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.
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 …