Brutally honest...

[merimask]

 

So, last night I was working, reluctantly, on a few masks.  I'm sick, but I can't afford to just stop working altogether and so I was up late, determined to do as much as I could before I felt too crappy to continue.

As it happened, I started to feel better as I worked.  I have an incredible immune system; I can actually do all the wrong things (stay up late, not drink enough water, go out in the rain with a fever...all things I did Tuesday) and yet eventually my body takes matters into hand and I will actually feel myself getting better.   Right now, I feel great in spite of being really tired...

But I'm digressing.  So I was working on these masks.  And it was rote.  Cutting, carving, shaping...I did all that in a haze 'cause I was still struggling with the remnants of this cold.  And I thought "well...I'll just see how far I can get before I have to quit", and I really wanted to quit (I felt like playing Rachett & Clank for a while before passing out). 

But then, HBO started re-playing all the episodes of "In Treatment" that I missed on Sunday, and I really love that show.  So I started watching while I worked and I just kept painting while the shows ran...five half-hour-long shows back to back.  And that's two and a half hours.  And the last show ended pretty much on my last brush stroke, and the masks were done.

And they are really great masks.  I made another Anubis and another Firefox...the fox is especially good because I experimented with some new grays with silver mixed in.  But the thing is, I made these totally on autopilot.  I put not a moment of thought into them.  I was just feeling crappy and watching TV and the masks were the things my hands happened to be making at the time.  They could have been needlepoint or hook rugs or paint-by-numbers.

But I sell these things and call them "art" .  Are they really art?  Is art something you can create thoughtlessly, on autopilot, while watching TV?   Was the first Firefox I made "art", and every one after that just "craft"?  Are they all art?  Are none of them art? 

Sometimes, I really do feel the creative spark, and I know it when I'm making something special.  And sometimes, I'm just running on autopilot, making masks like a lemming, doing it the same way I always do it.  And the thing is, at the end of the day you can put my "inspired" work next to my "busywork" and you can't tell it apart...it all looks the same. 

So does that elevate all my craft into art?  Or does that relegate all my artwork as craft?
 

EDIT:  These are the masks I made...
  

Comments

[merimask.livejournal.com]

I see what you are saying & I agree; & I've often thought that art isn't "art" unless it's perceived as such (it needs an audience's interpretation to be considered art). That totally makes sense.

But to me, a part of the creative process is intent. I guess I'm just worried because I sense some apathy in myself towards my work. When I can create it thoughtlessly, it is diminished in my eyes. It just feels less like "creating" & more like "manufacturing".

[a-hollow-year.livejournal.com]

You've been worrying about this for a while. (Not sure how long, but you've definitely mentioned this before.) Perhaps your angst on this issue would be better resolved not by asking yourself whether or not what you do is "art" or "craft" but why it matters so much to you that it be one and not the other. What's so wrong about being a manufacturer?

Or, alternately, make your own definitions for art and craft so that you can land firmly in the realm of art, regardless of what it feels like when you're doing it. When I write I just put one word after another, and after a while it sure feels like I'm just writing to hear myself type. It's very tedious to build a book one word at a time, but that's how it's done, very much like manufacturing (first you do this, then you do this, blah blah blah). The story is the art, the writing is the craft. How about this: a book does not possess a soul until it is done, much like your masks. Up until it is finished, it is just a thing we do. When it is complete, it lives on its own, independent of you and me, of our minds and thoughts and what we intended. It's free. The moment of releasing it into the world is what we work for, what we strive to do as we go through the rote manufacturing process. Without you, it will never be born. Even when manufacturing, we are holding it to our faces and breathing into it, and giving it life.

/ramble