From my critique yesterday afternoon:
"These pieces read like a photograph."
"It's de-mystified. It's just a thing that I can move."
"Do you think it's possible that your pieces are too beautiful, and therefore I cannot even approach them?"
"You've gone to great lengths to create an environment for us to see your work, and now this environment too has become part of your work."
"In the end, you win. You have all different sorts of ways to win."
Can a piece of work be "too beautiful" that it is unapproachable? Can a piece of work be so visually stunning that its beauty masks its content? Is there even such a thing as being "too beautiful"? This strikes me as absurd-- that something can possess so much aesthetic power that it repels you, that somehow, its visual beauty overpowers its truth and distracts you from finding its core. What this means is that you would have to look longer into it-- penetrate its surface-- in order to find its meaning.
In my working process, I never think about beauty in an intentional manner; it is never planned nor inserted into my work, but it emerges (for me) as an extension of time. The more silent the piece, the longer I gaze. The longer I gaze, the more I see. Maybe we expect to understand something right away, and maybe that is why art often comes in the form of a statement. Some works are easily accessible because their statement is so clear. I envy the artist that can produce that type of work, because I can't. When I am working on these pieces, I am so incredibly lost in the work. I am hoping to give meaning to a material. When I wrap the broken vessels, the only thought in my head is the pull of the string against the tip of my right index finger. I set simple rules for how to wrap them, and follow these rules consistently, but never without constantly questioning them. When I drill into my vessels, the only thing I see is the tip of the tool sliding into the material. I feel friction and resistance. I notice how the light hits the surface. I try to remember exactly how that friction felt, where I will meet resistance again, and then I start to drill some more. If that finished piece can carry that same contemplative dialogue with the viewer, I am getting somewhere...
"These pieces read like a photograph."
"It's de-mystified. It's just a thing that I can move."
"Do you think it's possible that your pieces are too beautiful, and therefore I cannot even approach them?"
"You've gone to great lengths to create an environment for us to see your work, and now this environment too has become part of your work."
"In the end, you win. You have all different sorts of ways to win."
Can a piece of work be "too beautiful" that it is unapproachable? Can a piece of work be so visually stunning that its beauty masks its content? Is there even such a thing as being "too beautiful"? This strikes me as absurd-- that something can possess so much aesthetic power that it repels you, that somehow, its visual beauty overpowers its truth and distracts you from finding its core. What this means is that you would have to look longer into it-- penetrate its surface-- in order to find its meaning.
In my working process, I never think about beauty in an intentional manner; it is never planned nor inserted into my work, but it emerges (for me) as an extension of time. The more silent the piece, the longer I gaze. The longer I gaze, the more I see. Maybe we expect to understand something right away, and maybe that is why art often comes in the form of a statement. Some works are easily accessible because their statement is so clear. I envy the artist that can produce that type of work, because I can't. When I am working on these pieces, I am so incredibly lost in the work. I am hoping to give meaning to a material. When I wrap the broken vessels, the only thought in my head is the pull of the string against the tip of my right index finger. I set simple rules for how to wrap them, and follow these rules consistently, but never without constantly questioning them. When I drill into my vessels, the only thing I see is the tip of the tool sliding into the material. I feel friction and resistance. I notice how the light hits the surface. I try to remember exactly how that friction felt, where I will meet resistance again, and then I start to drill some more. If that finished piece can carry that same contemplative dialogue with the viewer, I am getting somewhere...
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