The title I'm here to stop is a quote from a terrifying fake Kafka story, which no one had written. It showed me my greatest fear, a deadline. A totality beyond my control! Something about the closure frightens me . . . that I don't know enough, that I haven't gathered enough yet.

Students think about this too; some can be very apprehensive about their own work and, to a degree, don't see it as art. Maybe they believe the tasks aren't substantial, that the studio environment is the only legitimate context for their practice. A studio is a study, and a study is not work.

A mentor once asked me how my work would exist in the world. Maybe she meant, physically, how do ideas become objects? I heard: how does the work leave the studio if I never do? I'm not sure I misinterpreted. How does work enter the world if I'm already outside?

Now, I circumnavigate the world, like a silhouette or a curve, in search of elegant shapes, and live a life that leads me to them. An anamorphic life. Nothing too crazy. In doing so, at my most self-aggrandized, I think I'm remaking it all. I take illustrations from books, and pick up leaves from the street. Small samples of reality. The samples are cut with any tool available. Apparently, at the right speeds and concentration, anything can be a blade. I wanted a knife, but a light is much faster. It doesn't make things easier; it just changes the quantity and time. The paper billows and leaves blow from the cuts.

The exhibition includes such cuts of paper and a plastic material called Duralar; retired shoes with blind-spot mirrors attached; and wine bottles with silhouettes as labels. The Duralar rolls and curves along its flat edge and joins together through small slits, partially visible, assembling into something you can see through. It's a city of invisible people, burial objects, modern sculpture, and bonsai trees. None of the silhouettes are of a real person, except me. The paper is what I keep: photo proofs, class notes, photocopies of comic book pages, credit card offers, medical bills, and press releases. I cut leaves from the imminent failures and future potential, then put the negatives in little boxes, or string them along a cable.

Walking shapes the shoes, and I've had at least one pair for eight years. I wear these things into the dirt, flat-footed and mildly pronated. The mirrors attached to the toes feel like picking up a nice leaf from the ground. Momentarily, the world is compressed between your eyes and feet.

None of this makes things easier. I still reach for a thought before it's formed; I collect before I commit. Always penultimate. But it's not avoidance anymore. I just stop while I'm ahead.