kali durga
“Don’t worry about throwing things away. In fact, you’re ultimately going to have to throw all of them away except for one. Designers recognize this as the destructive aspect of the creative process; it’s a good thing.”
- Nancy Duarte, on sketching
Create, destroy, create, destroy.
By the end of it, what we get seems more like an echo or evaporating respiration than any sure or concrete expression. Maybe like if you’re lucky, you can look up at the night sky and see the milky way and marvel wordlessly knowing that what you’re seeing is the visual echo of what a star thousands and thousands of years ago looked like. Or maybe it’s just that when I think of the creative process that way, with a romanticized macro lens, it alleviates the pressure I put on myself to come up with a brilliant idea or concept. Knowing that, light years later, you and your work are probably not going to be anything like it is now. One TA at Mills used to say, “sometimes, it’s your favorite part that you have to let go”. In the attempts to create there’s so much synthesis to sift through, a sometimes turbulent leaving behind of borrowed ideas, inherited biases, old tricks and habits, all kinds of letting go. In the midst of it, especially when you’re ego is all in the driver’s seat, it can be so frustrating. When you’re able to reach this alchemical balance of clarity and get out of your way… that’s some good shit.
Kartika Review!
what a hectic entry into 2012. i forgot to note that my artwork was selected to be in the current issue of kartika review!
Kartika Review #11 | Winter 2011
Process
I’ve figured that I need at least 36 hours to plow through the self-doubt and walls of hater before I can even start to get at anything sincere in the studio. A week without the interwebs, phone, clients, and deadlines does wonders. In the first full day, I produce a mountain of bullshit weighed down with stupid self-absorbed “is it meaningful” questions, and then by day three some tiny spark-le emerges from the flotsam that I can work with. When people look at a “simple” work of art, they usually think “I could have done that” or “i could make that in 10 minutes” — what they don’t account for are the hours of thought, emotion, doubt, courage, funk, creation, erasure, destruction and regeneration that never make it to the canvas or what have you.
Anyway. In 2012 I’m going to try to figure out how to wing the 3-week work month.
100 Ideas #3: Tarot Cards
i’ve always wanted to make a collage deck of my own.
(in progress – drawings to overlay in second stage)
Build the Factory
Letter from Robert Genn, posted September 9, 2008
Dear Artist,
During the last while I’ve been giving my two bits worth to several would-be painters. These folks are young, well educated and talented. They want to talk about the business of making art, the possibility of going to art school, their future in art. They also check my modest brain for what I might think galleries want, price points, popular sizes, that sort of thing.
While this is all very nice, I’ve glazed over a few times, and frankly told one of them to paint a hundred paintings and give me a call when she does. There was a significant silence on the other end of the phone–as if it was just around the corner that I might coach creativity into her. “Think of yourself as a factory,” I said. That was the end of that call.
Not many of us can be convinced that working in a factory is a lot of laughs. Being a factory may be even worse. But there’s something to be said for building one and getting into it.
Artist-wannabees need to find a physical place to be. For artists who think big and lofty, an unused loft in a rust-belt town might be the choice. But a factory can also be in a corner under basement stairs, or an easel at the bottom of a garden. Factory is a mental thing.
An art factory is a place where unmarked supports enter on one side, become caressed with the physical manifestation of human imagination, and are subsequently pushed out the other side. Whether these modified supports are commercially destined or not, it’s a process that needs to take place.
When the factory gets the steam up and things begin to happen, the worker becomes hooked. Also, as skills are learned, techniques defined and directions found, the place begins to look like a perpetual motion machine.
Theoretical folks don’t always understand that the factory itself turns its operator back into a student. The factory becomes a school. If you like the idea of do-it-yourself learning, and you are curious about what you might be able to do, a little private factory is one fine institution. If your factory starts small and gets productive, you’ll need a bigger factory. “Room service? Send up a larger room.” (Groucho Marx)
Best regards,
Robert
PS: “You need a room with no view so imagination can meet memory in the dark.” (Annie Dillard)
Esoterica: I often ask folks how much they like working on their own. Funnily, almost everyone says they love the idea. But when push comes to shove, many can’t go long without phoning somebody, or hanging out. It’s a distracting world. It may also have something to do with the interactive way kids are raised these days. Unless aspiring artists are particularly introverted or antisocial, it can be a struggle to achieve the full factory focus that creates proficiency. For some folks it only comes with maturity.
faith
untitled sketch