Once Home Clara immediately sprung into action, scanning her work, finishing her website and producing her last images (3 of which being 12 hour long a la poupée (hand painted) prints containing every plate she etched while here.) I watched in awe as she woke up each day full of intentionality and direction. Not a moment left to waste. We went back and forth in the days that followed, peer editing, helping each other with little tasks needed, cooking and cleaning up till eventually we reached our final day together. 

Clara and Bean after Clara's final critique of her work from her time at Home.

We ended Clara’s time with a critique of all the work she made in just two months time. Discussing nuanced and underlying themes that maybe weren’t previously perceived as few are able to work as closely as me and Clara have been able to and thus I was able to offer a viewpoint that she often felt was lacking from her critiques in art school. That viewpoint being one of familiarity. Because I not only knew Clara but finally now understood her practice at large and where, what I was looking at, fit into the timeline of everything else. Because I watched her work for days on end with few breaks in between. We were able to discuss the almost unnoticed mania that is required of her to produce her work. We talked about possible ways of installing, exhibiting and displaying not just the work but the practice itself. We pondered possibilities and proposals for future showings and ways to refine and build structure for what “moving forward” on this work that will inevitably take her entire life (and potentially longer) to create and what new directions she could expand upon or dive into deeper to make the body of work stronger as a whole. We asked what all of this meant under the guise of “works for sale” and now with considering public perception? This entire conversation happened in the bedroom Clara resided in when she wasn’t tirelessly making the work we saw before us. A true living and working environment.