Catch-22: on the creation of artwork

[permetaform]

There are moments and sometimes days when all I can see are the seams. Where what I've tried to make beautiful is just a frankenstein of stitches and half decayed limbs regurgitated from the ground from which all things come.

What can you do with this? What is this?

What *is* this? Frankenstein brain-child I might so call it, a creature patchworked from nothing new, but is that just because I'm its mother? (and ya'll should know my feelings on *her* by now)

On the one hand, seeing the faults means that I have the ability to get better, create better perhaps somehow. Or know, somehow, when I finally might get it *right*.

On the other hand...it will never be completely perfect. To be a constantly growing, evolving artist of *anything* there must be *change*. To have change, you must know *what* to change. To know what to change...you must see where the faults lie.

And faults lie like seams; stitches holding skin and muscle and heart together. Perhaps, even, a soul?

::pets half-alive vid and closes Premiere:: Time to sleep on this, I think.

Comments

[phreid.livejournal.com]

*applause* That was--very well said. Especially being a treatise on lack of being able to say things well.

[billradish.livejournal.com]

Good art, whatever it's form, breathes. It rarely (if ever) breathes for everyone, but when it's definitely become art, it should be breathing for someone.

From what I can tell, there's a horrid little quirk when it comes to artists. They start out with a basic or even advanced understanding of the art they want to create and go about doing that. Then as time goes on they learn more and more ways to improve and get better about looking for ways to go further and advance a bit more. As the artist grows, so do their personal expectations grow and refine, guiding them closer to both what they want to create, and what their art wishes to be. And often, this is where many artists stop. The only stages past this one I have seen are defeat, or just acceptance that the combination of art and perfection is mutually destructive and continuing to create and improve, but with less insistence on perfection and more on making the flaws and seams part of the artwork, rather than detracting from it.

I? Am talking out of my ass. This should be obvious. However, it remains true that most artists I've known have had a progression similar to this, if not lining directly with it.

[luminosity]

I've never phrased this as beautifully as you just did, but I believe that this feeling of wanting to make something beautiful and only seeing the effort/mistakes/crap is an integral part of the creative process.

A few very, very true platitudes for you: It's always darkest before the dawn. If all else fails, walk away for a while. The crack in the wall is still part of the wall. We are what we are, not what we do; however, what we do is informed by what we are. Oh, that a man's reach should exceed his grasp; or what's a heaven for? *Art is never finished, only abandoned.*

We are constantly re-evaluating what we do, and by doing that, we tend to re-evaluate ourselves as well. I think that solution to dealing with this comes not by separating ourselves from what we do, but by keeping the work close to our hearts while we still separate ourselves from it. We will never be able to see what we do objectively, especially stuff that's as emotionally full of us as art *is* because we are sort of living in it. We're so close to it.

With every vid I make, with every drawing, painting, every dish, pie, cake, every crocheted, embroidered, ceramic, sculpted thing I do, the first things I *ever* see are the Frankestein seams. Sometimes, it's all I can see. But that doesn't mean that it's not *aliiiive*, and it doesn't mean that it's not good. :)

[permetaform]

::ponders and nods::

::GLOMPS::

[hannahrorlove.livejournal.com]

I know what you're talking about. There's something I wrote when I was just getting into fic that I was really proud of at the time - I still am, to a degree - and looking back at it, I'm embarrassed at what I put in. If I were to write it now, it would be a very different piece of work. I'm tempted to go back and edit it, but at the same time, I want to keep it the way it is, as a reminder of how much my writing's changed.

[snowyheart.livejournal.com]

*nods* I totally know what you're saying here. This is what I tell myself when I'm hating every single art project I do:

"Any artform you practice will only get better the more you do it. So, no matter how flawed or ugly something seems to you, it's better than yesterday's creation, and tomorrow's creation will be better than that. You can only get better."

Hope it helps... ^^

[permetaform]

::nods::

::hugs::