Monday, October 5, 2009 – 10:58 pm
I’m guessing most of you following this blog create artwork for a specific end product: a painting to hang on a wall, or a sculpture; maybe a book or poem for publication; music to put on a CD and so on. What if you were to envision a different context for your work to exist in? Would that give you additional ideas to pursue?
What if you were to create a painting intended to be a book cover, or a poem that became a song? My point is that I often have been stuck on the thought that what I produce eventually gets framed and hung on a wall, but now as I create work to be seen as animation (a project that is actually in the works), elements in my work previously seen as static can be thought of as transient and moving. This opens up the visual possibilities and I’m thinking that this could do the same for other types of art. I also think that it needn’t be an actual alternative project. Make one up. What sort of art would you create for an imagined CD package? Maybe you could even create the music and lyrics for it!
Visualizing a bigger context for what you’re creating may take you to some far-away exotic territory.
Monday, September 28, 2009 – 11:56 pm
One thing that’s really interesting about a blog to me is its serial quality. In my artwork, there are very few images that I’ve done that aren’t part of a series. Creating a pretext for a large (or small) body of work, can be a great assist in keeping the creative process alive. In a current movie, a woman decides to prepare 400+ recipes in 365 days. It’s a great motivator, and when ideas and inspiration run short, a simple recommitment to the original goal will overcome the creative block.
In my current series The Weekly Press, I committed to completing 1000 images. There was no time frame set, but the shear quantity meant that I would be with it for a while. I wanted to have a lot of elbow room to explore new ideas and new techniques. What happened was that just about a third of the way through, I started seeing patterns that I wasn’t aware of from piece to piece. This information gave me ideas for more images: work with what I’ve been avoiding.
Then another breakthrough at just about midway point: it dawned on me that I was creating the raw material for a time-based artwork. Now I’m working with images with more intention to accentuate the connectedness that they didn’t always have before.
So, creating a series for yourself to work on will guarantee a creative streak. Do a series of cloud drawings, or all pink images. Do one a day for a month and see what happens. If you watch yourself closely, one idea will turn into ten.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009 – 12:23 am
A great inspiration to me has always been what other artists are doing. Not just visual artists, but also musicians, writers, film makers, designers. I took photos this week on the coast, and I was inspired by another photographer whose recent shots of surf were very fresh in my mind. I was inspired to find my own new approach to photographing waves.
On a recent trip to Powell’s Books in Portland, I came away with a handful of books that had some really great artwork in them. It’s fun and inspiring to get into other people’s heads (as far as you can safely do that) to see if there might be new approaches to your own work in it. It might come from unlikely places too. Look into areas that you normally don’t go. I found one book of women graffiti artist that really knocked me out, and a book of web designs that were beautiful artworks in and of themselves (actually in many cases, the artwork was better than the architecture of the site).
I used to be concerned about “copying” others, but now mostly find that if I’m really clear about what it is in other’s work that I’m attracted to, there is a way to incorporate it into my own, giving my work a new, fresh look.