May.31.2007
4:48 pm
by Libby
Rubbish
It’s been hectic around here lately, but I have managed to spend some time most evenings in my studio. With the hot hot weather we’ve been having, it’s quite lovely to work in the cool basement. I’m not producing much though. For one thing, as I explained earlier, the bezel making process is slow, at least relative to polymer clay. The other reason is that I have been throwing a lot of my work into the trash or at least into a “huh?” pile. I make a few bezels, make some polymer clay veneer sheets to fill the bezels, but by the time I fill the bezels I’m not satisfied. Part of it is the lack of direction I have been feeling lately. But the main reason I have been filling up my trash with polymer clay bits is that a lot of what I’ve been making has been what a good friend calls “polymerde”.
Please don’t jump in and say you’re sure my work isn’t as bad as I think it is. I think it’s ok to throw things away when you’re an artist. At least it should be ok, but whether it’s from a sense of attachment or thriftiness, it can be difficult to throw away artist effort. I have gotten to a place where I don’t feel bad anymore when I consign a piece to the garbage. I try not to be too critical of my work, but when it’s really off, it gets tossed. For me it’s part of the process of getting back in the creative groove.
Filed in creativity, polymer clay |
Now see, I think you might be being hard on yourself by relegating pieces to the trash, but if it makes you happy, then I’m sure as heck not going to say it’s the wrong thing to do. To be honest, I ended up throwing out half of the pieces I’ve made in my latest quest. It happens. Sometimes I think it’s just more important to try, kwim?
I think I have been on a “more is more” binge with paints and inks lately and that may be part of the reason for so much polymerde. At least I am growing my pile of 1-inch squares. lol
Thanks for sharing this. I’m currently in the same boat and it’s nice to know I’m not alone. I’ve been working on a new (for me) technique for the last two-three days and my scrap pile keeps getting bigger, bigger and bigger. So, to make myself feel better I tried to do something with the scrap just for fun. Well, that sucked too and I ended up with so much self doubt that I ended up just having a good cry about it.
But, you know, I’d rather weep than give up.
Kathy
Kathy, don’t get discouraged. Sometimes we put too much pressure on ourselves and it’s stifling. The other thing is, it can take a long time to master a new technique. I think the best work comes from spending a long time learning everything you can about a technique. It’s a real scrap pile enhancing way to go about it, but it’s the way I work.
Several years ago, in a workshop, I asked Pier Voulkos about a bead cracking problem I was having. I was so discouraged because I had to thrown out so many beads due to large cracks. She said she thought it was partly the nature of the material, and that only about 1/5th of what she made was good enough to go out to a gallery for example. At the time I found her answer very discouraging, but now I find it extremely encouraging.
If every piece one made was wonderful we would all be artistic geniuses and there would be nothing to challenge us to push further… the truly great painters and photographers cull, cull, and cull some more before they present their work to the gallery goers….I like to think of it as a process of distillation…all the polymerde [love the term] is an opportunity to hone one’s design skills, and work out ideas…and besides, where would the clay for the centers of beads come from????