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"Be
a good craftsman; it won't stop you being a genius." - Auguste Renoir
8/18/2006
Oh lord, YES!
song du jour:The blissful quiet of a weekend to myself (until I start hammering on a repousse piece in a minute)
mood: Eeesh
Brilliance from Dan's latest post at The Woodshed:
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and bet that the majority of artists (or non-artists for that matter) have gone/will go/are going through this kind of identity shift. Actually, I think all self-reflective human beings go through this, but artists in particular seem to have a certain kind of artistic catharsis when the structure of the artist's identity shifts in such a way that it allows the art to flow out more freely. If the artist's "self" is the vessel through which the art flows, then the architecture of that "self" determines how, where, and when the art flows. So if that "self" is shaped like a dam, then the art might not flow as readily as it would through something more like a tube or canal.
Good grief, my "self" could seriously use a steak, some chocolate, more sleep, and time...always time... to be more tube shaped right now. With everything else in life I am perpetually running the risk of being a dam, not because I don't have a perpetual flow of ideas, but because that which constricts my flow reduces my ability to keep track of the myriad options and lessens my discernment for how to go about manifesting the ideas into reality. Translated: it's damned hard to work when my head keeps falling onto my workbench with a thud that wakes me up only temporarily.
As for my current "how the art flows," anti-monasticism as I am, I'm beginning to understand why monks were the artists, who created illuminated manuscripts. - Well in the West anyway. - Ah, to have no worries and no responsibilities save these little pots of ink, these little leaves of gold, and the scratch scratch of the nib. I have become perfectly content to obsess in a hunched manner over my drawing table filling in blocks of color and literally heavy breathing over gesso to get the gold leaf to stick. I could do this all the time, at least until my back gives way. It takes longer and longer to uncurl myself when I stand up. I haven't bought clothes for myself all summer, but damn if I can't find just enough room on a credit card to get another 2 tubes of guache and some metallic acrylic ink. Massive restraint is needed to keep myself from further debt when confronted with a shiny display of any kind of pearlized paint. Just $4.49/jar? Huh, how many jars in my basket? Ok, I'm putting them back...except the blue one, and the purple one... and the gold one.
Truly I have some shade of gold smeary stuff in every type of medium known to art stores: guache, oil, tube acrylic, jar acrylic, fluid acrylic, acrylic ink, gutta resist, silk dye, glass paint, liquid lead for glass paint, craft paint, glaze, powdered pigment, and on and on, and that doesn't include my makeup. My title shouldn't merely be Master Metalsmith. I should be Master Pack rat for I have all the art supplies from my childhood and teen years that did not get used up or dried up. At any given moment, I could leap into a work of virtually any medium that warrants its own isle at any art supply store. There are even baskets and drawers full of everything for embroidery, needlepoint, Russian punch, and tatting going back to age 8. Ironically, I suck at knitting and crochet unless it's with metal.
My mom didn't spend a lot on babysitters when I was a kid. She just enrolled me in whatever craft classes I wanted that she could afford and dropped me off on her way back to work. If it was a craft craze in the 70's, I took a class in it, all but how to make doll furniture with tin cans. "But, MOM(!), you get to curl metal strips into spirals!!!" "No, you're only 10, and I'm afraid you'll cut yourself and have to go to the ER."
Well, now I understand all too well the desire to avoid at all costs needing to take a kid to the ER, but despite being uninterested in doll furniture as an end result, I never got over wanting to curl up tin can strips into spirals, and so here I am, doing the more refined version for a living... and speaking of, must get back. It is so tempting to play with squishes of color, but there's a new series of earrings, bracelets, and pendants brewing that are currently only bits of metal awaiting fire.
9:34 PM
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