Mineral Light, Journey to the Self

Abstract

Let's say that there is a light that ascends from below as well as a light from above. Let's believe in this light from below, a mineral light. By talking about my teaching and my own artistic production in the studios where I teach, I would like to bring into the open this mineral light, and in this way say that our enterprise is really a part of the individuation process itself, a journey to the self. At the University of Virginia we teach art in the context of the College of Arts and Sciences. Our students typically are not preprofessionals in the field of art, although some few do go on to graduate art schools. Our students study art in the context of a liberal arts education. It is good that we discuss the liberal arts; we should do so while we still can. Since I started teaching here in 1985 I've always had a significant number of my students arrive from the Architecture School, especially graduate students. There have been so many as to form a distinct and measurable point of view within my studios, a pack or contagion, Deleuze would say.2 This is one of the interdisciplinary components of my studios. What are these architecture students looking for in an etching studio? What are the liberal arts students looking for? What do they find? I teach printmaking. The printmaking studios are a mix of different strata. On the one hand they are like machine shops, rooms with big simple machines, the presses, ponderous machines. In the company of these big greasy machines, and as in any self-respecting machine shop, here you can also find the Gojo Waterless Handcleaner. What would we do without it? These dumb machines really slow us down; to make etchings, woodcuts, or lithographs is to encounter long delays, as