watch the long light fall
I have begun re-reading Art and Fear, and it is very good. “The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars,” authors Ted Orland and David Bayles remind me when I pick up the book. So even though I fear my next project will be a failure, it will serve some purpose in propelling me towards the next project, the next skill learned and mastered. The authors also challenge me with this thought: “What separates artists from ex-artists is that those who challenge their fears continue; those who don’t, quit.” It is as simple as that. If I want to be an artist, I only have to keep making art.
This is a similar dictum to the one Crystal Downing, an English professor here, states firmly: “Writers write.” To call yourself a writer you must merely write. That is deceptively easy; although I say “merely,” I agree with Gene Fowler, who says, “Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”
So why do we keep making art even though there’s fear associated with our vocation, even though it is not easy in the least? I keep asking myself that. I’ve been asking myself that for the last four years. I think, as a senior, I might have the smallest glimmer of an answer about why many artists, poets, or writers find it worthwhile.
Making art is a way through which we engage in and with the world on a whole different dimension from regular life. To really observe an object is to be filled with delight in it, to come to love it in some way. So making art keeps us full of vitality, observing the world and falling in love with it. The process of making art is sometimes pleasant and sometimes frustrating, but it always forces us to see the world in a way that enriches us.
There are a lot of authors (and some of my professors here) who’ve said the same thing, in one way or another, through this past year of study. So I’m not really being original in writing all this down. I’m also (hopefully) not entirely wrong.
I just know that creation necessitates removing blinders from the sides of my eyes. And when I stop to observe and meditate, creation flows naturally from that engagement with the outside world.
Filed under general, vitality, art rants | Comment (0)“i have woven a parachute out of everything broken” or “a definite independence.”
One of my art professors, Ted Prescott, talked in our senior show class on Monday about “breaking away.” Basically, he said he was interested in seeing work that we cared about. Even if that meant work that wasn’t approved of by the faculty. Eventually, every artist needs to break away to make what they care about. He even went so far as to say that breaking away is a healthy thing, a necessary step in the life of an artist.
It made me happy, because that’s been my whole year so far. I’ve spent it feeling combative when people try to direct my work in directions I don’t care about, I’ve answered back with definite negatives, and I’ve spent this year figuring out exactly what I do care about and setting my priorities accordingly.
Nobody can find your artistic path for you. It just isn’t possible. For that matter, nobody can teach you how to be organized or how to be successful at what you do. Every person has to find their own way around to whatever goal they really want. I feel like that’s why graduation is so hard for so many people. Finally they’re spinning their wheels, trying to get to their goal (or to even find their goal) but the path isn’t set out for them and nobody can really give them advice or help them to get there. It’s up to you.
Even with individual projects this is true. Nobody can tell you how to get to the end of a particular poem. You just have to work through the poem until you know what you want and what it needs. And then you have to work through several methods of getting to the goal you’ve determined. Then determine the one you like best or that best achieves your goals.
That’s one of the things I learned over J-term break when I researched Elizabeth Bishop. I went to Vassar College to see her manuscripts and poem drafts and some of her artwork. In her poem drafts, I discovered a mind struggling with breaking away, not just from conventions or prior training or the expectations of professors, but a mind struggling to break away from the previous drafts of a poem until it met her interior criteria for approval.
The least number of drafts I ever saw from Elizabeth Bishop was five, and in most cases the number was closer to 15. With every new draft of the poem she was breaking away from what she thought she had to write to find something that was more truly hers, that was more truly what she wanted or needed or meant to write.
I also learned that she was obsessive and painted with watercolors and has terrible handwriting.
But in any case, this week my manifesto consists of this: avoid histories. None of this “When I started the poem I intended. . . ” or “When I was five I liked to write. . .” or “This professor gave me this feedback and so this is how to piece got to be this way.” No. One must break away. One must say, “This is the object. This is what it means.” And then whatever audience happens to be near can critique as they like. But I reserve the right to politely ignore what they’re saying and do what I feel the pieces need.
Maybe that is erroneous thinking. But nobody can show me my own path, so it’s at least my own mistake. And that makes it a step further along the right path — my path — than anything else possibly could be.
Filed under general, the real world, vocation, art rants | Comment (0)“the glove compartment is inaccurately named, and everybody knows it”
I may be among the few, but I love rainy days. The gray sky and encroaching fog highlights the contrasting transmutation of leaves from green to gold, crimson, and burning orange. The tree trunks stand dark and austere and still as leaves bend and twitch to rain drops’ dictation.
Also, it is simply entertaining to see students scurrying from building to building, mostly unprepared. Because who stops to look out the window as we’re stumbling from bed to class way too early for good mental health?
“Don’t forget about delight,” says Bruce Cockburn in one of my favorite songs. OK, Bruce. No problem. Not on a day like today when ideal conditions for napping, reading, and hot chocolate exist.
My roommates are pretty much amazing (I think this will be a frequent refrain of my life). Katie was up in the studio all night this week because she had a graphic design project due. So Elena took her a real Italian cappucino to help keep her awake. Pretty much they are very thoughtful people. Living with them is a little more complicated now that we are not in Italy, but it’s good, and I’m glad for whatever time I get to spend with them outside of class craziness.
Like last night. Art majors working on Halloween costumes are the best thing EVER (I say this, of course, without bias). Every year, the Art League (an organization for promoting crazy fun and community for anyone involved in art classes and led by an intrepid and mysterious figure known only as Captain Art Major) holds a Halloween party, usually at Daniel Finch’s house. This year I rue the fact that I will not be able to attend, because the costumes I see are colorful, brilliant, and hysterical. Trust me, photographs will follow. But only once the unveiling has taken place.
Happy Friday. Let its absurdity, its rain, and its delight usher you with a rush into the weekend.
Quotes of the day: “I don’t think he really thought that Jesus loved E-town,”
“D as in dog. . . arf arf!”
– my world views professor
“oh, i don’t know what to do — about this dream and you.”
I had the most fascinating discussions recently with several people about poetry. Professor Perrin and I discussed Milosz’s idea of poems as thing-moments — devoted to and embodied in things, evoking, eternalizing, memorializing a certain moment in time. This, she says, is what I privilege and do naturally in my poems. “It’s a simple thing, but it’s beautiful. Don’t be afraid of that.” Lately Professor Perrin has been encouraging me not to be afraid; I should lay claim to more things in my poems, be more declarative and less obscure.
At the end of last week I decided that poetry and art are commitments to the concrete things, at base level, commitments to the concrete, detailed world. So now I am obsessed with the idea of art (any art) as a composite of thing-moments. Also at the end of last week, I decided in my head that when Dad said (once upon a time) that his art is about things that are right in nature, maybe he was talking about this love and awareness and commitment and devotion to the concrete physical world. I say that, but when I talk about love and devotion, I’m also talking about the way in which the physical embodies something - the way it locates the image of God himself.
And last night, after dinner, Liz said “I like the physical because when I move it means something. It’s not something symbolizing something else — it’s action.” That struck me as absurdly powerful. Art should mean something as an action, not simply as a symbol or allegory or metaphor. In itself as a physical object or motion it has meaning and worth, beyond what it symbolizes or means or implies.
And then I’m looking at my wall, and I see this picture that Greg gave me for my birthday. It says “Like a moment so overly abundant that it spills from your mind, through your hand, to the page.” And yes, that’s poetry. Thing-moments. A moment overly abundant and spilling from things through your hand to the page.
Also, I learned something today. Apparently addressing the beloved, an apostrophe to the beloved, began the lyric poetry tradition. I find it strange that any poem of mine is addressing the beloved in any sense — but I am pleased to find out that when my poems do address the beloved, Professor Perrin thinks that they are very strong.
This is what I love about critique: people tell me what I am doing, and then from there I can strengthen it to go where I want it to go. Otherwise I find it impossible to step outside my head and understand what is weak and what is strong. But I am learning, through critiques, to ask the questions that may tell me the answers when I am alone and trying to still work. What is at stake in this poem? That is my primary question, the one she is always asking me.
Well. I am not always sure, but I will do my best to find out. But now I kind of wonder. What is at stake in this blog?
Let me know if you find out.
Filed under general, reflections, literary reflections, art rants, object-oriented-ness, thing-moments | Comment (0)and if i knew the answers, i would tell you now
Chris Fennell recently came to Messiah College to install a sculpture outside Boyer Hall. Known for his wooden waves, doorways, and of course his bicycle cyclone, Chris Fennell created this on the terrace outside Howe Atrium.
I love this sculpture. When Chris spoke to our senior art seminar class, he mentioned that it was inspired by looking at a pine cone. Now, it is not a new idea to take something small which gives you awe and make it large in order to share that awe with someone else. But to also make it a doorway? That, to me, is intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying. Chris calls this particular sculpture “Tree Passage.” In walking through it and looking upward at the pattern of wood and sky, I fell in love with the idea of awe as a passageway.
Even more than that, because it is poised on the top of a slope, leading between the natural world (the tree-covered slope leading down to Climenhaga) and the educational world (Boyer), I fell in love with the idea of awe as a passageway from the concrete and natural into the intellectual and back again. I can really only speak for myslf as an artist, but I know that my visual vocabulary is natural, and it is in an effort to more skillfully understand and articulate this natural, concrete visual vocabulary that I move into the academic/intellectual realm. And it is what I learn in the intellectual realm that sends me back into the natural world to see things again, see them new, and re-articulate, to actually make new objects couched in the concrete but enriched by the intellectual.
So now, in my head, I am seeing awe as a balancing point between the academic and the concrete, the thinking and the making. And I am seeing this balancing point as a doorway, in fact, this sculpture of Chis Fennell’s.
I feel in need of a balancing point between the intellectual and the making of things. Some portion of me, let’s call it the maker part of my personality, rejects attempts to label or pick apart a piece of work to understand why it is an emotional trigger for a viewer or reader. It especially rejects attempts to contextualize a work in terms of the creator’s personal lives or historical/social context. It wants simply to let the piece be what it is, enjoyed or not by viewers, on a level separate from explication or readings-into. Yet another part of me delights in explicating texts (whether visual or verbal) and understanding on every possible level its meanings, social context, and world-view leanings.
I am very postmodern, and perhaps this leads to my confusion. My response to “Tree Passage” could be nothing like what Chris Fennell intended, but I would still believe my interpretation is merited according to the observable formal content of the work. But as I am writing this, I am also telling myself that it is unfair and inadequate (maybe even silly?) to intellectualize such a beautiful object.
But maybe awe is, after all, a passageway or balancing point between these two impulses (the impulse to make and the impulse to intellectualize). Plain and simply put, if an intellectual understanding of the work heightens the awe with which we approach the work or the world post-viewing of the work, then it is worthwhile. And if it does not, then intellectualism is inadequate and should be abandoned in this case. Traditional wisdom, at least what I have encountered in art history classes, is that if a work cannot be aided by intellectual discussion, it is the work which is lacking. I utterly reject that. A piece can be beautiful and strong and amazing and simply too internal for us to intellectualize, but that does not lessen its worth as visual art, at least not in my mind. In my mind, it is the application of the intellectual which is often at fault.
Maybe this is a conclusion someone else reached a lot time ago. But I am just getting around to it. But I guess since I am just now being a senior in college, I have an excuse for only starting to formulate some of these thinkings now. = )
Filed under general, photography, art rants | Comments (2)