I love it when old lessons reappear…sort of a cosmic hopscotch. You think you’ve learned it and yet here you are repeating it.
My current repeat lesson is I choose to not create work for exhibit based on someone else’s specifications. In other words I want to design what I want to design. If my finished work fits a theme or size then I may consider it for said exhibition but to create specifically for an exhibition…nah!
This creating work for a theme and specific size can be mind-numbing. Last spring I decided never again and then in December said well maybe just this once! So I have been laboring for the past few weeks on two identical landscape pieces for a juried exhibit next month. The challenge has been primarily about perspective and also making the pieces identical in design.
After fighting with trees in the background for several days I decided to just stitch instead of fusing them. Then I fought with grapevines for days and just yesterday had the conversation with friend Franki Kohler revisiting that promise we both had made to ourselves about not creating ‘exhibit specific’ work! I said I would give this piece one last gasp and if it didn’t work well then I was finished with it. So there…
Well glory be…it worked! Now I am rejuvenated and on to the 2nd piece determined to duplicate the grapevines. I remain optimistic that I can pull this off while recalibrating that promise to myself to rethink before creating work specific to exhibit.
And my procrastination excuse to avoid working on this is I have been knee deep in family genealogy. What started out as simply research for an upcoming project became an obsession. Genealogy has never really appealed to me and yet it is intriguing and like working a giant puzzle. Ever since I was a wee one I have loved puzzle solving. My art work involves puzzle solving so it seems only natural that I would love this genealogy work as well. I plan to finish it up shortly and get on with other things although I do wonder if one is ever truly done with their family tree.
I swore off the themed and sized exhibits after Radical Elements. In a way, there is a challenge to be met, but in another way it is a diversion from one’s personal work. This year is dedicated to my own vision and to not being show-centric.
Absolutely Martha!
Wow, that’s really interesting to me. I’m working on something for an entry that specified 7X10, and I did not like having to try to make something a specific size. I thought the same as Martha said “a challenge to be met” and also a learning opportunity. But I was still thinking, “I do not enjoy this.” So of course, its comforting to hear others feel the same as I do.