Updated: Jan 23, 2019
Your creative, you want to be an artist? Does anyone know what it's like? We struggle with all kinds of existential questions. Why do we do what we do (besides for the love of it), how we do what we do. Who want's to buy what we do, or do we even care anyone does? Since college I've asked myself these questions. This isn't one of those blogs where i'm searching (hopefully you're not either) to dispense some wisdom I've learned from being an artist. There's for more accomplished souls than myself. This is about sitting on the bubble between worlds. Sometimes one has to sit back and examine the tricks life plays on you, ask yourself, how did I fall for that one? The Struggle is I've met a lot of amazing creatives, there's always one thing in common, through out all disciplines of art. The struggle to stay fresh, finding inspiration, or motivation to keep making dope art. Not being creative, that's innate, but creating art in a state of deep exploration and experimentation. Have you ever looked at something and understood exactly where that person was when they made it? That's what this blog is about, a place where I could talk about those thoughts. Frustration, inspiration & maintaining the high. What is life like making art, what are the struggles vacillating between full time and part time art life. Being a creative & how we fit in the regular world. You ask yourself existential questions, there's fear, there's elation, oh and than the bitter pill you have to swallow when something you made finds a home. I'm an ephemeral artist, pretty much everything I've ever made doesn't exist anymore. About ten years ago I went to a lecture by Jean Claude & Christo. They've always existed by not existing, I already knew that part of their story, but there was something Christo said in response to a pretty common question that stuck with me. He was asked (like he had been a million times) how he feels when his art is gone. His response was something along these lines: I am in love with the story of once upon a time. His art exists in the stories people tell about what they remember, how they felt, the emotive function of art. I quit telling that story because I fell in love with it. The back and forth struggle I was having, the one where you wrestle with the question of why am I doing what i'm doing. when I fell in love with the idea of once upon a time that question was a lot easier to answer. Even if you love it, the world makes you doubt yourself, maybe it even makes you doubt your art, or worse yet your artistic ability. Maybe you're not bursting on to the scene, a scene, maybe you hate the scene. Maybe it's just a new project. It's almost done, you've never worked with these materials before and you can see it coming to life. Either way, you're always going to be looking forward to the next festival, the next commission, the next party where all your other art friends will be. Really, isn't that what this is about? Maybe it's about the process, and maybe it should be. Process and evaluation, deconstruction and recreations. It's part of the art making experience you can't remove yourself from. That's the struggle, and that's what this blog is about, the struggle of keeping the eye on the prize, picking the metaphor that works. Maybe that's too vague, but that is the magic of prose isn't it? Words become symbols of what we want life to be, just like art. Art becomes me (us).