This Body is a Portal
a beginning, an invitation
Hello and welcome former subscribers to Krista Dragomer Studio, Let’s Go to the Moon, and everyone else! This is the new home for all of my newsletters, announcements and more. Let me tell you a bit about what I intend to do in this space.
Why this title?
For as long as I can remember, I have been interested in portals. I can recall myself, around five years old, sitting on the floor in front of the full length mirror attached to my bedroom closet door and bringing my face as close to the surface of the mirror as possible. I would then experiment with turning my head and eyes at sharp angles so that I could look to either side. I wanted to see it, that in-between place where the two worlds meet. I was sure that in the space between my room and its reflection was a shimmering zone of transformative magic.
My childhood interest in liminal spaces led me to engage in social experiments as well. I frequently placed myself in situations that might allow me to spend time suspended between this and that, between the known and the unknown. In anticipation of a friend coming to play, I’d be filled with a fluttery sense of excitement. But rather than run to the door to greet them when I heard them arriving, I’d go to another room, listening to the sounds of parents greeting each other, overnight bags being set down and jackets unzipping through a closed door. This behavior was often interpreted as shyness, but it was in fact curiosity about the feeling of no longer waiting but not yet receiving. I wanted to stay in the portal, to get to know it, to sit still in a condition of passage and take it in.
I draw. I have done this since the moment when my baby fists learned to release their clench and grasp an object with some amount of control and intention. Actually, I was probably drawing before that, inside my body, reddening platelets and lighting up neurons in pleasing patterns of newfound joy. My work spirals out into other mediums and materials, into sculpture and sound, and then returns back to the simplicity of a mark, a hand holding a simple tool, a residue, a moment in time.
Drawing has a physical immediacy: a surface and a tool come together to bear witness to the weight of the body’s lean, sweat on a palm, the speed and dexterity of wrists, elbows, and shoulders, the breath held and released. When I draw, I am in conversation with my body and my body is in conversation with the worlds that move through me. My body, this, body, is a portal of sensation. Our senses allow the world to move in and out of us like breath. Senses are portals that extend our bodies out into the world, making contact with that felt terrain through the watery touch of the eye, through the brush of sound on skin. And these portals welcome the world back into the intimate tissue of our interior. When I make art, I am engaged in a practice of bringing awareness to the ways in which the world enters our sentient bodies through these portals, how we make meaning of it and how it makes meaning of us.
More about this Substack
For a detailed breakdown of subscriptions, schedules and such, see my about page. I am thinking of this space as an opportunity to explore some of the deeper questions and drives that animate my creative practice, in hopes that they offer generative modes of reflection and engagement for my readers. I invite you all to share your responses and experiences with this material, that we might support each other as we explore the many portals of our lives.