When I was younger I had every intention of going to art school for painting. For years that was the goal, I looked at schools, spent hours a day working on my pieces, but suddenly, it just wasn't enough. I had covered every wall with paintings and I had simply run out of room in more ways than one. It was not that I no longer enjoyed painting, but that I wanted it to do more for me. At that time I really didn't know how to make that happen, or even why that was so important to me. For a few years I experimented with different types of creativity: writing, woodworking, knitting/crocheting, beading and finally pottery. A good friend showed me how to throw a cylinder, and I basically practiced like a crazy person for a year until I could reliably make some basic forms, and then I stopped. I stopped for a year and a half, believe it or not. Looking back I still wonder how that happened, but it did. I wrote a lot during that time, I had a lot to process and I needed to do some growing as a human being. Eventually I decided that I needed to get back into art and so I enrolled in a ceramics for non-art majors class at the University of Florida. The rest as we say, is history.
That semester was the first time I expereinced what I like to call a reboot; when you go back to something you haven't done in a while and and all the sudden you are remarkably better at it than you were before you stopped, like someone had installed all these upgrades in your brain and you had just needed to take a break and restart your mental computer for them to work. My forms were much better, and my ideas were better, so much so that with permission from the department I took several more advanced classes over the next two years.
But it still wasn't enough. I knew that there was something missing from my work, that stylistically, it was not polished enough. I just couldn't put my finger on it, none of my pieces felt complete even when every single inch of piece was totally decorated. It wasn't until I started doing shows and setting ridiculous deadlines for myself that I saw my own style coming through.
Another thing that I think was incredibly important for me was finding pottery that I truly loved and wanted to own. In school I had come across several pieces and artists that I thought were great and had a huge amount of respect for. I could see the skill and time that they put into their work, and appreciated the precision and consistency of their gift. But their pieces weren't for me.
Soooo, I started poking around on the internet, and lo and behold I found artists that were totally different than what I was used to. I had never really been happy with the mishima/scraffito concept, I could never make it work for me not in any detail anyway. And then I found Diana Fayt's website and spent a couple months trying to figure out exactly how she achieved her lines (I still haven't exactly, I'm close, but I have also moved on a little bit, and I like where my work is branching out to anyway). Her work led me to other pottery by artists like Molly Hatch and Meredith Host, and I started to realize that one of the reasons I had never connected with the pottery examples in school was that they were so.... academic. Now, of course, that has totally shifted and pottery I like is being used as samples in classes everywhere (go figure).
When I finally made the leap to drawing on my pieces it totally changed my style (and still is, for that matter). I haven't nailed it yet, but every day I get a little better, a little more precise, and that feeling is hugely motivational.
So, what I would say as advice to anyone who feels like they are reaching and reaching for their own style, but it still seems out of reach is, DO YOUR RESEARCH!!! There are people out there doing what you want to do. Find them and internet stalk them. In figuring out how they make their work you will form your own process, and eventually lead yourself to your own style. Make lists of what you like about pieces and what you don't like, cross reference these and develop the aspects that you want. All of this is useless however, unless you actually make a ton of pieces, because sometime in the middle of the night when you are totally exhausted and wanted to be in bed four hours ago, you are going to make something different, and it will change your life. And when this happens, guess what... start over.
Do any of you have a break through moment? Or have experienced a reboot? I'd love to hear about it!
No comments:
Post a Comment