A few months back someone referred to me as an artist. I paused, perhaps a little surprised. But I did not object. It was, in fact, an idea I had been toying with for quite some time. But as is typical for me, nothing is ever simple. Increasingly I think and dream about creating daily. Increasingly I think about art, about craft, about living, and about the way, the act of living itself can be about art, can be art itself.
But, me? An artist?
I am not asking for affirmation, or denial here. I am simply exploring an idea. We all have a say in how we define ourselves, and at least partially in how the wold defines us. I love math but I am not a mathematician. I do not think like a scientist. I never have and I never will. I have been a businessperson, and I have strong organization and managerial skills, but they are only a small part of how I define myself. I struggled with this when I was younger, but not so much anymore. I suppose I could say I am a writer. At one point I did, but the idea didn't mesh well in my mind. I do write, although I've never published a book, in fact I've never had the desire. But there are tons of writers of all stripes. And yet, I have been blogging consistently for 14 years. I've published nearly 2300 blog posts, and although I've never tried to build an audience, to stick to a theme, or even particularly cared about how many people read what I write, those assorted mutterings have garnered over a million page views. Tiny. Really tiny. But still there, a statistic, in a world that is obsessed with measurements and statistics. But I write because it is a part of how I see the world, it is part, but only a part of the act of creation.
When I was in California a few weeks ago, one of the places the group went was the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art. I was entranced with this small space, particularly taken with the work of a couple of the artists but one of the things that has really remained in my head, and my dreams, was the art produced by local schoolchildren. There were truly amazing things there, and I don't believe I was the only one who felt this way. But what particularly struck me is that I think that art, the need to create, the need to compress and express something about life that is intangible in a tangible way is part of human nature. Art. Music. Creation. The yearning for meaning. These are the things that make us human. They are a part of all of us, although that is not to say we are all musicians, artists, philosophers, etc. But perhaps also, we don't allow ourselves to flourish.
Mark Rothko said "A painting is not a picture of an experience. It is an experience." I love this statement because it gets right at the heart of something elemental and essential. It also reminds me that although we classify and judge, it is the experience itself, the experience felt, that makes art important. We can judge. But experience itself is true. An artist translates something ephemeral into something tangible. We humans are complex beings, and we all express and experience and feel in different ways. Each and every experience is true. Just because something speaks to you, and speaks deeply, does not mean that it will speak to me. We like to judge things, even art. And I am not saying there are not geniuses, people who create things that speak to millions and generations. Rothko was one of those geniuses. But art isn't about being Mark Rothko, or even about selling or publishing or whatever. It is a way of looking at the world, of experiencing it, and a compulsion to start that conversation and share that experience
But back to my own question. The person who called me an artist was one of the contractors I am working with. This person has never seen anything I have made, at least not knowingly. I've worn clothing I've made but more about that later. My initial assumption was that I was being called an artist because I am creating a "studio" or a glorified sewing room, although I intend to do far more than sew, knit, and weave in that space. But I think it was more than that. I think that person sees my choices in redoing the house as something creative. And I am of the mind that life itself can be art, that the act of living can be a kind of creative dialog with time and space and the people we choose to share that time and space with. Can one be a artist of one's space? Of one's life? I don't know.
Artist. If I tell people I am an artist they assume I paint. Well, I actually dream about painting, although I have no training and no skill. Occasionally I modify that by saying I am a fiber artist. Which may be partially true, but to me it feels the same way saying I am a writer feels. It describes something I do but not who I am. I may be an artist who works with fiber. I may also simply be a craftsperson. I struggle with the lines between things. I always have. Lines are so arbitrary and I always want to merge them, to cross over and outside, to look at things differently.
On this subject, this quote, from Jean-Claude Ellena's The Diary of a Nose, resonates particularly strongly with my own thoughts:
Craftsman, artist: I have never managed to settle for one or other of these definitions for myself. I feel like a craftsman when I am completely wrapped up in making a perfume; I feel like an artist when I imagine the perfume I need to make. In fact, I constantly juggle with the two standpoints. If perfume is first and foremost a creation of the mind, it cannot actually be created without the mastery of true skill.
I feel like an artist when I imagine: I feel like an artist when I imagine making something, imagine creating an experience, a space to be experienced. I feel like an artist when I see that the way what we see as known or fixed really isn't fixed at all, it is just the framework we have designated for ourselves. I feel like an artist because I want to translate that feeling into an experience. I feel like a craftsman when I am making something. For a long time, most of my sewing or knitting was purely about need or want, about copying something I wanted and making it. It was mildly creative, perhaps. It was craft. Increasingly what I make starts with an idea in my head, or a material, or something I see on the street, and that somehow gets translated into something else, something I want to create: a taste, a garment, an embroidery, a picture. It is never about the thing itself but about the experience the thing helps create. But all of that also requires skill, and skill is craft. All artists are craftsmen. They have to be in order to become good at their art, to to create that dialogue that translates an idea into something that can be experienced by others. The trick is in being able to create the bridge from imagination to experience. One needs vision plus craft. Perhaps I am just an artist-in-training, an apprentice who has yet to learn what might suit me.
When I was in California with my museum group these questions of art and conversations and design were floating around, almost as if they were in the air we breathed. Or maybe that was the wine. One of the conversations was about the first piece in a room that drew you in, and whether or not that was the piece, if you were going to buy, that you would buy. For me, that is not the case. The first thing that captures my attention in a room draws me in yes. But that first thing is rarely the thing that sticks with me, the thing I am drawn into conversation with. Donald Hess, of the Hess Collection in Napa, buys art that speaks to him, that keeps him up at night. That is what has always drawn me....that sense of conversation. That is what I see as important, things not merely as things, but as a conversation, and meaning. I can't buy all or even most of the art that haunts my dreams. The pieces shown in this post are a few of those items though. All are my photos, from the Napa trip and my favorite museum in San Antonio, the McNay.
