It is a cliché and it is worth looking at. Often the things that we most resist or dismiss in the fine art conversation are the things that inspire the work we do with or without our knowing.
While working with Robert Mueller on an artist book in Florida this past week, I came to understand another layer of the creative onion. Pushing for complete honesty in a mark and its conceptual connection to the page and the book can strain any mind and creative relationship. We found ourselves enthralled with the need to continually reinvent the processes we used to covey the sense of urgency and intensity a book about the 8 winds should contain. Often the color choices in our conversation became expressions of a synesthetic movement. A color felt soft or tasted good. It made your skin crawl, eyes hurt, or demanded that your hands rest on the page. At the close of a ten-day printing session we took our first break to enjoy a sunset over Lake Alice. It was then that all of our color choices and combinations became
evident. We were using colors that corresponded to different parts of the day in the sky and water. Over and over we talked about the effect of the wind on the person and the person's affect on the wind. The changing directions marking the heroic journey; heroic in epic and ordinary proportions. It became obvious sitting in front of the sunset that what we had accomplished with this book was so powerful because it was so firmly connected to the honest base human journey in emotion and physicality. As artists we are unable to separate us from our environment and can occasionally connect others to it with our work.
While working with Robert Mueller on an artist book in Florida this past week, I came to understand another layer of the creative onion. Pushing for complete honesty in a mark and its conceptual connection to the page and the book can strain any mind and creative relationship. We found ourselves enthralled with the need to continually reinvent the processes we used to covey the sense of urgency and intensity a book about the 8 winds should contain. Often the color choices in our conversation became expressions of a synesthetic movement. A color felt soft or tasted good. It made your skin crawl, eyes hurt, or demanded that your hands rest on the page. At the close of a ten-day printing session we took our first break to enjoy a sunset over Lake Alice. It was then that all of our color choices and combinations became
evident. We were using colors that corresponded to different parts of the day in the sky and water. Over and over we talked about the effect of the wind on the person and the person's affect on the wind. The changing directions marking the heroic journey; heroic in epic and ordinary proportions. It became obvious sitting in front of the sunset that what we had accomplished with this book was so powerful because it was so firmly connected to the honest base human journey in emotion and physicality. As artists we are unable to separate us from our environment and can occasionally connect others to it with our work.
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