[-empyre-] Re: On Passport Privilege and In and out of the system

[Cara Walz]

N.M. wrote:
"It's a micro micro moment, but I think of that moment often because it
made physical things that were always assumed. I travel a lot for work
and at every airport, even when I do get hassle, I am still reminded
that it could be much much worse.  The passport trumps all else, it is
the document that people will give anything for. Those not born with
the right color passport, that is.

Don't want to monologue, so I'll stop here and hope others on this
list will chime in with their experiences and thoughts on this...."

J.H. wrote:
"Thus it's easier on entering a gallery to shrug and say right away, oh,
s/he's from Germany or LA or NYC or ....  And this might sometimes be a
shorthand, I suspect for s/he's close to the style of the Becker's or
the Leipzig painters or Cal Arts or Yale....  The coming Whitney
Biennial list of artists is of course concentrated in LA and NY, without
the unusual 2006 emphasis on artists born overseas but working in
America and vice versa."

My grandfather, after his studies in art at Carnegie Mellon in 
Pittsburgh PA, was invited to study at the Sorbonne. He didn't go, and 
instead elected to marry his art school love and serve in WWII: He drew 
pictures of planes to help pilots identify the enemy. Later, he had two 
daughters. One is a hermited lesbian poet addicted to pain pills. She 
lives near the Mexican border so that she can acquire her pills without 
a prescrip. The other, my mother, gave birth to four daughters. I am 
the third. Would my life be different if my grandfather had gone to 
Paris instead of the Army? Definitely, if I had been born at all, that 
is.

This evening I will draw a map on a gallery wall in pencil about the 
midwestern American city. The middle of the drawing will be full of 
variety and grow steadily more homogenous as ones eye radiates outward 
towards its fringes. When the show closes, the drawing will disappear.

A young artist friend of mine (i will not divulge his name) once asked 
for career advice. I told him to go to graduate school at Yale. He did 
so and then moved back to this humble burg sporting the polish version 
of his first name instead of the americanized one he used to go by. He 
has been well received.

Cara Walz