Today's post is indebted to two comrades-in-art-arms: husband and fine art photographer Sam Elkind, and good friend and abstract painter Marilyn Kleinhans. My most frequent and honest conversations about the creative life happen with these two, and I want to share two concepts they shared with me that keep me from going too crazy (sometimes!). Bear with me as I tell a story.
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| Mesilla Door, silver gelatin print. (c) Sam Elkind |
Like many, Sam started out in photography in the darkroom, and perfected his process there over many years since he was a teenager. He loved the look and feel of silver gelatin prints. As we moved to New Mexico, though, he decided to switch to digital processes, largely because of the perennial water shortage in our area and the need to conserve wherever possible. Processing film and prints consumes untold gallons of water.
An unexpected bonus of this switch to digital is a vastly shortened feedback loop for his work. If you've done darkroom photography, you know the drill. In the fastest possible scenario, Sam could shoot in the morning, and if he had time he could develop the film in the afternoon. And then wait overnight for the negatives to dry. But that was a rare schedule; usually the film waited a week or more to be processed. Once the film was dry, he would spend hours on his feet printing, a slow process of several steps that also requires drying time to truly judge the print. The feedback loop--the chance to truly look at and evaluate his work--stretched over days.
In the digital process, Sam can shoot in the morning, and if he is back home with time left in the day, process and print multiple images that same day. He can make and evaluate his work much more quickly. And as we all know, digital image software provides many more tools for image development and manipulation than darkroom enlargers did. His work has expanded and developed much more quickly than it could have in the darkroom process. Of course this is not to throw shade on anyone doing darkroom work and making prints the old fashioned way--this work has a unique appeal!
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| San Antonio Creek, digital image, (c) Sam Elkind |
Many of us weavers are familiar with the basic problem of the long feedback loop. One of the tapestry artists in my feedback groups mentioned that as she gets close to finishing the large tapestry she's been working on for over a year, she has learned so much that she wishes she could go back and do things differently at the beginning of the process on this tapestry. We've all experienced something like that, right? The feedback loop for large-sized tapestry is loooooong.
This got me wondering: How can we shorten our feedback loop as weavers? I'm sure you can think of a few ways:
Work smaller. Work at a larger sett with thicker yarns. Work in a more open, less packed weave.
I have a couple of ideas:
Join a group of like-minded weavers and trade feedback on a regular basis. They will see things in your work that are in your own "blind spot" and allow you to address them sooner, if you choose to.
Seek more opportunities to show your work in public. Viewers will tell you what they see and this is feedback you can't get any other way.
Maintain a side practice of smaller tapestry work (sketch tapestry/woodles/minimes/samples) where you can indulge those "what if" ideas while you work on larger pieces (s).
Try paper weaving! See my previous two posts to see what I'm talking about. I am still surprised at how much faster paper weaving goes than tapestry. I'm able to move through ideas and experiments at a much faster rate, and that's immensely satisfying. And it's helpful as I create work for the upcoming Studio Tour in September. I don't have to worry about having enough new work to show this year.
The Eldorado Studio Tour is a real, hard deadline--it happens this year Sept. 21-22. I really do have to get a number of tasks done by Sept. 20. But there are also false deadlines--those perceived deadlines we set for ourselves where we say we absolutely have to get X done by Y date. Thanks to my sane friend Marilyn, I'm learning to see that most of these false deadlines just create gratuitous stress for me. If no one outside my studio is expecting me to do X by Y, then it's a false deadline, and I need to just calm the heck down. It's a skill I'm still building.
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| Chaos Series: Untitled #3, 16”x20” acrylic on canvas. (c) Marilyn Kleinhans |
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| Riot of Joy, 5”x7”, pastel and ink on Pastelbord (c) Marilyn Kleinhans |
Marilyn went on to expand on this idea in a useful way: “I’ve found myself creating work for a “theme” with a deadline for submission. It became the push to fit into someone else’s idea of what I should create, which I think of as a false deadline. Those have been some of my least successful, and least honest, paintings so I no longer choose to make art with that in mind." I think Marilyn makes a good point. This may be fodder for whole 'nother blog post: the pros and cons of creating work to fit exhibit themes. Stay tuned for that!
As always, I welcome your comments!