Go Team!

I am an artist.  Specifically, I am a printmaker, a figure artist (mostly drawing), a designer (logo art), a draftsman, a musician and a writer.  Okay, so that’s not very specific at all.

When I hit a wall with one medium, there’s always another I can turn to – sometimes I’ll spend months doing nothing but writing, sometimes I won’t put pen to paper for weeks, but I’ll fill a sketchbook.

But let’s say, hypothetically, that I hit a wall in the studio, and I’m not ready to move on to a new medium.  There’s something else that’ll kick start the creativity every time:  another person.

The Hearth

I’ve known it for a few years, but I didn’t realize when I first started printmaking that one of the major factors in choosing this particular medium is that it’s a communal medium.  Family’s have gathered around the hearth, the kitchen table, or (for better or for worse) the TV for centuries.  Communities gather around the Church, the park or the local watering hole.  We printmakers gather around the press.  Sure, there’s the solo part of the process- the designing and prepping of the matrix (be it etching, monotype, litho, silk screening, etc…), but we always have to reconvene at the press.  Here is where ideas are shared, opinions given, and alternative perspectives are added to our art.  And if you’re low on ideas, you can be damn sure another artist will have plenty to say about your work.

I could never get into painting, and I was never sure why.  I now know it’s because I always felt isolated in painting.  That’s your space, this is mine.  I used to go upstairs to the painting department at UMassD and marvel at what a ghost town it was.  Artists in their cubicles, listening to headphones, only occasionally sharing their work for critique.

In most other media, there’s a focal point; Ceramists have their kilns, metalsmiths their anvils.  Woodworkers in a shared space tend not to have their own table saws (that’d be a pointless waste of space).

After I left college, the necessity of a sense of community became even more apparent.  When you have to carve time out of a bust schedule to get into the studio, and discretionary personal time becomes more and more rare, setting up a time and place to work with other artists becomes hugely helpful.  Not only does it guarantee you’ll be in that creative setting for a set amount of time, but it also provides for collaboration, which can not only get you out of a creative funk, but will push your art to new levels.  No artist has ever been worse off for collaborating.

No time spent in the studio is wasted.  Even if I don’t get a single usable image out of a session, I’ve at least learned what doesn’t work, so next time, I can maximize my creative output that much more.  But if there’s another person (even if they aren’t an artist.  Face facts here, people, artists don’t buy much art…) in the studio, I can ask for advice on where to take the work.  Even if I don’t do exactly what they’ve suggested, they’ve pointed me in another direction than the one that led me to that creative dead end I was at before.

Figure drawing groups are great.  Models need breaks, and those breaks create ready made intervals for collaborative critique.  Quilter’s circles?  Why the hell not?  If you’re in a shared space with other artists, you WILL get feedback.

For the Fallen - Etching

Oh, so you’re not interested in getting feedback?  Well, then, I pity you.  Your work will never evolve into something better than it is now.  And if you’re not interested in improving, then you might as well hang up your apron.  Yes, I wear an apron in the studio.  And I look damn good in it, too.

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