My first semester at Hunter MFA was incredibly difficult for me. I was struggling to fit into a 2D seminar and a “traditional studio practice” was not working out well. As I was questioning my life choices, I found myself pounding on the studio door of Ellie Ga late one fateful evening, and her advice to me was to “go and find Constance, take all of her classes and hopefully she will be doing more tutorials next semester!” Armed with this knowledge I was able to secure a tutorial spot with this Joan of Arc type figure, which led to a video elective, a spot on the Early Show curatorial squad and eventually CDJ as my thesis advisor.

Throughout this journey, CDJ provided me with helpful texts, generously indulged my stories and encouraged my love of travelling, theater, photo history, performance, classical music, mysticism, hard core feminism, martinis, ideas of objecthood, queer alliances, historically-based research, ephemera, long novels, and a well earned cigarette break. As our relationship deepened, and more personal details were revealed on both sides, our similarities overran our expectations and a true friendship evolved that I will be forever grateful for.

Constance recognized that I was a time-based media artist in the most abstract sense allowable; before I ever had. She was able to understand my language as I was figuring it out: how to explain my visual expressions as they were evolving and she is by far the best and most patient editor I have ever worked with. She gave me the gift of permission to continue along that path. Even though I would often have to stop and clear the road ahead, I had the conviction to power through it, knowing I have a place in the pantheon of path pavers before me.

I will never forget while we were working on the Early Show, I was reporting to CDJ after a particularly harrowing interview I had conducted with an artist that I kept referring to as “crazy”, (who, in my defense, was crazy, and the situation in the studio itself totally absurdist). She half chuckled, gently gripped my wrist and looked deep into my eyes and told me, “Someday my dear, some poor overworked grad student will be saying the same thing about you!”

May 6, 2020

Tania Cross
MFA ‘08