Lost Artifacts
I’m in “the pit of despair” phase of creating new work for an upcoming show. A term that a local artist’s husband referred to this stage of work he often sees his wife struggle with before a big deadline. Trying to create work that is from deep within me, after only creating “sellable” work for the last 2-3 years has proven to be difficult. I feel closed off, disconnected from the part of me that made meaningful work in grad school and before. Because of the pressure to create work that will make me money, I feel like I’ve lost my fire and I’m trying to get it back. As I was looking through old files from grad school to maybe give me a spark, I came across tons of videos I recorded of myself painting my thesis work. I forgot I had taken those to create instagram content out of. My hair was long and my eyes were sad. I was listening to heartfelt music, something I rarely do in the studio these days. I even caught a conversation with my friend and fellow grad student, Siri, about some dudes off Tinder. Watching these videos was like watching videos of someone who had died, someone no longer around, who couldn’t be revived. And while it broke my heart, I also know that that version of myself was meant to change and there’s not really any going back.
I’ve been reflecting on past work I made when there wasn’t the pressure to pay my bills, just to create. These artifacts of myself seem foreign to me and it is refreshing to dig them up and think about where I was in my life when I made them. In today’s newsletter, I’m going to include some of these “lost” artifacts. Some sketches I found, poems, experimental work I forgot about. I am also including an excerpt from one of my favorite books that was a big part of my psyche, A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Which, while looking for my copy for this exact purpose, I cannot seem to find... fitting.
I have a lot to talk about in these newsletters but I am feeling burned out and not sure how to say all of it yet. So with that, I have decided to drop down to one newsletter a month for a while so I can focus on creating new work. Maybe they will get more interesting that way (I hope lol).
One last thing and MOST IMPORTANT:
I would like to announce my first museum solo show!
Kuehl Fine Art: Autumn Hunnicutt, June 6th - June 28th, 2025 at the A.R. Mitchell Museum of Western Art, Trinidad, CO Opening Reception: Friday, June 6th, 5-8pm Artist Lecture: Thursday, June 5th, 5:30 at Trinidad State College, Boyd Building
I would love to see you at the reception and/or the artist lecture. Thanks for all of the support and please enjoy the random things below.
Love,
Autumn
A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
"Lost really has two disparate meanings. Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing. There are objects and people that disappear from your sight or knowledge or possession; you lose a bracelet, a friend, the key. You still know where you are. Everything is familiar except that there is one item less, one missing element. Or you get lost, in which case the world has become larger than your knowledge of it. Either way, there is loss of control. Imagine yourself streaming through time shedding gloves, umbrellas, wrenches, books, friends, homes, names. This is what the view looks like if you take a rear-facing seat on the train. Looking forward you constantly acquire moments of arrival, moments of realization, moments of discovery. The wind blows your hair back and you are greeted by what you have never seen before. The material falls away in onrushing experience. It peels off like skin from a molting snake. Of course to forget the past is to lose the sense of loss that is also memory of an absent richness and set of clues to navigate the present by; the art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss."
It’s always nice to stumble across someone who’s been inspired by something that also inspired and sustained me. A Field Guide to Getting Lost helped me find my voice when I started writing again. I’m forever grateful to Solnit for that (and I recommend Hope in the Dark, if you haven’t read it already). Congratulations on your solo show, and thanks for this.
Love you Autumn! 😍