To Each His (or Her) Own

What is it about your material of choice that excites you?

I had a funny lesson last night in the very specific pull between artist and the “right” materials.  My sister was here last night.  She’s taking a week long pastel landscape class in the shoreline area of Connecticut, and I convinced her to stay over with us for a night before heading down to my dad’s.  Wendy’s a painter, but she’s put her art aside for the last few years.  In preparation for the class, she had to sort through her rather extensive collection of pastels to gather a useful cross section of colors and values.  She was in a hurry to get on the road, and so she brought the whole kit and caboodle.  She gleefully sorted through it all while I attacked some small pieces of metal at my bench.

I wish I had taken a picture.  She had drawers of color in pastel form all spread out on one of the work tables in my studio.  The array of color was seductive, but the material did nothing to get me excited or to grab my creative spirit.  Wendy, on the other hand, was carrying on an excited dialogue with each piece of pastel she selected.  She had stories to tell about the qualities of each special color, how wonderfully fun and useful they were.  She even had a couple of quiet admonitions to some sneaky colors which looked much better than they behaved.

It was a blast to be an observer to her excitement, her intimate relationship to her materials.  And I chuckled at how the experience illustrated the concept of “to each his own”.   Lay out a similar rainbow of beads or inks and I would be every bit as excited and engaged as my sister.  It also brought me to the realization that polymer clay doesn’t quite grab me as a material in the same way.  Ultimately, the polymer is a bit more like a canvas for me.  Don’t get me wrong, I love it and what it can do, but the clay by itself isn’t as seductive for me as beads or inks and paints.