Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Creating in a Series

"Kitty Series. Hoosac." John P. Soule.  1871.
Digital image courtesy of the Getty Open Content Program

Hello Friends,

When I was in high school my creative writing teacher gave the class a strange assignment: We were to designate a special journal, go outside for 28 nights straight and write about the moon.  Being high school students, we immediately balked at the seemingly cumbersome scope of the assignment, and at having it dictated to us what our subject would be, and such a trite one at that.

But after a couple of weeks our tune changed.  By that time, we'd all written everything that we had expected to write about the moon.  Having to write on it over and over again was forcing us to go deeper, to get stranger and more creative, to make connections we hadn't made.  It forced us to revisit similar concepts from a new perspective.  Also, themes started emerging over the four weeks. We were all too young to have really developed themes or styles over the course of our short writing careers, so this was really our first time to discover these things in our own writing.  By the end of the assignment we were hooked, and many of us opted to continue writing about the moon just to see how far we could get.


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This reminds me somewhat of another experience I had in high school, when my mother dragged me to go see a Warhol exhibit that was in town.  It was a massive exhibit with room after room of his works, including both his famous pop art prints but also photographs and sketches.  At the time I was convinced I hated Warhol.  What was so special about Marilyn Monroe's head in different colors and a can of soup, anyway?  But then I saw the exhibit, and I saw everything as part of an entire series or collection.  Again, my tune changed.  I started to see themes emerging, themes that I could only appreciate after looking at multiple pieces side by side.  I got a sense of what it was he was trying to say.

There is a certain subtlety, nuance and flexibility to working themes across an entire series or collection.  It allows for development, dialog, different perspectives within one whole.  To pack all of that into one piece would make that piece completely over the top, hitting viewers in the head with blatant preaching and overused symbolism.  The art of the series enables a picture of a can of soup to really just be a picture of a can of soup, but also to say a million other things.


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These are lessons I have taken with me as an adult.  For instance, they really enhanced my ability to appreciate recent exhibits on Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series and a collection of Toulouse Lautrec prints and proofs at my favorite D.C. art museum, The Phillips Collection.  Each individual piece of the Migration Series looks childish and mundane, but in the context of the greater series these pieces tell an incredible story of a major historical migration in the U.S.  So too do Lautrec's prints tell a story about turn of the century Paris and the development of printing technology, whereas each of his pieces individually is really just an advertisement for low-brow entertainments.  Needless to say, I bought catalogs of both collections for my coffee table.  One print will never do.

The notion of the single-artist series naturally gives way, then, to the curated collection.  Choosing different pieces from different artists so that they can be juxtaposed, compared and contrasted, show varied approaches to the same subject matter or the same technique.  Curating itself is an art.  My first real experience as a curator probably came when I was editing my college's literary magazine and discovered, completely to my own surprise, that all of the pieces my colleagues and I had selected for admission had some kind of MidEastern or ancient biblical theme.  We ran with it, selecting a cover image that had been taken in Morocco by a student studying abroad and calling that semester's issue Scribe.  When we realized that this was happening, we then consciously rearranged the pieces to give them a flow, to really capitalize on the waxing and waning of different themes, ideas and images as the reader moved from piece to piece.


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I realize that these concepts continue to pop up everywhere.  Today, I am a hobbyist tarot reader.  I have always loved the idea of creating my own deck, which makes sense given that it would merge my appreciation for tarot with my creative hobbies.  Tarot decks are made up of 78 cards, each with a distinct title and symbolism.  I decided to create one using still life and portrait photography, all of which would incorporate flowers that I felt embodied the ethos of the particular card.  And as I go about this project (as I write I'm a little under half done) I notice other themes popping up.  Lighting and angles, certain color combinations, even how close I zoom in on my subjects, the types of photo editing I perform.  And when themes can be seen across multiple pieces in a series, the absence of those themes can also be telling as well.  Whereas most of my cards are bright and vibrant, meant to embody life and spring, the death card is clearly devoid of these concepts.

Perhaps the most obvious encounter, however, that we all have with the concept of things created in a series, and of curated collections, is fashion shows.  Each season designers are challenged to embody the zeitgeist through a collection of several pieces of clothing, utilizing similar fabrics, colors, cuts, ideas.  All different but all the same, as part of a cohesive overall statement.  Shows featuring multiple designers demonstrate the notion of curation.  And the fact that certain trends pop up in shows by different designers across the industry demonstrates a kind of collaborative (or competitive) dialog.

I recently attended a fashion show featuring several designers in the Washington, D.C. area.  The event, Underneath It All, took place in the Dupont Underground and was co-sponsored by a number of area stakeholders.  Dupont Underground is an art space that is literally found underground in the old trolley terminal under Dupont Circle, not to be mistaken with the Dupont Circle Metro Station.

If you have never been to a live fashion show, it's something you should go try at least once.  Even if you're not a fashion person per se, you do have to wear clothes, and a fashion show brings clothing to life in a way that we just don't get to see otherwise.  In this case, I got to see collections by several different designers local to me.  So, one, I got to appreciate a series of linked but different pieces by each designer and, two, I enjoyed the way in which the show's curation enabled me to watch the different collections in dialog with one another, comparing and contrasting.  Even so, there were common themes throughout, because D.C. is a distinct environment with distinct tastes and needs that will naturally influence all of its designers.

Bellow is my own curated selection of what I thought were among the most striking pieces (that also photographed well, a few favorites had to be left out because I just didn't get good photos).  I've purposely taken them out of the order in which they appeared and instead put them in a new order that I feel really exemplifies how the same themes appeared across collections and designers.  Enjoy the compare-and-contrastability!  (Designers/brands: Fordam Rowe, Ema Dona, Espion Atelier, Jarmal Harris, BTF Clothiers)


                        
                        
                        
                        
                        




What about you?  Have you ever had the opportunity to create or curate a series before?  How did that experience compare to working on a single piece independent of anything else?  Did you find your decision making consciously change because you knew you were working on each piece in relation to the greater whole, or did you find yourself surprised at the end by the ways in which your collection came together?  Discuss in the comments.

Emily
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Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Recharging Creativity in Your Happy Place

"Oasis in the Desert," Emil Orlik, c. 1913
Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art Open Access Program


Hello friends,

In the past I've written about the importance of having a good workspace, but I've come to realize that it's equally important to have a good escape place, as well.  Often when we engage in the creative process we do so to relax; for example, I like to knit meditatively while watching Netflix.  It becomes easy to forget that being creative is also exhausting.  Think about the amount of brain power and emotional energy that gets invested here: the time spent deciding what project to do, planning it out, obtaining and budgeting the resources, finding time to do it.  Add to that deadlines for completing them, figuring out what you're going to do with it (is it a gift?), and setbacks encountered along the way. Then, if you're trying to monetize your hobby, all that energy increases tenfold: Will it sell? How do I promote it?  What price should it be?  Is it worth it?

If you take your creative passions seriously enough, it can be like having a second job.

And that's all without counting the actual time and energy that go into physically making what it is you're making.  And any physical problems your body might have to endure, like the fact that knitting too much triggers my carpal tunnel syndrome and makes my hands go numb, or that sitting for a long time screws up my hips.  I know wire turners who had to stop because they were getting migraines, painters who had to stop because of the fumes...Oy.

I have come to the conclusion that maintaining a creative lifestyle, freeing yourself up to really give yourself over to the creative process, and staying in it for the long haul require the ability to get away, not just from the exigencies of daily life and from your day job if you have one, but from the demands that we put on ourselves in our creative endeavors as well.

My happy place, it's no secret, is Massachusetts.  I used to live there, my best friends are there, and so it gives me an immediate sense of sentimentality, homeyness, and familiarity.  It's also cute beyond measure.  Going to Massachusetts is like drinking warm cocoa.  And oh, those New England seasons, and that perfect mix of cosmopolitan grit and novelesque, pastoral scenery.


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To me going to Mass is like being whisked away into a fairytale.  Time stops.  The rest of the world ceases to exist.  Anything that was bothering me is left at the border.

But if you want to triangulate even further, past the state level, past even the city level, I can actually pinpoint the exact geographic spot at which I am my most relaxed and content: the courtyard at Boston Public Library.  The entire building is gorgeous and palatial, the most beautiful place in the city, a testament to Boston's high regard for learning and knowledge and education.  It is full of marble statues and frescoes and mosaics, and at the center of all that splendor sits the courtyard:


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Have you ever seen anything so heartstoppingly magnificent?  It is literally a cloistered little sanctuary right in the middle of the city.  You can see the tops of the skyscrapers that surround the building over the library walls but you can't hear any of the noises from the bustling streets outside. It exists in perfect, quiet seclusion.  This is where I go to experience beauty and calm.  And if I can't get there physically, it's where I go mentally.

Though the reading room ain't half bad neither (no, that isn't Ancient Rome).




This place is so heavily ingrained in my mind as the source of all goodness and inspiration that its energy followed me all the way to Texas.  I was in Austin a few months ago and, looking for something unusual and purely local to do when I had some free time, I stopped by Museum of the Weird completely on a whim off the street.  My tour guide performed a psychic demonstration for us. Mind you, I was there by myself and the other people in my tour knew nothing about me.  I hadn't said a word about Boston the entire time I was there, mentioning only that I was from D.C.

The guide asked me to visualize a place, any place in the world.  Naturally I picked the BPL courtyard. My guide then drew something on a little slip of paper and handed it to me.  He said that I was imagining something like an oasis, though that wasn't quite right, and he saw big dark things towering over.  I saw that on the paper he had scribbled pond with a little palm tree, some books, and written the word "Boston" on it.

This blog isn't about the occult, and I won't speculate about what eerie things may or may not have been happening.  But I will comment further simply to note how fitting it is that the image I had in my mind of BPL's courtyard came through as an oasis.  That is the function it serves in my life, and how strong those mental and emotional associations are for me.

I'm at a point where merely closing my eyes for a few seconds and imagining the courtyard makes me feel calm and centered, and helps me focus my attention.  It's not magic.  It's conditioning.  I've come to associate those feelings with that mental image, and so visualizing the image triggers the feelings. You might even go so far as to call it a form of self-hypnosis.  It's invaluable.

Having the ability to immediately calm and focus oneself is beneficial in any aspect of life, but it is particularly helpful when engaging in creative spaces, where the options and pressures and possibilities are literally endless.  It's easy for creative types to get distracted and enthusiastic about a million different ideas and projects, and equally easy to burn out because, as I discussed earlier, the creative process is so heavy on personal output that you can't help but become exhausted.  So when I need a breather, I think about the courtyard, or look at whatever new pictures of it (there are always plenty) have emerged on Instagram.


What about you, readers?  Do you have a designated place you go to, whether physically or mentally, to achieve a sense of calm and focus?  Do you find the creative process relaxing or exhausting or a combination of the two?  Do you find yourself needing to take breaks from your own creative endeavors?  When you find yourself overwhelmed what do you do to give yourself a break?  Discuss in the comments.
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