how to: make an artist website

NOTE: this piece was originally published on my personal blog on January 6, 2020. It's been a long year. Nice to re-meet you.

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I bought this domain on August 17th. That was after months of delay, and only then after I knowingly put the URL in a playwright bio written in early July assuming I would continue to procrastinate, thus tricking myself into finally making it. If the site were out in the world, I told myself, it would have to exist in some capacity. The trick worked and it didn’t. I bought the domain. I uploaded my brand new headshot and resume… and that was that. It hasn’t been touched since. Until now.

Happy 2020 everyone. May you live or die for your resolutions, face it: the new year is merely an excuse to start fresh. It’s also a good excuse. “MAKE YOUR FUCKING WEBSITE” was on my to-do list for so long that I reached a point where I had to look in the mirror and confront myself about what exactly I was trying to avoid. It’s not that I couldn’t do it. In theory, I actually enjoyed the idea of the project. It’s not that I didn’t have the time - though I certainly made that excuse over and over again. It’s not even that I felt I lacked material to post. “MAKE A REEL” was also on my to-do list for the entirety of 2019, but that’s another story, and I realized, not the be-all end-all to sharing a website.

The thing, as always has been the thing, is my struggle to articulate. I always want to articulate the thing - perfectly - but the words are either moving too quickly in my head, or they don’t quite encompass exactly what I’m trying to say. Over the years, this used to frustrate me endlessly. I’ve since come to accept the speed of my thoughts and laugh whenever I interrupt myself mid-sentence, but when it comes to building a website that articulates the best version of myself and my artistry via a multimedia platform supposedly marketing my entire career I’m like… what the fuck do you want from me? What am I supposed to do here? Nothing I could possibly produce in a text box can sum up my thoughts about myself and my work. I’m just starting to figure out who the fuck I am, let alone what defines my art. How do you expect me to write it down? It is beyond daunting. More than that, fresh out of school at twenty two-years old? It feels false. Too set in stone to feel at all accurate. Unlike the U.S. Constitution, I need this to be a living, breathing document.

It was then that I remembered I used to run a blog with 7,000 followers. If you know anything about those years, you know that blog was my life. And people loved me. Thirteen-year old me who posted crap garageband covers of songs from A Very Potter Musical. Fourteen-year old me who cried wordlessly to Photobooth and then, the world (iykyk). Fifteen-year old me who went to Supernatural conventions. I digress. The point is I was good at the cultivating an audience thing when I could speak in my own voice on my own terms. And my own voice rambles. So... why not think of this whole website hullabaloo as more of an ongoing project than a final one?

In acting school (yes, I’m going there), one of the most valuable things I became aware of was my habit of labeling emotion. I would experience something unfamiliar and then try to figure out exactly what just happened. I was told by my teacher and mentor, Andy Arden Reese, that if I stopped trying to label the feeling it would become more true and more real than by any logical definition I could summon - even greater than at the moment of origin. I feel the same is true for my entire existence. If I try to define myself and my art, I’m limiting potential. There is much more to me than I’m even aware of.

How can I relay my truest self to the world without definition? I guess the answer is: don’t. Or at least, keep updating the definition. Write the whole dictionary. An artist requires a dictionary of self-definition. This is the beginning of mine. At first I was like, this is not what an “artist website” is. No one does that. But then I was like… says who? And then I was like, no one will read anything. And then I was like, literally? Who cares. This is for me. It’s a marketing tool that actually brings me a little joy - and joy is key. This summer while training with SITI Company in Saratoga Springs, renowned director Anne Bogart was asked how she chooses what her next project will be. Her response was “frisson de corps” - or goosebumps. Rather than logistical or even rational thinking, her decision making is based upon the intensity that the idea rouses in the body. Rather than the mind, the body is the barometer.

For whatever reason, writing into the void feels like a good idea to me, for me, here at the starting line of a new decade. So I’m going for it. Who knows how long it’ll last. But, while you’re here, take a look around. There’s not much. But there’s this.

Love,

(me, this is my website)

Maggie