since I have been vegetarian more and more research has been published that has made my choice feel more “right” for me - in that the research shows how a vegetarian diet aligns with my view of how humans can better exist as part of the earth. It has also gained a lot of popularity which is wonderful in many ways. Meeting other vegans and vegetarians is more common and less novel now. I won’t get into all the ridiculous comments and questions I’ve heard over the years, often times meant to be insulting or somehow make fun of my diet choice. Those comments happen with much less frequency now, if at all, which feels like evidence of a major cultural shift. I do eat dairy and eggs, technically making me an ovo-lacto-vegetarian. I love ice cream and cheese and eggs dearly and eat them often. I make an effort to buy eggs from free-roaming pasture raised eggs as much as I am able. I buy and drink mostly soymilk. If I buy dairy I try to buy “organic”, but honestly I am more lenient with dairy. A lot of cheese is made with animal rennet, which is an enzyme from the stomach of certain animals. If a vegetarian dairy cheese (one made with rennet from microbial enzymes) is available I will usually get that instead, but not always. I sometimes eat things made with gelatin, which is a byproduct of meat production and is essentially a kind of meat product itself. I sometimes eat Thai curry or Korean kimchi, or Japanese sauces or soups that I know probably have fish or shrimp sauce in them. For the most part I try not to. Those exceptions drive a lot of people crazy, especially meat eaters it seems. They seem to think that I have “rules” and that if I break those rules somehow it disqualifies, discredits, or undermines my vegetarianism. For me is more of a big-picture reduction. If over the course of a few months I feel like I’ve made too many exceptions to my boundaries, then I’ll tighten up a bit. Over the course of 19 years this has helped me to reduce my environmental impact and harm to non-human animal life by a massive amount.
I’ve been considering starting to eat some fish or maybe certain other animal products next year after the 20-year mark. I’d like to explore sustainable fish or meat and see what health impacts it has if I eat it maybe 2 or 3 times a month. The easy b12 and omega3 source is the main thing I’d like to figure out. Plus it’s easier to find and afford sustainable fish and meat now. I just don’t know how I’ll feel about eating other animals so directly and intentionally. That might keep me vegetarian for many years to come. That, and impossible burgers. Yum.
Today I had a great final mentorship meeting with Elaine Shen, (https://www.elaineshenstudio.com/ ) who is one of the current artists in residence at the Textile Arts Center. I was asked to participate as a mentor in the program and was paired with Elaine as she has been developing a multi-facets practice that includes art, design, and commerce, all of which are largely informed by her interest in textile processes. It has been a really enjoyable and rewarding process for me, and I hope that it has for her as well.
Taking on a role as mentor brought with it some serious impostor syndrome for me, but I did my best to listen, and share my experiences and viewpoints, trying to trust that there may some bits of value in there. Elaine’s work and approach to the residency stood out in a number of ways from the other residents, which is admirable and inspiring. She was exploring ideas, processes, and materials that were nebulous in nature. At the beginning I was excited but also nervous that I’d have trouble giving helpful feedback. It wasn’t super clear where it was all heading. Today looking back on how much her work has progressed, and the very broad scope of exploration she tackled, it was so wonderful to see it coalescing into a visual and material language that is vibrant, complex, and engaging. She has developed a way of exploring and digging into her curiosities and interests that she can apply over and over in the future, and in a way that will inform and complement the other sides of her practice in interesting ways.
In two weeks the residents will have their final critique, and then they will have until September to complete their work for a brief exhibition at TAC. I’m really looking forward to seeing all the work. It’s a really outstanding group of artists and It will be great to following each of their practices in the years ahead. Thank you to TAC for inviting me to a part of the program. Thank you so much to Elaine for sharing your time and efforts with me. It was truly a pleasure to think about, discuss, be with, and grow from your work.