#2: Process

There are many ways to make a piece of art. Some artists heavily consider the meaning, some consider the viewer, some consider how they’ll make the sale. You can truly get lost in consideration sauce. My head got so spun around post grad school that I still consider a lobotomy. Figuring out why you’re making the damn art can be way more daunting than making the art itself.

I’ve found myself often paralyzed by the ‘why’. I think back to critiques in art school, when I felt like a fraud for making something that I had yet to find the meaning for. How could this painting, birthed from my loins, possibly be void of relevance?! Granted, the painting in question was a portrait of Samuel L Jackson as Jules from Pulp Fiction. I painted it because *duh* he’s so badass and then I felt like I got punched in the guts when my professor told me it looked like Etsy art. The ‘why’ distinguishes the crafters from the fine artists.

By grad school, I got so deep in the ~meaning~ of my work, as a part of my thesis show, I put 69 plaster sculptures of my vulva on the gallery wall. Thinking back, perhaps this was an act of rebellion against my professors. Or perhaps they pushed me hard enough that I made some of my best work. Honestly though, if you didn’t put your pussy on the wall in grad school, did you even go?

I am proud of that show, but perhaps the most important takeaway from that time of art making for me was the process. At the time, I was making a shit ton of small collages. I spent hours and hours cutting out tiny shapes and glueing them into place. I must have made 100s of collages, some of them sucked, but some of them were really good (I’ll speak more on how making lots of work, however shitty, is essential to getting to the good stuff another time). It’s only now, upon reflection, that I realize how much I’m in love with the act of art making itself.

My process typically involves the consumption of marijuana. I tried making work while drinking alcohol once and I literally couldn’t see what I was doing. I don’t know how how Ernest Hemingway ever finished anything. I’m a stoner at heart. It’s not essential to my art making but helps get me in the zone. I also love a good cup of tea, the presence of my dog, and depending on the day, it’s a toss up between an audiobook or James Blake.

I love making work intuitively. Mindlessly even. It’s an act of meditation. A trance. I can spend hours soaked up in the tiniest of details. It’s almost as if I become witness to the work unfolding rather than the creator of the work itself. I feel so corny as I write this, and I feel an urge to hit backspace, but just as I bared my vulva on the wall I shall bare my soul. I’m by no means the first, nor the last, to relish in the escapism of creating art. But I think how we feel in the act of making should hold just as much importance, if not more, than the ‘why’.

There are a million ways to make art, a million considerations, a million reasons to doubt what the fuck you’re doing. My challenge to you is to try and focus on the act of creation itself. Tune out the voices and let the energy of the cosmos flow through your fingertips. You are creativity embodied.