There is a practical limit to what can be sustained within the structure of a university art school when the work itself becomes physically and logistically complex. This is not a critique of the system as a whole. It provides access to space, equipment, instruction, and a shared environment of making—conditions that are necessary and valuable.

But when a project requires transporting materials across long distances, rebuilding sets from scratch, and working within fixed and limited time blocks, the structure begins to impose constraints that are not immediately visible until the work reaches a certain level of complexity.

At that point, the process changes.

To build a single image, I carry materials across a one-and-a-half-hour commute, moving between transit systems, managing objects that are not meant to be portable, and arriving already partially fatigued before the work has even begun. Once there, the set is reconstructed, worked on, photographed, and dismantled again within the same session.

This is not occasional. It is every session. The structure assumes a mode of working that not all forms of practice can sustain.

This is not unique to me. It is the condition any student encounters when the work moves beyond what can be easily set up, executed, and taken down within a single block of time. A significant portion of energy is spent not on the image itself, but on the conditions required to make it possible. By the time the work begins, the process is already operating under constraint—of time, of physical energy, and of sustained attention.

What the Work Requires

The work I am making now is not built on speed. It depends on continuity. It requires staying with an image long enough to notice what is slightly off, to make small adjustments, to leave it, and to return with a clearer eye. It requires the ability to remain inside a process without having to restart it repeatedly.

Within the university studio structure, the work becomes segmented: build, shoot, dismantle, leave. Each session is self-contained, and each return requires reconstruction—not only of the physical set, but of the mental state that allows the work to move forward. Working in my own space introduces a different condition—not ease, but continuity.

The set can remain. The work can extend beyond a single sitting. I can step away when something isn’t resolving and return to it without having lost the thread entirely. Decisions are made with more time behind them, not less. What I am noticing is not that the images are dramatically different at a glance, but that they are developing differently. They hold continuity. They feel less like they were completed within a constraint and more like they were allowed to unfold.

This difference is subtle, but structural.

Where Learning Breaks Down

At the same time, the university art school remains the primary site of technical learning. I have been actively asking for more hands-on support, especially at the moments when something isn’t working and I need to understand why. But those moments do not happen on a schedule.

They happen in the middle of the process—when a light behaves differently than expected, when a material doesn’t respond the way I thought it would, when something fails in a way that requires immediate adjustment. These are the points where guidance is most useful. Within the current structure, those moments are often misaligned with when support is actually available. Studio hours are limited, and within those hours there is not always enough time to both encounter a problem and work through it with meaningful guidance before the session ends.

So what happens is this: I either move forward without fully understanding, or I pause the work and lose the momentum I had built.

Neither option is neutral.

The Middle

This is the uncomfortable middle.

It is not a rejection of the university art school, and it is not a declaration that I can or should work entirely outside of it. It is the recognition that the conditions the work requires and the conditions the structure provides are no longer fully aligned—and that I am now responsible for navigating that gap.

Not resolving it completely.
Not stepping outside of it entirely.

But working within it without ignoring it. This is where maturity enters the process—not as confidence, but as specificity: an increasing awareness of what the work actually requires, what the system can realistically offer, and where those two begin to separate.

An Image Within This Space

The still life I have made sits within that same condition.

It draws from a 17th-century Dutch visual language—controlled, composed, intentional—but it does not fully resolve into that order. The octopus extends beyond the plate, interrupting the containment of the composition without collapsing it. The image remains structured, but carries a quiet instability.

It is not chaotic, but it is not entirely settled.

That tension is not imposed. It is a byproduct of how the work is being made.

Working Inside the Gap

I am still moving between both spaces—between the university studio and my own working environment, between structured learning and self-directed process. There is no clean resolution.

But what has changed is that I can no longer treat the conditions as interchangeable.

They are not.

And the work responds accordingly.

The uncomfortable middle is not confusion, and it is not indecision. It is the point at which differences become concrete—felt in the body, in time, and in the work itself. It is where the process becomes less about following a structure and more about understanding how to move within and around it without losing what the work is asking for.