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 …
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—