I’m Usually Pretty Good At Naming Things is a short documentary about the making of a collage series of the same name. In the summer of 2021, I decided that I had spent long enough making art with pre-ordained meaning. I wanted to see what would happen if I let the process speak back to me. So I culled through my extensive arsenal of the stuff I make collage and sculpture with, and made a stack of paper about a foot tall. With this as my raw material, I cast aside the idea of outward expression with a specific agenda, and embraced inward exploration with unassigned curiosity. Subsequently, each collage became its own independent narrative. I was speaking in an intuitive language that perhaps I didn’t have total agency over. It was scary, and it was freeing. I realized that even if I didn’t fully understand what I was making, there would be two people who would: my kids. To be clear, I don’t mean ‘understand’ in the way one processes a distinct language: I’m not a semaphore; they are not at sea. What I mean is that these pieces might just have a poetic resonance with the two people who know me better than I know myself.

Mac Premo makes art, commercials and short films. Born in Washington DC in 1973, Mac graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1995 and moved to New York that same year. His films and art have exhibited worldwide, including the Ringling Museum, PS1 MoMA and The Brooklyn Museum. Mac has won 13 New York Emmy® Awards for his video and animation work, including awards for best commercial, photography, set design and best PSA. Sometimes he writes and performs one-man plays. Mac is a NYFA Fellow, and lives in Brooklyn with his tremendous wife and two totally radical kids. And also their dog, Philomena.