August has been a bit tumultuous. My computer picked up a virus that required an 8-day layover with the geeks. I'm not sure it's completely well but I have it back and I'm going to go bravely on until I have a reason not to. And the second-floor bathroom sprang a leak which resulted in having the first-floor bathroom was stripped to the studs and spending several evenings with bleach in a spray bottle assaulting mold -- banks of fluffy, surprisingly pretty, green mold that looked rather like jade, but that had to go, nonetheless.
And all the while, I was working on an almost completely white panel that I started in Vermont at the beginning of the month and decided to send for consideration by the Quilt National '09 folks. Once they turn it down, I'll post pictures. (All three judges show a deep affection for the hot end of the spectrum in their own work, so I expect that, like Ishmael in Moby Dick, they'll react along the lines of "it was the whiteness of the whale that appalled me.")
All of which is a bit of prelude to a question my friend Jane asked, prompted, I think, by all that whiteness: Do you think simple is harder? In the moment I thought "yes" -- mostly because of how difficult it is to write simply -- but now that I think about it, in terms of visual art, No. I don't think simple is harder. At one level I think it's all hard, but the art I'm generally attracted to and the art I've started to make is relatively simple: few components, extremely limited color, small format (usually), formal composition. Such austerity demands precision in the elements, but it's what I like and how I see things, so it's easier for me to swoop a couple of red lines across a white field and call it a day. I find it much harder to try to do the kind of richly textured and highly colored work that my friend Denise does so well. I admire her work greatly and I do wish I could do "that kind of thing" but it just doesn't come out of my fingers gracefully and I get paralyzed with anxiety. There is some anxiety in working out precisely where and how those red lines cross that white field, but I have more confidence that "it will come" when I'm working sparely.
What do you think? As a viewer and/or as a creator, is simple harder? How so?
There's also a more than even chance that I misunderstood the question...
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5 comments:
Hmmm...it's a tricky one. Look at the vibrant work of some abstract artists that "looks easy to do" and then try to do it!
And look, too, at the spare, foggy coastlines of some painters and try to do that.
For myself, I know that sometimes I can spend ages on a piece, re-working it, changing elements until I'm satisfied and someone will say "I love the simplicity of this!"
And I can also have things which seem complicated tumble out of my head, effortlessly.
There is no easy answer.
yep, no easy answer... for my own work it really depends on the piece, sometimes it comes to life quick and easy and looks complicated and sometimes it's a torturous process that brings a simple result... can't wait to see your white whale... ;)
I wonder if Jane's question pertains more to personal style and aesthetics than to process. There was also, I'm told, a recent discussion at one of the online gabfests about fear of the open (or blank) space. And certainly some of the more prominent/popular fiber magazines have established a highly decorated style as a kind of standard for what a collage "is," what an art quilt "is."
It's an interesting question, all questions with no clearcut answers are interesting.
I was able to extricate my backup disk of the QN piece from the jammed disk drawer and I'm taking it to work, where I hope that computer can read it so I can then email myself and maybe post some details of whiteness. Here's somethign that's never easy -- dealing with computer intransigence.
hm... maybe a question that only makes sense in the context of individual working styles/loves/preferences/inabilities/difficulties? i know the things i'm attracted to when i look at the worlds, similarly as i know the things i can do confidently - knowing that i can pull 'it' off. and such ease/comfort zone stuff will certainly (?) be recognisable to others, won't it? and then there's stuff i fought quite hard to get to, sweated over it, reworked it etc. and i think it is at that point that someone needs to know/ or recognise if 'simple' and restrained is part of my confidence or not? if that makes sense?
in the landscape abstractions i did in the first half of the year, a couple of people picked the simplest compositions as the first ones, where in fact they were hard fought for through a series of more complext composition which got reduced and reduced further.
Yes, that's it -- all the putting in and taking out, and the great mystery of "how do you know when you're finished?" I tell my writing students the story of the sculptor (usually I've heard this about Michaelangelo) who gets a block of marble and takes away everything that isn't the angle. "Easy for him" I snort. "He doesn't first have to make the marble and then start taking away what he Has Already Made." My young writers are comforted by that.
It's the cost of doing business (how many cliches can I pack into this...?), I suppose, and also the source of our deep gratitude to people who understand that it doesn't "just happen."
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