Category: studio

Finally made it through photographing thirteen sketchbooks/journals worth of images. Of course I didn’t record everything because a lot of it is just not good, and for the most part eleven out of those thirteen were mostly writing and not drawings. It still ended up being a LOT of stuff. I have a set of slides from my last real quarter at KCAI in late 1990-early 91 which I need to have someone turn into digital format images (there are places that do that, right?). Was surprised to find that I have a continuous bridge of work from that time until now. Some of it just crappy sketches and bad emotive writing, but still. Some of it isn’t too bad. I’ve been doing art all along since then and I have material evidence of that. And that’s just the material evidence, not counting the performed art of ritual that took up 90% of my artmaking efforts for a number of years. Seeing the continuity of work over 20 years or so has been surprising to me since I’ve had to work pretty hard to contradict the strong persistent voice in my head that insisted for a great big chunk of that time that I’m not an artist, really.

So yeah, I am SO not allowed to get mopey about not being a real artist anymore. There never was any kind of “gap” or lost years in that sense.

Why is it such a big deal? Why did that nag me for so long, keep me talking about it over and over, and why didn’t I eventually just say “so what?” and move on? Because really and truly it’s what I am and I had to get right with that on all planes. Which took a while. Even though it was/is obvious to everyone else. It’s laughable, really. Good thing I have a very very persistent Muse that never listens much to what I think.

Now for the renaming, sizing, and thinking about what will be useful right away. I will spend two hours on that, take a gym break, and then spend the rest of the afternoon in the studio.

Dies Mercurius
Luna wn 88%v

Beginning the process of organizing 4 years worth of image files to extract content for the website. Am seeing just how poorly organized the files are! For the most part I have just been taking pictures and dumping them off into the computer, 95% of them into one big folder called “my pictures”, the rest into named folders. Note to self: don’t keep doing that. Yikes.

Thank goodness I’ve recorded most of the materials and dimensions information on lj, too. I’d hate to have to re-measure everything and make guesses about pieces I no longer have in possession.

First edit through the images & folders yields decent pictures of about 70 pieces & process shots, about 200-250 usable images in all. Ruled out some pieces that I know I don’t want pictures of up on the site (the ceramic work, etc.) and I still have PLENTY. I think I have a few of the Mark Woolley show over on photobucket that I erased from my machine for some reason that I should snag back too. Maybe. I do remember they were kind of crappy pictures.

All of a sudden it feels like I have really made a lot of stuff.

Now what sort of tree do I want to hang this on….

Dies Mars
Luna wn 97%v

the looming gremlin of mass production, continuity, and more road blocks I put in my own way

Have had a couple of days to get back into the groove by making a few simple layered metal pieces. My drawing sucks, but I’m doing it.

The metal pieces look like roughly-made mass produced elements stamped out of sheet and assembled. They look like pieces that machines could have made much better and more quickly, economically. It looks like I’m mimicking a machine process, poorly. Do Not Like.

For this kind of piece, most people cast multiples of the elements from perfected masters, but I find myself resistant to that idea. Why does carving something in wax and then multiplying it feel like “cheating”? Am I really that stuck on the one-of-a-kind thing? Yes, I think I am. And I think it could really hold me back.

I definitely have a fondness for the romantic singular event of making, and for the unique and unrepeatable object made by my hands in a segment of intensified time. It seems to come from my background in theater and dramatic ritual in general, initiation in particular. It also comes from living in a culture that places a high value on the individual and unique whether genuine or affected. Ironically enough, that same culture places little value on craft and is awash in ten thousand different (mostly mass-produced) options for any particular thing a person might want.

The fact is that, in comparison to casting 100 identical elements, a heavy steel die striking a piece powered by me dropping a hammer on it just feels better in my mind than casting it from a wax I carved.

The things I like about that that are all but invisible to anyone else:

-the metal is many times tougher, denser and durable for being impacted instead of cast. Its physical state, density is a direct result of its having been a receptacle of focused force.
-the process of the delivery of force that transfers the images/patterns is much more dramatic, more like some sigilizing processes. It is more immediately and easily choreographed to fit within ritual frameworks I’m familiar with
-the process is very old and very simple. The equipment required is very basic (once made & assembled) and can be used almost anywhere, Casting = many more steps and stages, much more required equipment (that I will have to travel to another location to use), brand new learning curve again.

HOWEVER…by not branching out, am I making a lot more unnecessary work for myself for a result that differs only minutely -assuming I raise my technical skill at the hand work to a high level- to most viewers?

The viewer who isn’t in on my particular views on the evocation of spirit out of matter will not see the difference (though I’d like them to). The viewer shouldn’t be concerned with me, anyway. They don’t need to see what goes on behind the curtain as the proof of the piece is in the experience of it. This is my problem with much conceptual art out there. One shouldn’t need to read a page of text to enjoy the art properly. One shouldn’t have needed to have read the book to enjoy the play- these things signal a failure on the part of the artist to do their job.

Should I stay with the time-consuming hand work, is communicating what is “special” about my work going to require that page of text  that I so very much dislike to explain, if what is special about it is hidden behind process? Should anyone care? I know I should, but will anyone else? (The problem becomes how to let the piece speak for itself, clearly, and yet still have it be close to my ideal).

What matters to me does not necessarily have to matter to anyone else. Ideally while making the work, I make no predictions on who might like it and who might be utterly indifferent to it. Easy to say hard to do. I’ll succeed if they have a live interaction with the piece(s). I might as well just concede that I’ll never have the view from the other side of the curtain as concerns my own work. I’ve already thought & written about it too much, about a perspective I will never have. My business is the how, and the opening of ways for these things to get into their forms.

Serving that thought, I do not want to inhibit the progress of the work by being too closed-minded about reproduction technology.

I still ought to take a casting course so that my choice is better informed. I feel so impatient though. Back to the exercises, then. Amd perhaps later have a conversation about material fertility & multiplication with one of my insect patrons.

Dies Mercurius
Luna wx 50%v
(M4)

yield: six crystals with clear crosses, approx 3mm x 3mm x 2mm (sea salt)
Gently separated the best large crossed crystals from masses of various sizes and clarity- six good ones. Re-dissolved the rest and re-set for slow evaporation in sunny spot on studio altar.

Dies Mercurius
Luna wn 21%v

Seem to be stuck on a question that I probably ought to just leave alone-
Who am I making this stuff for?

In fact, when listening to my own intuition regarding this question I get a clear “that’s a detour, don’t worry about it, get back to work”. So I won’t spend a whole lot of time on it here. Trying to answer that leads to all kinds of guesswork and mental calculation that isn’t exactly beneficial to the making.

But my internal planner keeps asking this question anyway. It’s not far from the question “why are you making this/ what’s it for?” This is coming up now, during the making of lance #2, because it’s at first consideration a ceremonial weapon from another life.

Why?  the simple answer: The lance form is beautiful. It has an extremely rich historic and mythic context. In the world of the imagination it opens many doors. I have an intimate and longstanding connection with the form.

On a bigger arc, it brings up questions about how and where I want my creations to be/go in the world.  Being actively used among a small and mostly hidden bunch of practitioners? Hanging out on someone’s mantlepiece most of the time? Piling up in my home? Hanging in a gallery? Left out in the wilderness? I think a list of places and a jotting down of my gut feelings about each might be in order to generate a beginning snapshot.

Once those are examined, the hairier task of working out the economics of the thing comes to the forefront. Not just the how-much-money in/out question, but the overall energetic exchange. For that I must consider relationship, community, ownership and value. It is important to get the exchange right. Trouble is I still have difficulty placing myself.

Enough time spent on this question for the moment. It’s not going anywhere, I’m sure I can revisit it later. It’ll certainly revisit me, anyway. In the mean time, back to the doing.

Looks like I will be making a pair of wedding rings after all, and am thrilled to have been presented with a new collaboration/commission for a trio of garter buckles. These tasks are right, undeniably RIGHT, no question about it.

Dies Luna
Luna NEW
(M3)

On the Pluto-Saturn configuration- um, yeah…heavy ain’t it? Have to admit, though, that it’s kinda nice to think of it as Pluto showing Saturn that perhaps he’s not always the bad motherfucker, after all. Comforting to see your boogie man get boogied a little, himself.

And it is for that reason that I will be embracing the virtues of Saturn that I have come to know better and better, namely disciplined detached work in the service of ambition.

Recent readings on craft and the functions of work point out that gaining mastery in any skill is about active problem-seeking as much as problem-solving. Looking for weaknesses in approach and execution, finding more difficult tasks that are beyond the current skill level to attempt to execute, knowing that the result will likely be inadequacy or failure. It requires a willingness to be incompetent (at least in regards to the ever receding horizon of the-next-level) for a long, long time and have this plainly pointed out over and over. Purposefully being near people who are better than you at what you do as often as possible.

I get to embody some of my least favorite things things!

motivation? Discomfort just as much as desire- mainly to push onwards and climb it, already. There will no doubt be some significant rewards and incredible feelings of actual advancement along the way, some very good things. But problems come and how I decide to react to them is the other side of the coin (both sides together constituting the value, worth of said coin). Materials and their tendencies, and my internal menagerie assert themselves every time I take action. There’s pressure to keep acting – I only have so much time.

And to go there willingly requires another level of putting self-image aside, assuming nothing, being a beginner over and over and messing up a lot. Because the minutiae of these trials are so very specific and really no one who isn’t directly involved cares -nor should they- this has to be done in private. It can’t matter whether anyone is watching the ridiculousness, suffering, and humiliations or not. Expectations must change.

It’s painful to my Leo Moon and Aquarius Sun, both of which want attention, acknowledgement of achievement, and social approval. Nothing wrong with that. That’s just where it’s most tender. Those are good motivators, but the wrong ones to place emphasis on. They are definitely the wrong carrots.

I’m certainly not going out of my way to find problems or create more for myself- been there, done that and hopefully can tell the difference now. The path, once I start seeing the difficulties that I’ve not been ready to see until now, will provide plenty.

I’m willing to take on this particular illusion filter because it’s the right next step. Oh Michael Lutin you are so funny. Dis-illusion, indeed!
Sign me up. May all the problems of this path stand right up and say HERE I AM! as plainly as the inspirations pulling me along it do.

Dies Mars
Luna wn 50%v

Sometimes the swift and desired objective that is the result of an act of magic comes not as the immediate materialization of the thing or opportunity you wanted, but as damned good advice. In fact, it comes that way a lot.

I think a scale could even be made where the nature of the entity responding can be reasonably well identified by how subtle and rarefied or literal/material the result. Which would help answer the question (if it’s a question that needs asking, of course) “when is it appropriate to consult an angel, when a god, and when some other sort of spirit?”

Depends on the kind of stimulus/response you most need. And if you know that part, you already know something important.

Dies Venus
Luna wn 79%v

The world is as yet unfinished. Every new piece of art, of dance, every new song adds to the visible and concrete world. The veil continues to recede endlessly with each new event of creation. It recedes in all directions, at once.

It is our job to keep making our little bits of New World on the edge of that veil.