Personal Myths and Wearing Art

"One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art". This is a quote by Oscar Wilde that I've known for about 15 years, but only two weeks ago decided to put as a handwritten headline in my booth for shows. Having just returned from the American Craft Exposition in Evanston, Illinois, I am struck by the many familiar and consistent comments I hear at my shows. These comments all have to do with how we as women view ourselves and how I have learned NOT to view myself, but rather as Oscar says - either being or wearing a work of art.

When customers come up to my booth, I sometimes hear gasps, often hear comments like "I've never seen anything like these!", and often get lots of questions like "Are these really purses?" or "Is that really a pin?". But then, when they really start looking at my work, the comments get personal and I hear things like, "Oh, you have to be tall to wear those neckpieces", or "I'm too tall to wear that neckpiece", or "My chest is too small to wear that", or "My chest is too large to wear that" or "I don't go anywhere to wear that" or "I wish I could wear that". Now, I realize that sometimes these comments are just ways for people to tell me that they don't want to buy my work and are moving on, but often, they REALLY like the jewelry or purse and spend a bit of time looking at everything in my booth.

I have decided that all of these comments are myths we create about ourselves and have imbedded into our identities. Maybe it's something our mother told us or something we just prefer to believe because it's an excuse to not try very hard to look nice. One of my best collectors is a petite woman (5'1" or 5'2") who wears statement neckpieces and bracelets. Another is tall and very thin. Another is extremely full-figured. They all look terrific in my jewelry and purses and they carry it well because they have the self-confidence and interest to wear art. What they also have is the courage to change and the courage to try on new things.

I see too many women who look dumpy and unhappy because they wear baggy, shapeless, or uninteresting clothes with a little tiny silver chain with a heart on it. Sometimes, spurred on by friends, they try on one of my less showy neckpieces with a silver spiral, faux stone, and silver stick on steel cable that is sophisticated and artistic in an understated way, and they find they look and FEEL terrific! Then if they buy it, they go off feeling so good about themselves. They had the courage to try on something they wouldn't normally try on and the courage to change.

When I know I look good, I also feel good. That's why even though I live and have my studio out in the woods of New Hampshire, I wear a neckpiece and/or cool earrings every day as well as put on makeup and spend time on my hair so that I'll feel good while I'm working.

The point is, being a work of art or wearing a work of art is not for others, it's for YOU.

Creative Success and Late Bloomers

Having become a huge fan of the nonfiction writer Malcolm Gladwell after reading OUTLIERS: THE STORY OF SUCCESS, I began reading WHAT THE DOG SAW while visiting my newly married daughter and son-in-law in Minneapolis. Minneapolis, by the way, is a wonderfully artistic and cultural city that is also a very forward-moving, bike-friendly, diverse place with LOTS of incredible restaurants. And in case you hate winters, the whole downtown has over-the-street enclosed walkways -- two to every block as well as a nice light rail system. My daughter works in the gift shop of the Walker Museum of Contemporary Art so we had a very in-depth tour. I came away tremendously inspired.

But, I digress - back to WHAT THE DOG SAW. In the chapter entitled, "Late Bloomers: Why Do We Equate Genius with Precocity?", Gladwell bases his discussion on a study by David Galenson ("Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity"). He describes prodigies like Picasso as rarely engaging in open-ended exploration, tending to be conceptual in the sense that they start with a clear idea of where they want to go and then they execute it. Late Bloomers, on the other hand, are experimental, searching their whole lives, wanting to hone their craft, and are often dissatisfied with their work. Late Bloomers do not necessarily start late in life and often do as much artistic endeavor in their youth as prodigies do, but their approach is different. Gladwell compares Picasso to Cezanne who even though was an artist all his life, did not have a major exhibition until the age of 56.

While reading this whole article, I kept thinking, "That's like me....that's like me....that's like me....I'm a late bloomer". Even my previous blog in which I describe my struggles as a 59-year-old artist fits the description. I've endeavored to hone my craft my whole life, still experiment with techniques, and am searching about what I want to say now. One more thing that Late Bloomers have in common is a "patron". By that he means, someone who is supportive, both financially and emotionally to the artist, someone who believes in them.

I can say here that I would not be where I am today without the support of my husband, David. Before we were married, he bought me a potter's wheel because I had taken a class and became enchanted with clay. Then he bought me a used electric kiln after we got married. Even though I have a degree in mathematics, he never told me I should be out working in a "real" job and has always told me how proud of me he is. I can also mention my mother who always said while I was getting my degree in math, "You should be taking art." I got an MFA when I was 29, indicating eventually I realized she was right.

So, I'll bet there are a lot of you who are also Late Bloomers. Just knowing there is a description of an "Old Master" that sounds like me is exciting. Struggle is all part of the process. But the most encouraging of all is ---- THE BEST IS YET TO COME.

My Struggles as an Artist

Even though it's been 18 months since my last published thoughts, I have been actually thinking a lot. Since the last post, I've successfully curated a museum show, had a one-person show at Snyderman Works Gallery in Philadelphia, done a number of retail juried shows, and taught a number of workshops. So, why do I feel at age 59 like I'm still struggling as an artist?

Yes, art is a struggle for me. I feel compelled to make art all the time, I've been doing it professionally for over 30 years, and I've been doing it my whole life. Yet, I still am struggling with whether I have anything to say, what should I be saying, and how should I say it.

When I got my MFA, the most important single thing I came away with was said to me by a professor during a critique session. "Make your work personal". It wasn't all the technical knowledge and skill I took from my degree, but that single phrase, that was the most crucial thing for me. But how was I to do that? I've taken that phrase very seriously over the years and made different series of works that reflected the stages in my life, my inner struggles and feelings about the outer circumstances of life.

I did a series of sculptures based on the interiors of the houses of my midwest relatives when I was growing up, then a series of "Housewife Queens", then sculptures based on my daughters' childhood drawings, then a series on the Arabian Bedouin Women I bought bits and pieces of jewelry from while living overseas, then a series on the Village Women I encountered in Turkey when we lived there, then a series on women's faces and Biblical verses that were autobiographical in emotion (including a scream based on my own ruptured aneurysm 9 years ago). More recently I've done a series of pods, grass, buds, and moss sculptures/purses based on the woods I walk in here in New Hampshire.

While older work involved representational imagery of women, more recent work may not seem related because it is "inspired by nature" - a phrase I always detested as being trite and overdone. But, in fact, my more recent work of pods and buds is voluptuous at times, nearly always feminine in meaning having to do with seeds and perhaps the end of my own reproductive years and beginning of grandmotherhood.

But, now I'm at a standstill. Where do I go from here? Do I make sculptures of death even though I am most likely many years away from the end of my own life? How do I translate that into sculptures that are actually purses?

I'm actually feeling right now like all those years of making "stuff" in the end is just that - "stuff". I'm feeling like king Solomon right now when he said in Ecclesiastes, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity and chasing after the wind". I want to still make stuff, but is it just a job to make money? Who cares in the end? I want to still make my work personal, but am struggling with how to do that right now. I am feeling the meaninglessness of worldly striving.

Art is hard work!!! If it weren't, everyone would be an artist.

Perseverance in a weak economy

With this economic crisis looming over us craftspeople, i'm thinking about business survival over the past 30 years. The late 80s were the heady days of craft when I could sell ANYTHING I made, and for a good price. Then a recession came during the early 90s and everything plummeted. I was fortunate to be living in Turkey at the time because my husband, Dave, had a job there so I was not as affected as my artist/craftsmen friends. But, the best craftsmen survived.

We just kept making things, selling them the best we could and we survived. The reason is that we persevered. There is nothing like perseverance when it comes to art and fine craft, in the midst of economic downturns, in the midst of creative blocks, and in the midst of getting rejected from shows we always used to get into. The best craftsmen persevere, and maybe it kicks them in the butt in order to do a little changing and growing as well.

So even though I may not make as much money now as I have been in the recent past, I will persevere. And I will continue to strive for excellence, not dumb down my work to make it more "saleable". "There is always a market for excellence" I read once. I will persevere and continue to make excellent things to the best of my ability.

Fashion Week

I have had a very busy summer and so I am sorry for not having written anything for a couple of months.

Last week I went with some girlfriends on an overnight trip to New York city with the idea of going to Bryant Park to check out all the glitterati in their Manolo Blahniks going in and out of the designer runway shows (one of my friends weaves and makes clothing for a living). Amazingly, we saw the college-age daughter of another friend of ours who is a student at NYU and who was doing an internship stint at Fashion Week. Knowing it is impossible to get into the shows unless you are someone, we asked her if there was any way she could get us into standing-room-only at a show. She went to find out, and she got us some tickets!

Granted it was the collection of a young and supposedly up-and-coming Russian designer, but still it was a runway show in New York city! The show lasted all of 12 minutes with young, blond concentration-camp-like women walking very fast down the runway in his spring collection. The clothes did not make a lasting impression on me, but it was pretty exciting.

After that we went to a shop on Madison Ave. called "Julie: Artisans' Gallery" which is a gallery of wearable art, and there in the front window were 7 or my purses! I had just sent them to the shop and they had mentioned that maybe they would put some in the window, but it was still terribly exciting. They looked terrific.

We ate in a fabulous restaurant in the Meatpacking District and shopped in the West Village. Then we took a very cheap bus back to Boston ($18 one-way), then another bus up to New Hampshire. All in all, it was a splendid way to spend time with girlfriends.

But frankly, I am really glad to be home. I got my big-city fix and can now reflect on the whole experience. It seems trite to say it, but the whole Fashion Week experience was shallow. Is this what life is all about? To some people it is - paying attention to the latest must-haves. And actually I am quite ambivalent because this is the market I sell to.

I sell cool little containers and artsy jewelry for people to carry around and impress others. I feel uncomfortable about that and yet I really enjoy and have a passion for what I am doing.

I don't know if other artists are in this quandary. Maybe it's a result of living in frugal New Hampshire. Or maybe it's a result of my Christian faith and reading in the Bible about materialism. What ever it is, I've been doing a lot of thinking about it.

Thoughts About Color, but First My New Granddaughter

It is such an exciting time in my life right now because I have a first grandchild, born May 31st, and her name is Eleanor Mae (sounds like a good novelist's or artist's name). I'm spending time at my daughter and son-in-law's helping to take care of her. I have to tell you right now, grandchildren are the best reason for having children. What a blessing from God she is!

In the midst of all this, believe it or not, I've been thinking about color. Maybe it's being impressed with the wonders of God's creation and color is a big part of that. Having a pretty good grounding in color theory from my formal art training, I feel I have an adequate ability to lay down and organize colors to express what I want or to make a good composition. What is more intuitive, however, and continually changing in my work is color mixing and color choice. Because I am now allowing nature to inspire me, I've come to notice the incredible range of colors that exist on the surface of one smooth stone or one small clump of moss. The wide variety of greens in a clump of moss may be extremely subtle and difficult to notice, but I strive to do just that and this enables me to get a real richness that I'm striving for in my work.

And so, I've been spending a great deal of time recently just mixing colors of polymer. For example, I'll mix an interesting green, then cut it up into 8 or pieces and add a small amount of another color to each piece and mix it in - maybe white to one piece, ecru to another, a teeny bit of red to another, yellow to another and mud to another. So all the pieces work well together because they have the same base green, but yet all are different. The resulting richness of color enables me to achieve a successful organic quality.

This richness is particularly evident in my "Blowing Grass Purse". I first mixed a large Skinner blend made of 5 colors - purple/ecru/green/ecru/peachy orange - then cut it up into 6 equal pieces and added small amounts of other colors to each blend and mixed each in. So I ended up with 6 variations of one Skinner blend and rolled many pieces of grass out of each, then assembled them all into one clump. These variations are called color shifting and can become extremely powerful when used in one piece of artwork.

Thinking Big

While doing the Smithsonian Craft Show last week, I was able to take an hour to visit the Helen Williams Drutt Jewelry Collection exhibit at the Renwick Gallery Museum of Fine Craft. It's an understatement to say I was absolutely blown away by the collection of art jewelry she has collected over the past 40 years.

After looking at the breath-taking jewelry pieces made by many different artists, what I came away with more than anything is the question "Why don't I think that big?" By thinking big, I don't mean big in scale, although that can be part of it, but rather big in idea, or big in elaborateness, big in complexity, big in the amount of time it takes to make it.

Unfortunately, sometimes we think that in order to make any money doing what we do, we have to do "affordable" work, or work that is popular. I'm not convinced that we have to think small in order to make a living and in fact, we may make a better living if we occasionally think "museum stuff" -- meaning work we would like to have in a museum or a conoisseur's collection someday.

I have seen so much unassuming polymer work -- little earrings, one small pendant on a cord, a bracelet made up of 10 or 12 beads. BORING. Not only would it never be in a major show, but people would not buy it for more than $5.00. Now it's fine to have some pieces that are affordable to the mainstream, but you also NEED pieces that are spectacular and even "pricey" to draw customers to your work. Also, there are people who only want to purchase spectacular pieces, and they don't want $5.00 earrings!

Thinking big takes risk. What if we spend all this time on one piece and it looks lousy when we're done? What if nobody likes it? I have created pieces that I was very excited about, but in the end didn't work out to my liking. But the next piece -- or the piece after that -- succeeded and in the end it was worth taking the risk to learn and develop. Everything worthwhile in life requires risk.

Thinking big takes work. I have once or twice taken a couple of months to make a piece, from sketching, planning, working it out and perfecting. Some of the pieces in the Renwick exhibit, however, I know took more than a couple of months just to work out the idea. Some of us are just not that interested in really putting a lot of work into something, we're a little lazy. Well, unless you are willing to work at it you'll just have to realize that your work will never be that good and you may not be as successful financially or artistically as you might like. That's OK, you just have to understand that.

Thinking big also takes perseverence. I've realized over 30 years of working at it that yes, being an artist takes some talent. But far more than that it takes passion and perseverence. Just keep making things, just keep doing it, just keep working and the ideas will come, you'll keep getting better and better!

As I'm writing this, I'm saying it to myself, even though I know it all already. I need to Think Big!