Anyone remember this piece? This is Swoops, aka The Magic Schoolbus. It has been languishing on my design wall (in its intended vertical orientation) since the summer of 2005. Pa The Tic.
Anyway, I have, with the help of Eric Maisel, art coach, come to a major conclusion: Not finishing my crap is *2* strikes against it. If I just finish the ratzenfratzen stuff, I might find that not everyone thinks it is the crap that I think it is. Better yet? Even if it turns out that my stuff really IS headed for tertiary treatment at the local sewage plant, at least it will be DONE AND OFF MY WALL. That, all by itself, would be a huge blessing.
Therefore, my art project of the week: I actually took Swoops down and worked on it, and PLAN to have it FINISHED (or at least ready for backing) by Wednesday noontime (so I can show it to someone that afternoon). My daughter, Dana, happened to be in the studio with me when swoops came off the design wall, and, much to my chagrin, she almost died of shock; I don't think she knew that things weren't up there permanently and COULD come down. This piece hasn't budged since before she was conceived, and here we just bought her first pair of Big Girl shoes for her playdate at the park today. Sigh.
No need to beat myself up for what I haven't gotten done before now though - I have learned those lessons, and punishing myself for not having learned them sooner is pointless. I am NOW working on getting this piece finished, and that feels great.
BTW - I opened Picassa to gather together my photos of finished work for my gallery page. It (depressingly) didn't take long. Some of the pictures are lousy, some pieces I just don't have pictures of, and, well, I just haven't finished that much work, obviously. So - I need to take some new pictures, juggle computers for lack of a connecting cable, and then I'll get back to you.
Swoops is fantastic! It definitely deserves to be finished
ReplyDeleteAn important part of creating is "listening" to the piece on your design wall. At some point the piece takes on a life of its own. I've found that when I haven't payed attention to this aspect either of two thing happened ... the "finished" piece just didn't work or I lost interest in it and it never got finished. The dialog with art makes for joyful (well, mostly) journey.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your response, Nellie! I wholeheartedly agree about the necessity for a dialogue between one and one's work. Much of that process has been stymied for me lately by the demands of pregnancy and raising small children, and I simply hadn't had the energy/interest to be available to hear what my piece had to say to me!
ReplyDeleteAlso, I was finding that reworking problem areas left noticeable holes in my work, and that frustrated me; I just needed to let the foibles of a less than perfect technical execution cease to bother me - at least for this piece! My mantra is progress in a day, not perfection in an hour, but I think that I need to paraphrase that into "progress over a body of work, not anything resembling perfection in any one piece!"
Many thanks again -
Susan