So it’s been a busy couple weeks since our previous chat. On the outside things have moved slowly- the honeybees are getting busy with pollen collection, the koi are awake and developing their appetite. Last week I assembled the new hive that P gave me for Christmas, and used it to split the original colony into two. Now we wait a month and see if a new queen is in and laying. It’s a slow-moving process looking in, but more frenetic and focused looking out. It’s a perspective on the cycle of life that often eludes me when I’m in the middle of my own creative machinations.
I made a decision in consultation with P to take my work directly to the people. I have three or four opportunities this summer to exhibit my stuff in organized art fairs. I’ll have some original gelatin transfers for sale, some prints in a variety of sizes, and a couple small options like notecards. I go into it with no genuine expectations beyond meeting some nice folk and getting much needed feedback on my stuff.
My inventory of framed pieces has been accumulating exponentially over the last couple months, and the stack was beginning to create a noticeable decrease in the square footage of the studio. I keep a few pieces on the wall for reference and study but the rest were becoming a tripping hazard. So the decision was made to take them out into the world and introduce them to the people of earth. The curious thing about making this decision was that just after I came a cross an article about “creative clutter”- not the tools and media of the trade scattered about the working studio space, but the finished work that inevitably finds itself in a purgatorial condition, living simultaneously in both a physical state and still in the artist’s creative consciousness, marking the past while projecting their psychic influence on the future. So I covered the majority of them and put them in short-term storage.
The Japanese have a symbol called Ensō, a brush-drawn circular path that, like most things Japanese, has a multitude of meanings, most notably enlightenment, elegance, the universe, and the beauty of imperfection. The symbol itself is not meant to be a circle without end, but a circular path with two distinctly dissimilar ends, touching and continuing without really closing. Conversing, if you will. Its a lovely reference, and I find it quite reassuring as I continue to see how far I can go along my current path. So much associated with creating can become disorienting. It demands that one step away from time to time, to see where the path has taken us and to touch the past to reorient, then move on.
Putting the finished work away for now was a good thing. At least twice in the last six weeks I’ve come to a not well thought out conclusion that my still life focus had run its course, and that continuing on could only create derivative work. I was wrong. Setting the older work aside helped give clarity. Walking the path again brought me to the same place creatively but a different location mentally and emotionally, and with a wholly new perspective moving forward.
So I find myself excited, if not a bit nervous, about the summer. Excited to be trying this new adventure. Excited to show my work out loud. Excited to spend a day in conversation or contemplation. Maybe make some new friends and maybe see some old friends. Its just another turn of the path..