I am an artist. I am also left-handed. You are not at all surprised, I’m assuming. It’s well known that the left side of the brain governs things like logic and reasoning, as well as the right side of the body. Right brained people (i.e. lefties) have the abstract thought and creativity going for them. In some brains, the hemispheres exchange information most freely, in others, hardly at all. The former is predominantly true for lefties, the latter righties.
I’ve been reading in certain anthropological and archeological publications (here he goes again) that the type of lateral thinking & problem solving we lefties specialize in hasn’t always been an advantage. Quite the contrary, it’s actually been a hindrance in the course of human evolution.
The word “left” comes from the O.E. word for ‘weak’, in other languages, the word for left loosely translates as “clumsy.” Now, I know I’m clumsy, but only in terms of gross motor movement. From the elbow down, I’m anything but clumsy - I’m outright gifted. In my mind, I can string words together to bring men to tears with their eloquence. But these are not the things that will help you escape a saber-toothed tiger. As it turns out, we aren’t clumsy because of any deficiency of the right brain, but because of the aforementioned hemispherical communication. A left-brained (right-handed) person receives only one set of commands from the brain (“Run fast. Get up that tree.”) in times of crisis. A right-brained (left-handed) person is receiving two command sets, from two parts of the brain that process situations differently (“Run fast. Get up that tree. Wait, cat’s don’t swim, get to the river. No, the tree. Oh, God, there are fangs in my kidneys.”).
Granted, it’s the difference between .25 seconds and 1.25 seconds, but that’s a long time when being chased by a smilodon (or so I’d imagine. Eventually a left-handed neanderthal developed the spear and made short work of ‘em).
This roughly explains why the upstairs hallway at my parents house is fettered with the athletic accolades of my two right-handed brothers, and not one contribution to the scholastic sports legacy by yours truly. But it still does not the absence of my science fair honors or my National Latin Exam medals.
How does this translate to art? I would think that would be self-evident. Survival without tools or agriculture was possible, but civilization was not. Those humans capable or a greater level of creative, lateral thought made civilization possible with the creation of tools and the domestication of plants and animals.
So, in other words, art is what sets us apart from the animals. Being able to think creatively enabled us to settle into one place, divide our labor, develop an artisan class, and carve a niche for art in society that never existed before, is not necessary for survival, but is essential for living. Art pervades everything we do. The cultivation of plants is an art. The engineering of an automobile is an art. The writing of a newspaper article is an art.
Sure some of those are formulaic, but then, so is printmaking. I can’t skip a step, or there’ll be no ink on my plate and thus no image. But within each craft, the true artists always emerge and garner greater recognition. Because not only does society need art, it needs artists (but that’s another essay altogether).
Life is tough; it had always been. Sometimes, inhumanly so. At those times, we need the artist to remind us of our own humanity, or the humanity of those around us, across the globe from us, or preceeding us by years, decades, or centuries.
This essay sat three-quarters finished in my computer for weeks. I couldn’t find a way to finish it until we attended the Berkshire Veteran’s Photography Project opening reception last night. As we stood looking at large scale portraits of veterans, while the vets themselves mulled about the room, sharing experiences with but civilians and veterans alike, it struck me. This is a perfect example of the necessity of art in human history. The veterans all posed unsmiling, upright. But the photographer had still coaxed the personality out of his subjects. Sam could stand stony-faced, but couldn’t hide the smile in his eyes from the camera. Every line in Ralph’s face seemed to tell a story.
It takes both lobes of the brain to properly record the course of human history. We need the logical left brain or remember the names, the dates, the movements, and the events that have shaped civilization. But we also need the right brain to breathe life into this data, to make it more than words on a page or a headstone, to put the ‘human’ in the course of human events.
I am an artist. I am not a perfectionist. There are few things in this world that could, even by the most optimistic of judgments, be considered perfect. When I rack my brain to think of something I’d call perfect, I can only think of perfect moments. But moments are fleeting, and if they were truly perfect, they’d last, right? Wrong. Allow me a philosophical digression:
I once had a theological discussion with a guy who’s basis for his atheism was, “How could a perfect God create an imperfect world?” My answer at the time was “I suppose if you’re perfect, you can do anything you damn well please.” But in the years since, I’ve decided that any perfect higher power has a view of the bigger picture that we do not, they see the strings and pulleys behind it all. So perhaps existence is perfect, and we, only playing a microscopic part in the grand scheme, are only privy to a small piece of the puzzle, imperfect in and of itself, but perfectly befitting of its role in the big picture.
I made myself a little dizzy there, but the point I’m getting at is that these perfect moments are only so because they ARE fleeting, forcing us to take stock in the importance of each moment, because it’ll never happen again.
From an artist’s standpoint, particularly as a narrative artist, trying to capture the perfect moment for immortality is a fool’s errand. Were we to freeze these moments and look at them with the critical eye of an artist, we’d see them start to come apart at the seams- the longer you look at that perfect smile on her face, the more you can see the trepidation. Oh, and I didn’t even notice the stray dog shitting right behind us (thank you, Rembrandt).
I tell my students that (in terms of portraiture) the most perfectly proportioned and symmetrical person in the world is both the most beautiful, but also the most forgettable. Watch a Miss America pageant, the faces all start to blur into one another after a while, and Miss Alaska looks just like Miss Utah looks just like Miss Connecticut.
We see true beauty in the imperfections, and it’s as subjective for the viewer as it is diverse in the person, scene, or whatever it is we’re taking in.
So, as an artist, I cannot hope to tell you what’s perfect. I wouldn’t dare be so bold as to tell you what you should find beautiful. All I can do is tell the truth. Even abstract expressionists & surrealists tell what they believe to be the truth. All we can do is give our best representation or expression of our subject, then it’s up to the viewer to decide whether or not it’’s “beautiful” or “perfect.”
Lies are ugly. That’s why when some artist doesn’t understand the human figure before they start to deconstruct it, the viewer is not fooled. Picasso knew how to paint a person in space before he made the conscious decision to attempt to show multiple conflicting planes of the face on one canvas. He’s not lying to us, he’s simply giving us more information than our eyes are used to taking in in a single moment.
He also was not striving for perfection, he was striving for truth. When we try to make something perfect, we effectively homogenize it to the point where it simply seems unrealistic. We gloss over the things that make it individual, memorable, and therefore beautiful. Another thing I say to my students: “The perfect is the enemy of the perfectly good.”
I am an artist. And I’m a teacher. So occasionally I’ll post a practical entry. This is one of those times:
I did some designs for a friend of mine who is a DJ (the One Drop Sound System), and we made some shirts. Nothing unusual there. Some time later, he was hosting a charity concert/artisan show/performance art event and, of course, there was more talk of t-shirts. Wouldn’t it be great, we pondered, if we could print shirts there at the show? I’ve always been a firm believer that anything kinetic draws a crowd, and this way, I wouldn’t have any unsold stock left over. It got the wheels turnin’, anyway.
With silk screening (at least using photosensitive emulsion), electricity is only necessary when preparing a screen and “curing” (setting ink with heat) the final product. And if it’s dark, light helps. So, yes, I’d need an outlet, but only for a lamp and a heat gun, but I’d forego the exposure box (for setting screens). As for water, yes, it is necessary. But not much. If I kept one bucket of clean water for cleaning my sponges, I could set up my slop sink and use it for wastewater & cleaning my plastic spatulas, squeegees & dirty sponges. All told, I’d need about six gallons, max.
The rest is in the preplanning: I’d need the aforementioned sponges, spatulas, squeegees, some clean towels, a drying rack, inks (with extra jars for mixing colors on the spot) and shirts. Of course, I’d already fitted a collapsable drafting table with my screen hinges. So the only caveat would be that I’d have to prepare the screens in advance, so I crammed as many images of varying sizes onto my ten screens as I could, including the event logos, my friend’s logos and some other fun designs and packed it all into the truck. With water-based inks, I was feeling as environmentally-friendly and carbon neutral as I could be.
And it actually worked.
There were, of course, certain problems. As that it was the wettest summer in living memory, things were not drying at all quickly, and I’m sure my instructions to run the shirts through the dryer when people got home fell on many a deaf ear, and images faded (I know this because people sought me out afterwards to remedy this problem...). Could I, I would put a dryer in my truck bed, but alas, I could not.
I charged shirt + image. Each image (based on size) cost a different amount, and multiples were encouraged. My favorite ones were when somebody chose a few images they liked, gave me $25 (my cap on pricing) and said “go nuts.” If people brought their own clothing, they saved on a shirt. People were literally pulling the shirts off their backs and I felt like a street performer. It was a grand old time, and I repeated it at a few craft shows.
So these, for any ambitious printmakers who’d like to try out In Situ Silk Screening, are the basics. It’s amazing how much a process can be pared down when we look at the real essence of it. Maybe that’s the underlying moral of this whole essay. Commercial printers would have scoffed (and did) to see me work: registration by eye, screening over wet ink, mixing colors on the screen (on the fly), but I’ve never enjoyed screening more. I couldn’t care less what offends the sensibilities of commercial printers. Art has always been a social endeavor to me, and being able to move my studio outdoors was more fun that should be allowed.
For that same event (being the obsessively prepared person I am), I contracted out a bunch of concert tees to have at the ready. His processes were too rigid for him to adjust to the humidity and all his screens failed. Not that I’m bragging (and I hope it doesn’t sound like I am), but having taken the time to learn the chemistry and the mechanics of all the aspects of the process gave me the flexibility to pull off this whole escapade. I’ve heard a true craftsman never blames his tools, and I can get behind that.
I am an artist. I am also a craftsman. I am currently unsure if there’s a distinction. Intellectually, I know that there is. As succinctly as I can put it, a craft is functional art. If it serves a utilitarian purpose, it’s a craft; if it serves an exclusively aesthetic purpose, it is art. And, as art, it commands a much higher dollar value than a craft.
I’m very torn as to whether I buy into this dogma. By essay’s end, I will have both defended and picked apart this logic. And I can almost guarantee I will not come to any sort of conclusion, infuriating myself and and any readers who were (naively) banking in my wisdom to resolve the matter.
The human animal has a funny little quirk among animals of valuing luxuries over neccessities. It obviously comes from a time when we were settling into cognitive thought and first started appreciating things for their appearance. We still knew that we needed things, and we knew what those things were (tools, clothing, shelter, food), but now there were suddenly these things we wanted for no other reason than they looked good. They didn’t help us live, they made living more enjoyable. I’ll fight the urge to go on an anthropological tangent and merely note that over time, labor became specialized, and an artisan class emerged, and with each generation, these craftspeople became better at making the things we needed, to the point where aesthetic decisions were coming into play.
Fast forward 13,000 years. I can sell an etching for $275, but a book I hand stitch, using a less successful pull of that same etching as a cover, I can charge $45. Tops.
The book is far more useful, so why not charge more? I think I have the answer: First off, the etching is pure art. I am implicitly saying when I market this etching, “This is the best I have to offer. It is a culmination of years of practice & education, and a fine demostration of all my artistic abilities. I offer this etching up to history, in the hopes that future generations (as well as this) will appreciate it for the miracle that it is.”
It’s not as hyperbolic as it sounds. We artists must have a firm belief in our abilities to even want to present our art to the world. I also think it hits upon the crux of the matter: Art is an investment. A craft, no matter how beautifully made, is intended to be used. And things that get used tend to get broken, weathered, beaten & torn. So, to our subconscious, the craftsperson is saying, “I present to you this, the best of my hand. I thing it’s really good, but not so great that you should put it away forever in a safe place. Go ahead, break it! I can always make another...”
Yes, I know how wrong this is. The craftsperson is no less talented, their work no less amazing than an artist. Proof? take a mid-nineteenth century quilt, put it on the wall, and 150 years later that craft becomes art. Take a (and yes, allow me the lattitue to paraphrase Indiana Jones here) crudely flaked stone, bury it for 13,000 years, dig it up, and put it in a museum. I’d stand in line to see that before 99.99% of all the work of all the artists of the last 500 years.
Once again, time is the great equalizer. So, craftsmen take heart, we artists won’t make any money until we’re dead, and even then, only if we’re very, very good. But, not only will you make money in your lifetime, but if by some fluke your work manages to survive a few centuries intact, it’ll BECOME art.
Not that it wasn’t before, but, well, y’know...
I am an artist. And I sometimes run into roadblocks. Inspiration comes in waves, but waves have peaks and valleys. So sometimes I find myself struggling with finding subject matter worth sharing.
At these moments (I should not say ‘moments’, they sometimes last months) I must always return to the following truth: Art is a visual language. We communicate stories, ideas, emotions and more using images instead of- or in conjunction with- words.
There are some artistic camps that assert that art for art’s sake is enough. That pure form needs no story, no narrative, no overarching meaning. I can accept that, but personally, I find it rather uninspiring. I’ve drawn countless abstract compositions, but even the most successful ones have felt incomplete until I’ve plugged some sort of subject matter into the composition.
So what inspires me? I’ve played with organic forms against geometric in monotype. I etched nautical scenes for years. I’ll always return to drawing the human figure. I’ve started studies for a series of architectural etchings. But if there is one thing that brings me to the drafting table every time, it is iconography.
Do I mean that in the purest sense? Perhaps not. What I refer to when I say iconography is a single object, a series of objects, or a scene that suggests a larger story. A vignette, if you will. Back in art school, a teacher was laying into me over an image he didn’t think translated well (I’m not sure why, it has sold several times over...), and a friend who had worked very closely to me for a few years came to my aid with, “Mike’s art always looks like the opening scene of a movie, like it’s about to open up into a larger story.”
Bam! Pow! It blindsided me. She’d just summed up why I make art, and what I’m trying to accomplish with that art before I’d ever started asking the question of myself.
So where do I draw this inspiration from? It’s simple; I don’t feel like I need to attach a story to an object, when I feel as though every object already has a story to tell. Have you ever jumped into a foundation hole and pulled an old bottle from the wall, and just turned it over in your hands, and let your mind drift back to who may have used it, and under what circumstances it came to be buried here? Have you ever been walking through the woods and come across a kill site, bones or feathers, and imagined what animals were involved; whether the prey ever saw its end coming? Ever been cleaning out an old relative’s closet and come across a ledger with the dates 1907-1911 written in it along with a list of expenditures and tried to piece together exactly who’s hand had written it?
Yes, these all sound like jobs for an archaeologist, not an artist. But is art so different? Don’t many of us try and string together a story using what few visual clues the world has decided to share with us? I see both pursuits as detective work. Time washes away all but the faintest traces, and leaves both artist and archaeologist with three things: a few relics, an imagination, and a desperate need to tell the story.
This is what I mean by iconography. Telling a whole story with just a few images. Sure everybody’s story is going to be slightly different, but that’s a chance I’m willing to, nay looking to make.
Special thanks to Andrea Cacase, who not only appears in the drawing at the top of the page, but whom I've quoted for this essay.
I am an artist. And I get a lot of sideways glances for saying that out loud. Sure, anybody who knows me wouldn’t raise an eyebrow at hearing me refer to myself an an artist, but when meeting someone for the first time, it never fails to draw some level of surprise or skepticism.
That may seem rude or prejudiced of people, but consider this: what is the second question we’re always asked when we meet somebody new? If the first is our name, the second question is usually, “What do you do?” meaning, “How do you make your money?” (Unless you’re getting picked up, then they’ll be fishing for information on your significant other. Or so I’m told, I’ve never been hit on, as far as I know.)
Personally, what I do for money has little to do with who I am. I work four part-time jobs, and I’m not sure which, if any, will ever evolve into a career. I have two brothers who could both honestly answer the question, though. One is a teacher, the other a sailor, and they are both passionate about their chosen professions. When my brother says, “I’m a sailor,” he’s referring not only to how he earns his living, but also to what he loves; what he does for fun. My other brother may not teach for fun, but none of us doubts that he’s found his calling.
But would it be wrong of him to say, upon introduction, “I’m a father”? Doubtless he’d rather be with his family than twenty teenagers.
I used the phrase ‘chosen profession’ above. My older brother has a Bachelor’s in history and a Master’s in education. My younger is a Massachusetts Maritime Academy graduate. I have a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts, and we three are all pursuing our ‘chosen professions’. I simply must do other things to make ends meet. Perhaps the reason I’ve been unable to parlay any of my jobs into a career is that I’ve already chosen my profession. I say ‘perhaps’, but we all know it to be true.
I personally find the question discomforting. If I answer dishonestly, and say “I’m a teacher,” the next question will invariably be “Where do you work?” Nowhere in particular, I’m a sub. Should I say “I work part time as a land surveyor and also as a furniture conservator?” Both are good jobs that I do enjoy, but can one honestly call a part-time job a career?
And if I answer truthfully? I know that “I’m an artist” better communicates who I am as a person - my dreams, my motivations, my passions and my future plans. Most folks react to my answer with genuine interest, as that it’s so far removed from what they’re used to hearing. The rest of the conversation passes amiably, discussing my art, their own favorite artists, friends of theirs who are also artists, or other interesting, art-related topics. Whenever I’ve introduced myself as a land surveyor, I’ve had to hear about the neighbors fence or argue the merits of denitrification. For the most part, people like to know that there are individuals out there who are at least trying to live the dream, and want to latch onto the dream themselves, if only for a little while.
There are always a few jerks who’ll counter with “Well, you’ll never make any money ‘til you’re dead,” but I’m not in the business of justifying my existence to them. I’m a pragmatist, and I know it’ll be a long time, if ever, before art will support my wife and I. I know I’ll need a day job. But I’m not about to give up my identity to fit more seamlessly into polite conversation.
So I mitigate. I think I’ve effectively distilled years of awkward conversations into an appropriate response. It stops the cynics from tearing at your passion and lets the believers in on the joke. It neither denies me my identity, nor diminishes the struggles that every one of us, artist or otherwise, faces in life. And I invite my fellow artists to help themselves to it: “I am an artist. But I work other jobs to feed the art habit.”
