"Try to describe your work as a series of *beautiful actions* not just as a single noun."
When I think of your work, I see you: intending, selecting, gleaning, imagining, shaping, smoothing, feeling, relaxing, pondering, sharing... I wonder what comes to mind for you?
“a series of beautiful actions” - I love that so much! i think that encapsulates so much so poignantly.
I think what comes to mind most to be is wondering, questioning, exploring, discovering, experimenting, iterating. It’s always a meticulously craft ‘if this, then that’ endeavor, in which the ‘if this’ is always changing to sure that the ‘then that’ is always a mystery.
It's not easy to let go of the outcome and embrace the practice itself--resting in the tension of not knowing. The mystery of it. I guess that's what I love when I see your newsletter pop up on my feed--the feeling of curiosity for what you might share this time. Always new.
Thank you Ann! It’s that exact feeling that keeps me coming back to my work bench, back to collaging, again and again and again. I never tired of seeing what might surprise me today.
Thanks Martin! Bounds toward the indistinct is an interesting one for me. It came together in a way I could have never anticipated, and I’m not sure I could have ever envisioned.
Thanks so much! It’s been interesting to see how much baggage and how many expectations I have around that word. i think that’s why its been so helpful for me to lean away from using it when I think about myself and what I do.
Exactly! That’s been on my mind a lot lately. No matter how still or static something seems, if you look close enough, for long enough, you’ll discover that everything is an unfolding, the only real question is the scale and pace at which it unfolds.
But… I also think that artist doesn’t have to be loaded with anything. All it really says is “I make art”. And so it’s just a banal descriptor for an action. The debate around who is an artist, singer, photographer, designer, chef, etc. are more about outdated class distinctions and who or the lack of it. If artist feels off for you that’s cool but you’ll remain one to many people regardless.
It's an interesting paradox, isn't it? That names and labels can be at once so irrelevant and inconsequential and yet so potent, portent, and heavy laden. As I've been working with my therapist to develop better strategies for managing clinical depression I'm continuing to discover the immense role that expectations play in the way in engage with myself and teh world. It's not just the things I think about, but the how I think about them. The ways I think that they should be. A piece of writing like this is little more than my attempt to hold microphone to the monologue that going on inside me. Wondering out loud what it would mean to let go of my ideas surrounding what art is, what artists are, and what is they do. in that regard, for me its not so much about the distinctions or the descriptors, but how they effect what it is that I do. And I can't help but notice, that when I stop thinking of myself as an artist, and instead see myself only as someone who makes things, I feel better and the work gets better too.
I love the idea of being generalist. I appreciate the open-endedness. For me, however, I’m just never as general I’d like to be. My creative process is multifaceted, and circuitous. It involves a lot of moving pieces but it always come to a very specific focus of concentration I may move paint around paper. I may go out and take photos. I might play with graphic elements. But I’m not a painter, a photographer, or a designer. I explore these varying avenues only as a means of generating source material to produce more varying collages. As much I’d like to be a generalist, i really only do one thing, lol.
My interpretation of being a generalist doesn’t imply having to do everything and certainly not having any particular level of skill at a wide set of things. To me a generalist is just someone with a diverse curiosity and an associated diversity of output. You would likely fit my definition but that’s also not my place to say.
I definitely like your definition. Strangely enough, I think my inputs are more diverse than my outputs. I always make collages, but I'm always playing with the materials I use to make them. I suppose that's where my 'diverse curiosity' comes in.
I figure our outputs as makers will be specific and diverse in their own / our own timelines. I go through phases where I make things that all *look* like parts of the same system/series and then I switch. I call the majority of what I do “drawing” even though it often involves lots of painting, collage, and other media and methods.
Love that! Definitely relate. My output is always collage. But I’m starting to spend lots of time and energy on creating the source material for the input of the collage making process.
Thanks Brian! It’s funny that the absence of challenge was actually a bit of challenge, I like contradiction, lol. I kept feeling like something was missing, but the overall structure felt right to me. So I just kept adding little additions hoping to resolve a tension that wouldn’t release. in the end i just had to let it be, to let the tenseness breathe.
Duane, I wish I could remember where I read this:
"Try to describe your work as a series of *beautiful actions* not just as a single noun."
When I think of your work, I see you: intending, selecting, gleaning, imagining, shaping, smoothing, feeling, relaxing, pondering, sharing... I wonder what comes to mind for you?
“a series of beautiful actions” - I love that so much! i think that encapsulates so much so poignantly.
I think what comes to mind most to be is wondering, questioning, exploring, discovering, experimenting, iterating. It’s always a meticulously craft ‘if this, then that’ endeavor, in which the ‘if this’ is always changing to sure that the ‘then that’ is always a mystery.
It's not easy to let go of the outcome and embrace the practice itself--resting in the tension of not knowing. The mystery of it. I guess that's what I love when I see your newsletter pop up on my feed--the feeling of curiosity for what you might share this time. Always new.
Thank you Ann! It’s that exact feeling that keeps me coming back to my work bench, back to collaging, again and again and again. I never tired of seeing what might surprise me today.
Y ese <<simplemente hacer cosas>> me parece más que suficiente, incluso, extraordinario.
Elev(ator).
Much appreciated.
Maker and creator, that’s who you are! Titles or categories aren’t really important. The process of creating and making is what matters most.
Precisely! Well said!
bounds toward the indistinct - This was the most distinct piece for me. 😅
the absence of challenge - ❤️💚❤️
Thanks Martin! Bounds toward the indistinct is an interesting one for me. It came together in a way I could have never anticipated, and I’m not sure I could have ever envisioned.
As is so often the case!
Knowing what you are and what you want or want to do is so much more important than labeling it. This should make a lot of us think.
Well said! Actions over semantics.
Who are you? You’re an artist.
Thanks so much! It’s been interesting to see how much baggage and how many expectations I have around that word. i think that’s why its been so helpful for me to lean away from using it when I think about myself and what I do.
But you are. Own it.
Perhaps I should. I’m far better at owning my processes than the pronouncements for what they’re named. It’s a work in progress I suppose.
Like Austin Kleon says: Forget the noun, do the verb.
Exactly! That’s been on my mind a lot lately. No matter how still or static something seems, if you look close enough, for long enough, you’ll discover that everything is an unfolding, the only real question is the scale and pace at which it unfolds.
But… I also think that artist doesn’t have to be loaded with anything. All it really says is “I make art”. And so it’s just a banal descriptor for an action. The debate around who is an artist, singer, photographer, designer, chef, etc. are more about outdated class distinctions and who or the lack of it. If artist feels off for you that’s cool but you’ll remain one to many people regardless.
It's an interesting paradox, isn't it? That names and labels can be at once so irrelevant and inconsequential and yet so potent, portent, and heavy laden. As I've been working with my therapist to develop better strategies for managing clinical depression I'm continuing to discover the immense role that expectations play in the way in engage with myself and teh world. It's not just the things I think about, but the how I think about them. The ways I think that they should be. A piece of writing like this is little more than my attempt to hold microphone to the monologue that going on inside me. Wondering out loud what it would mean to let go of my ideas surrounding what art is, what artists are, and what is they do. in that regard, for me its not so much about the distinctions or the descriptors, but how they effect what it is that I do. And I can't help but notice, that when I stop thinking of myself as an artist, and instead see myself only as someone who makes things, I feel better and the work gets better too.
I agree that the qualifying of creative action is fraught. And the debates between the merits of qualifiers like art vs craft are mostly pointless.
The only title I really respond to for myself is Generalist because it says something about also doesn’t narrow.
I love the idea of being generalist. I appreciate the open-endedness. For me, however, I’m just never as general I’d like to be. My creative process is multifaceted, and circuitous. It involves a lot of moving pieces but it always come to a very specific focus of concentration I may move paint around paper. I may go out and take photos. I might play with graphic elements. But I’m not a painter, a photographer, or a designer. I explore these varying avenues only as a means of generating source material to produce more varying collages. As much I’d like to be a generalist, i really only do one thing, lol.
My interpretation of being a generalist doesn’t imply having to do everything and certainly not having any particular level of skill at a wide set of things. To me a generalist is just someone with a diverse curiosity and an associated diversity of output. You would likely fit my definition but that’s also not my place to say.
I definitely like your definition. Strangely enough, I think my inputs are more diverse than my outputs. I always make collages, but I'm always playing with the materials I use to make them. I suppose that's where my 'diverse curiosity' comes in.
I figure our outputs as makers will be specific and diverse in their own / our own timelines. I go through phases where I make things that all *look* like parts of the same system/series and then I switch. I call the majority of what I do “drawing” even though it often involves lots of painting, collage, and other media and methods.
Love that! Definitely relate. My output is always collage. But I’m starting to spend lots of time and energy on creating the source material for the input of the collage making process.
The absence of challenge 💫. Something about the color use with so much open. Love it.
Thanks Brian! It’s funny that the absence of challenge was actually a bit of challenge, I like contradiction, lol. I kept feeling like something was missing, but the overall structure felt right to me. So I just kept adding little additions hoping to resolve a tension that wouldn’t release. in the end i just had to let it be, to let the tenseness breathe.
Naming vs experiencing. Well said!
Succinctly put! Much appreciated!