Last week I facilitated a week-long workshop at Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. It was a great experience, and offered me the opportunity to give a talk about my work.

I’ve always tried to use artist talks as a means of discovering something new in my work. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how to approach this talk, but had the fortune of being the last speaker on the week’s schedule. I was so inspired by the readings and presentations of my fellow faculty that I felt I had to do something beyond a slide show of recent work.

I stepped on stage with the barest of plans — just 18 slides that offered me a kind of chronology. It starts the day after I was born, but in many ways is focused on the decade I’ve lived on Cape Cod — with a particular eye to facets of and the growth of my art practice since arriving here. It certainly weaves together a few threads I’ve never before brought together — and speaks to a few things I’ve never previously named.

Chen Chen reads before me and I caution you not to skip that part of the video. We didn’t plan anything — in fact had just met — but synched in a profound way. And he’s brilliant!