Mud vs Mud: The Messy Creative Process
The snow is melting. I didn’t forget that I’d started a blog. I thought of it constantly and didn’t add a post to it. I made things instead. I’ve been working through things. Trying to figure out what to do about what—the paintings and other pieces, things made of sticks and dirt.
On the surface, my failure to blog didn’t help the plan—the part of the plan that hinges on taking consistent actions, that is—the idea that taking certain consistent actions will amount to, well, a realizing a variety of goals, none of which will matter much if what I’m putting in the soup is mud, which isn’t always a bad idea either. If I worked with mud consistently, I would know and know for sure what, if anything, I could or would make of it.
Mixing It Up: It’s My Art.
I’m writing about this one from the Phoenix airport. Speaking of greatness (a few posts ago), I’m not a great travel agent—I thought I was flying to Denver and told a friend in Denver that I was going to be in Denver but to change planes so, sorry, I won’t see him this time, but soon, soon. We can figure this out; surely we can—now we can because I finished a draft of that book I’ve been writing—it’s bad, really bad, like if I-found-a-skeleton-in-the-woods-and-all-the-bones-were-badly-broken bad, but I did it. I found the story. It’s all there. All the broken bones are sorted and stashed in “like kinds” buckets—leg bones, arm bones, spine, fractured skull pieces; each in their bucket. Now I can write it and hang out with people. I’m not lost in the woods anymore. I mean, yeah. I’m addicted to being lost in the creative process, and I want to drop this story for another yet unwritten one, but yeah. No. I’m going to finish this one …
Rearranging Things and Invisible Things
I don’t want to write this, but I’m doing it anyway. Writing for structure, a container. To prove to myself that what’s wanted isn’t all of what’s needed. I’ll find a way to want it because I want the structure, the container, the invisible vessel—without it, I could drift forever, disappear into my curiosity, fall in love with nothing, and maybe that’s what I’ve already done. Maybe. I love the process—the sifting, sorting, finding and rearranging.
I’m talking about the creative process. I think that’s what I’m talking about. Or maybe it’s just what I’m saying—just commenting on something vague, the mountain behind the fog as if I hadn’t already seen it.
We Must Create: And Say It Again To Each Other Again
There are still tears in my eyes—tears of laughter. I just got off the phone with one of my Creative Fellows, a filmmaker from Los Angeles. His wife had already given him the *Greatest Advice of All Time, but he was calling his creative friends to vent anyway. Sometimes we need each other, us creatives. We need to say the same thing five thousand four hundred and fifty-nine times—to know it well enough for it to become something else. The dream is that it will expand—it will become the dream currently shadowed by fears, doubts, or stresses of whatever variety. I vented some, too.
Brother. We talked like brothers—fought over …
Great: The Greatest Abstraction So Far
Greatness as a painter? Or artist? It makes no sense to me. Okay, yeah, I get it. We define certain artists and people as great. It happens. Opinions accumulate. Things are noted. Other things are never seen. Which is the greatest?
The more I thought about it, the more “greatness” felt like an odd thing to measure—it has no shape and is slippery. What does “great” even mean? When I think of the artists I’ve known, the ones others might call great—highly successful in their work, some of them famous for it—I’ve seen some great performances and shows and witnessed a fluffed-up ego or two. But I’ve never heard one artist say that they think they’re great—
In the Woods: Collaborating With Dirt and Snow. It’s time.
I'm in the woods—and the kitchen. Hello from the table where I sit with a view of the Pike Forest. I can almost see the exact spot where two of my canvases are buried in the snow and ice.
One thing led to another. Months ago, I was working on the ground, feeling the shapes of the earth beneath me and the canvas, outlining them with a soft pastel—until the season changed. It snowed. I got the urge to bury the paintings. They'd already been outside for months. For whatever reason—not knowing what to do, curiosity, attempted surrender, a deep desire for change, grief—I had decided to let things (wind, rain, dirt, fallen branches) influence my work …