...from Emily Moran Barwick

Hi. I'm Emily.

This is the part of my website where I summarize myself in a few sentences and descriptors (e.g. artist1, writer, activist, educator, speaker...).

But here's the thing...even though I'm small,* I don't fit well into boxes. I'm a complex mess of a human. And after a lifetime of painfully curating controlled versions of myself, I want need to welcome the chaotic and beautiful mess. (Even though it scares me...)

So here on this website, I'm going to challenge myself to be messy. Imperfect. "Too much." To create a space where all of the parts of me can live. And to do so openly, in "public" (if a little website counts as such)...

It's not going to be polished. It may not even be good. But it will be okay...enough.

*I'm 5'1" if you want to know...

Latest (Public) Thought ➱

Latest2, Best, and Favorite Posts3

Living Documents4

Latest (Public) Thought ➱

Stuff in the Works ➱

  1. This footnote is a manifestation of my self-conscious need to justify calling myself an artist on a website that may seem (at least currently) devoid of "art" in the traditional sense (whatever that means). So, for the none of you who asked, I did once have an "artist website" showing my "actual art." (again, what does that mean?)
         I got an MFA <-- does that make me a real artist? How about my art being covered on local TV that went (briefly) national? Does that do it? Or maybe that I've had some solo gallery shows and group shows? (Albeit a while ago now...so...maybe that's not in my favor here).
         I had to "nuke" my artist website (read: wipe it from the face of the internet) due to reasons I plan to elucidate in a post on this very here website in the future. The erasure of my artist website was a further erasure of parts of myself I'm only now starting to re-connect with.
         I do plan to bring at least some of that "art art" (wtf is that?) here onto this website. But what I'm most interested in at the moment is this website itself being my art practice. I see the bones of its HTML and delicate lace of its CSS as medium, if not magic. And I’m enlivened by being in dialogue with it, and it with me.↩

  2. "Latest" is a bit inaccurate here. I'm writing all over this website more recently than the "official posts posts." Take a swim in my Feedbackless Feed for the (often) freshest of stuff. Or hop over to my Not NOT Unhinged Change(log) for what I've been mucking about with on this site (and likely having BIG FEELINGS about). You can also pop over and see if the Website Manifesto has been breathed into lately.
         Also, I have a visceral resistance to the concept that "recency = importance" that our feed-based internet has engendered. Yet, I feel a pressure to "prove" that I'm doing stuff. That I'm writing/creating/working. And "official posts" or videos or "content" that triggers some RSS or notification or is sent through a newsletter is what's generally seen as "proof of activity/work/worth." Not the writing, creating, and work that's silently released. So...in summation, this is yet another footnote of me justifying myself to the none of you who demanded I do so. So there!↩

  3. There are only six posts right now, so that subheading is completely accurate↩

  4. These are ever-evolving pieces; I see them as being in dialogue with the website's own evolution, both reflecting and instigating that change.↩