I remembered the semester I spent in Rome during art school. I was a painting major but ended up spending most of my time working on collage books.  I had a conversation with a painting grad student one day, who was very surprised when I said I was a painting major. He said he always thought I was a jewelry person because I was so fashionable. Which I thought was funny since that’s the last thing I am, but I guess he meant that I didn’t wear baggy paint-covered pants or something. And maybe he was right, maybe I am a jewelry person after all. This is very interesting…an artistic identity crisis? I’m thinking of ways to combine collage/digital collage and jewelry…I still want to finish these damn paintings though. Even though I’m really thinking I might be kind of really over making paintings…

Today I received an email from a friend who works in academic publishing. She noticed that one of the authors of an article she was editing listed his affiliation as “Department of Luminescence, Lebedev Physical Institute, Moscow.” Isn’t that beautiful? I don’t even want to look up what one might actually do in a Department of Luminescence, because I’m sure it’s much more mundane than it sounds.

I’ve been stuck lately in a cycle of pondering art and its role in the world, and my role within those ideas, which, much like the idea of a Department of Luminescence, is probably best not examined too closely. Every year after the spring/summer art-craft show season I expect to feel relaxed and happy, but I inevitably end up feeling drained and uninspired. I’ve been trying to figure out just why that is.

I think part of it is the vague uneasiness I feel around the intersection of art and money. Obviously I don’t entirely believe that art is something pristine that should never be touched by evil commerce.  I like making money from my art. It’s very validating. But I think it’s easy to fall into a mindset where I start to measure success and thus happiness in terms of sales completed and money made, which is ultimately detrimental to my happiness and to how I think about art and why and how I make it.

This was a pretty good show season- I sold a fair amount of items, but the totals were a lot less than last year and even in some cases less than two years ago. Which if you’re measuring things in a purely monetary sense is not good, and it’s easy to start thinking things like “What am I doing wrong? What can I do to sell more?” There are countless resources online dedicated to increasing profitability for your art business, and it’s so easy to start thinking “oh I should work on SEO, revamp my website, pay a consultant, try to do more shows, start a mailing list!”  I get anxious because I’m not terribly interested in pursuing the standard Artist in the Art World path (trying to get gallery shows, apply for grants, increase renown, get rich people to pay a lot of money for my work, etc.), but if not that, then what? I’ve managed to carve out a weird little place for myself somewhere between Art, Craft, and Design, and mostly it works for me. So why do I continue to judge myself by standards I don’t particularly care about or want to pursue?

I don’t really believe in living according to a More Money = More Success = More Happiness model, and I especially don’t know why I let myself get annoyed about declining sales figures compared to previous years, because I definitely don’t agree with the prevailing economic theory that everything should keep growing and growing year after year and if it doesn’t then something is wrong.

What I do believe in is that I am happiest and my work is at its best if I totally forget about the idea of it as a product to be sold eventually (even if that’s really what it ends up being), and also if I totally forget about the Art World and potential viewers and what they will think about my work, even though of course I do hope that in the end what I make touches someone else somehow, makes them happy or makes them think or remember something in their own life.

I think I’ve been feeling a bit stagnant and uninspired with a lot of my work this past year, like I’ve been just trying to produce stuff to sell and re-treading old ground because it’s been successful in the past. Particularly with things like the lens necklaces and digital collages it’s so easy to slip into a sort of mindless production mode, and it makes for bad work. Quantity over quality.  Yes, it’s nice when people think highly enough of my work to actually buy it. Yes, it’s nice to sit at a show and have people tell me “oh, I like your work!” But in the end, it’s not enough, it’s not why I do this. Acclaim and praise is not what drives me to stay up well past any sort of reasonable hour tinkering with projects. Whatever that drive is, it comes from within somewhere, and I ignore whatever it is at my peril.

I think it’s time to find a new direction, try some new things, while re-committing to some basic ideas. For one, just making the work that I want to make rather than worrying about what will sell and what won’t. If someone likes it and it makes them happy and they want to give me money for it, then that’s awesome. If not, then whatever. C’est la vie. I’m such an idealist, and such a cynic too. I love contradictions.

I’m more interested in the process of making art, the pleasure I get from it, art as exploration, art as fun, art as a way of living, than in anything else like making an impact in the art world or being famous or meaningful or making lots of money or whatever it is I’m supposed to aspire to.  This is why I’ve quite deliberately chosen not to try to make my art the sole source of my financial support. (I have a full-time job as a graphic designer, which I enjoy as far as jobs go, but I consider it somewhat separate from “my art.”) If that makes me a dabbler or a hobbyist or whatever other disparaging term there might be, then so be it. I’d like the word “amateur” a lot better if it were more commonly recognized as deriving from the French “from the heart” (or something to that effect).

I read an interesting interview today with a photographer, Phillip Toledano. He said some things that really resonated with my current frame of mind:

Well it’s interesting because I think about the art world a lot.  And I think about, you know, when you go to a gallery and read an artist’s statement. It’s terribly incomprehensible, right? It’s just kind of a simple club sandwich, layered cake extravaganza of references and connotations and words and people’s names, none of which means anything to me. And I feel like it’s almost directed not toward anyone, but the very tiny biosphere of curators and gallerists and the art world, right? So we’re all in this world talking to ourselves and it’s naïve. But part of me feels as though it would be nice if art makes things better for people, for the world in some way, if it shows them something that is possible.

…

I remember saying this as a kid. My father’s an artist and I remember talking to him about wanting to be an artist and saying to him if I can do art that changes people over time, shows them something for a second or a minute, changes their mind about something, that would be really worthwhile.

So, that’s always been my intention. But ultimately I can only make the art that I can make. I just do the ideas that speak to me and I talk about the stuff that’s interesting to me. Hopefully that will be of value to other people.

…I could just be f*cking talking to myself. I mean that’s the thing that you don’t know. Am I just bullshitting? Am I just drinking my own urine and telling myself it’s the finest red wine available? I have no idea. You know what I mean? You don’t know. You just hope that you make stuff that matters, firstly to yourself and secondly to other people.

I love coming across interviews or blogs where people say what I want to say, but better. I can only make the art that I can make. I find the idea of art as primarily a business, a calculus of effort spent and resources gained terribly stifling, but the idea of art as a way to live, an ongoing experiment, an experience, a practice much in the same way that yoga is a practice, a way to find the beauty, the luminescence in the ordinary, in life as a whole, now that’s interesting. I think that’s why I was so struck by this email about the Department of Luminescence. It sounds like a good name for my art life, for resolving to refocus and move forward with some new ideas and shake off some old ideas that have outworn their welcome, open the windows and let in some fresh air.

I’ve tried all kinds of stratagems and rules and ideas and tricks, none of which has really stuck or helped much. Sometimes it all starts feeling a bit like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63eZR2J5JFM

I’ve tried designating one day a week for a particular type of work, as in Monday is for digital collage, Tuesday is for updating my website, and so on. This didn’t work out so well since some days just tend to fill up with other things and then I’m always getting behind on one particular kind of task. I found myself getting engrossed in a project on Monday and wanting to keep working on it on Tuesday, but then forcing myself to move onto the next thing instead.

I’ve tried just working on whatever I feel like working on, which is great, except sometimes I find it difficult to focus. If I’m working on a painting, I feel like I should be working on jewelry instead. (Oh, the ever-present, dreadful should.) If I’m working on jewelry I feel bad if I don’t practice my violin or do yoga or clean the apartment. And there’s always something else I want to be doing, something I feel like I’m falling behind on, something I’ve just never gotten around to (like learning how to really properly use my fancy digital camera instead of just leaving it on the Auto setting). If only sleep was optional, or I could stock up on it like a rechargeable battery. Alas…

I very recently realized that the magic word is FOCUS. This actually occurred to me during a yoga class, when I was struggling to just breathe and focus on that instead of listening to my mile-a-minute inner dialogue about all the stuff that I needed to do that day. I need to give myself permission to just focus on one thing at a time, to really think about it, to go deep, to not be constantly running from one thing to another like a panicked maniac. Sometimes I wish I was the sort of person who is just obsessed with one particular activity, but no, here I am trying to be little miss paint-jewelry-collage-photo-digital-design-violin-cooking-aerials-flying trapeze-biking-reading-oh boy I’m making myself tired. I’d probably be a lot better at each of the things I like to do if it was the only thing I liked to do, but alas, I’m apparently destined to be a dabbler, a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none.

So, I’m trying an experiment, starting this month. And I’m writing about it here so maybe I’ll actually stick with it. Kind of like if you have a friend to go to the gym with, you’re more likely to go even if you don’t really feel like it. For each month I’ll be choosing one area of artistic, intellectual, fun, or business-related activity to really focus on. Of course this is relating to whatever I can do in my free time, aside from work and freelance work and whatever various things come up. And of course this doesn’t mean I don’t get to do things like take a break and read a book if I feel like it, and if I really do need to work on something that isn’t that month’s chosen focus that’s ok. It just means that the chosen subject is my default go-to activity for the month. I also plan to spend the month doing related research on each subject and hopefully doing some writing about it too (this is perfect since I’ve been meaning to do more actual writing for my site instead of just posting photos.)

I tried something sort of like this years ago, where for one month I took a break from using paint. I drew, did photos, collaged- anything that wasn’t paint. And it was interesting. I was teaching myself Photoshop at that time and I think not painting made me focus on Photoshop more instead. I used to scoff at the idea of greater creativity and inspiration coming from imposing limits, but now I definitely think there’s lots of possibility in the idea of working within certain specific parameters.

It’s going to be interesting. I’m a little late writing this (project deadlines interfered!) but May is hereby declared The Month of Jewelry! Perfect, since I need to finish up some new stuff for the remaining craft shows of the year.

I’ve become increasingly inspired and fascinated by scientific imagery in recent years, and I think there is a lot to explore in the place where art and science intersect. I’m also reminded of my favorite Einstein quote:

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”