Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

Elemental

photo collage C. Ascher

People often ask artists, people often ask me, “Where do you get your ideas?” which actually seems to mean, “Where do you get your strange ideas?”  It seems to stymie them how artists working expressively can keep generating image after image, many of them rendered in very unique, unexpected and yes, sometimes weird ways.

It’s one thing to look at a beautiful landscape or flower, even to see a group of pleasantly arranged objects or an attractive face and be moved to want to represent it realistically. That’s what I call ‘apparently direct inspiration’, the impulse comes from wanting to capture that exact image, and the focus is on gaining the technique to do so. Once the image is made, the usual reaction is for the viewer to experience the skill of rendering and thus be transported into the presence of the object or subject as if standing before it. The artist has fixed the image in time and place so that her/his experience of noting it, of being moved by it can be shared.

This ‘apparently direct inspiration’ creates the illusion that it is an outside-in process, a ‘pure’ response triggered by the sight of something that exists supposedly independent of the artist. This is the most expected way of receiving and rendering images, and most of us who are sighted can create in this way if we acquire the required mastery of the materials. Our success or ability can then be judged or measured in comparison to that of others who have chosen to render in this way no matter when, historically speaking, they did so. The image can be experienced directly; the artist’s interpretation (subtlety of brush or tool stroke, composition, lighting, the very moment or perspective chosen, etc.) must be invisible, subliminal, or at the very least discreet. This gives the impression that the artist doesn’t mediate the viewer’s experience.

To render in this way, people think ‘all’ the artist has t do it seems is to look around, see something and render it. Viewers accept this as obvious and relate to it quite readily.

It’s altogether another thing for an artist to render something by what I call ‘obviously filtered experience’. This inside-out approach shows the way a perceived image or an experienced event is processed, understood, integrated, altered and expressed by the artist. The artist in this case has to either align him/herself with a technique developed by others whose process is similar, their ‘style’ or their ‘ism’, or try to create her/his own.

While we’ve been exposed to the first rendering method for centuries, viewers often seem to have a hard time understanding the latter, more recently developed processes, hence the above question.

Since my art is largely the result of a mix of these former and latter processes, I sometimes answer the question by saying,

“Think that my head is like a food processor: images go into my eyes and sensations go in via my other senses; on the way from my heart to my mind they fall into my memory and get scrambled with the memory of other sights and experiences; my dreams, personality, culture(s), thoughts, conceptions (or misconceptions) get mixed in. The resulting concoction pours through my hands into my media and expresses itself as my work, coming out more like a pulpy, Expressive juice than a Realistic smoothie. Things are represented as they seem, or feel, or inspire, or provoke, not necessarily as they are. There are as many more variations, endless in fact, than there are objects or experiences my life.”

Then I ask hopefully, “Does that help answer your question?”

A Question of Degree?

This Introvert's Circus

photo collage C. Ascher

            “Are you an Introvert or Extrovert?” That question came up out of nowhere in a doctor’s waiting room. The person was reading a magazine. I was going to ignore the question. I edged over a little, pretending I hadn’t heard. But I couldn’t help thinking about it. The person looked at me expectantly.

My answer finally: “I am an artist.” I thought that pretty much covered it.

“What does that mean?” was the response. I was stuck. I had to clarify.

‘I mean I guess I’m both,” I said.

“It says here you’re either or. There’s a questionnaire, see?”

My stomach clenched. “No questionnaire.”

“Well, what do you mean?”

I regretted engaging, but now there was no way out. “Well,” how to explain it? “When I’m thinking about, researching, planning, and making my art, I want to be alone, undisturbed. The presence of someone else in my art space is distracting. And,” I added pointedly, “unwelcome.”

“Even if it’s your family?”

“Even love and affection have nothing t do with it. I get irritable. All I want is for the person to go away so that I can get back to work. But then, when the work is finished and I take it out of my studio, I want to experience people’s reactions, get into profound conversations about it. I want people to connect with it.” I hoped that did it.

            “So you want privacy and acclaim.”

            “Not privacy. It’s not about privacy. It’s about being alone with my material, trying to discover. And then it’s not about acclaim, it’s about seeing the impact the finished work has independently of me.”

            “What’s the difference? Being private is an alone thing isn’t it?”

            “Big difference. Privacy is when you take a break from being ‘public’, as when you’re with family or friends or at work and want some time to yourself to think, finish some task, rest, clear your mind or re-focus. You want to go back to being with people after you’re done.”

“Yes, of course.”

“But being solitary is different. You need to be alone to focus on the ideas and thoughts so that something may come of them, hopefully something meaningful and important. A break from that can mean you lose the thread, you lose the momentum, the possibility can be irretrievably lost. That is more frustrating than being with people is pleasant. The public or social interaction is then a burden to be avoided at all costs.”

            “But you want acclaim.”

            “No. Once the thinking comes to fruition, I want response. For what I’ve achieved to have any meaning, it has to have a life beyond me. Acclaim is about me; the attention is on me, in the end it’s a superficial response that makes me basically exploit the achievement, or in which the achievement is secondary. That’s useless to me, because what distinguishes me is my realizing something that has meaning beyond me. It can live on, be social or public in my stead while I go focus on the next possibility.”

“Don’t you take a break?”

 “Well, sort of. Not really. It’s always going on in my head. It’s because my work isn’t based on tasks or independent units. It’s a continuum. Do you see?” Surely.

            “You don’t want to be admired or loved? Don’t you want fame and fortune? Isn’t that what artists want?”

            “Of course, but not like that, not like you mean it.”

“How I mean it?”

“Because of me, not as a result of my achievement.”

            “What’s the difference?”           

            My upper lip had begun twitching. This was torture … what was holding the doctor up?

            “What is the difference?” repeated as if I hadn’t heard.

            There was no out. “What I am is only partly genetic, only partly determined by biology. Who I am is a result of how I’ve tried to understand my life, what I’ve noticed about life. What I make of and with it is what defines me, not my notoriety or success. It’s a process, see, a life’s work.” Why did I open my mouth? The look I was getting was skeptical, like I was trying to pull one over, or like I was some kind of alien spouting strange sounds.

            There was a long pause. Then: “Well, you should try this questionnaire,” was the reaction.

OMG! I thought, and changed my mind about giving out an invitation to my exhibition.

            “The doctor will see you now,” called the receptionist, and I bounded out of my chair like a Jack-in-the-Box. “Goodbye!” I said. I was free!

Virtual vs Actual

Free!

photo collage C. Ascher

I’m thinking that in this world of ‘selfies’ and minutiae, the focus seems to have shifted from our actual accomplishments to our texts and photos about our daily activities, our fantasies and to our ‘brand’. The ease and speed of recording, and the sheer volume of postings makes it imperative that we keep a ‘presence’ on the web, even if that presence is illusory, banal and in the end, only as noticeable as the number of hits it can amass.

Recording anything that moves, sharing, liking, linking, re-posting, hash-tagging, Blogging and other fun, easy, quick activities take up our attention, energy and give us the impression that we’re being creative and communicative without demanding undue effort on anybody's part. After all, it’s gotta be quick, it’s gotta be catchy and it’s gotta be accessible to millions!

It’s addictive; technology has allowed us to feel like magicians who can conjure up popularity, fame and hopefully fortune from the comfort of our electronic devices. At the very least we can amass ‘friends’ the world over without ever having to really deal with them as flesh and blood. We were primed for it by television, by all those weekly series and talking heads; and, just as we could change the channel at will, we can befriend and un-friend with a tap of a finger. If that isn’t magic…

Other than cautioning us to be careful and consider our choices, perhaps their actual aim, movies like Blade Runner, The Matrix and Artificial Intelligence have shown us an attainable goal. “I can do that!” cry the technophiles and inventors who are no longer under the calming, humanizing influence of Mr. Spock and the Star Trek world. All they see are the nifty gadgets created for the movies, the neat special effects, and in true nuts and bolts fashion, they set out to figure out how to realize them, how to outdo them, how to beat each other to the stock market rush.

Now we’re entering a new phase of technological ingenuity. Inventors are having paroxysms of pleasure figuring out how to make ‘smart’ devices. It’s not enough that we’re monitored on every street corner and that it’s open season on our every public act, we are now being scrutinized by our personal, effort-saving appliances. From our cars to our watches, from our coffee machines to our beds, our very bathroom mirrors, we are being watched, recorded, analyzed, computed, data about us is being amassed and broadcast to... whom? All this so that more devices can be created to target us, enhancing our belief that we are important: to those selling the devices we willingly offered up our privacy as sacrifice for that illusion.

Pretty soon, we won’t know we’re alive unless a gadget tells us so.

So was The Matrix really all that shocking? Living life in a womb-like pod, free of those annoying bodily functions, our every physical need provided via an umbilical-like tube while we live ‘in the cloud’ – hey, forget the mystery, we’ve created Heaven!  It must sound very appealing to those inventors. That is, unless they plan to keep themselves ‘off-line’ so that they can continue inventing and improving our lives?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for keeping those inventive hands and heads busy, and I do thank them that I get to ‘delete’ instead fussing with whiteout. By my very compliance, I share in the optimism created by the technology. But I also don’t want to get rid of my SLR camera, recycle my books, put my typewriter in a museum, just look longingly at my vinyl records, explain to kids what a postage stamp is (soon what a handshake is), give up the steering wheel when I drive, be plugged in and online at every second of the day, as if these things really are ‘ecological’ and ‘planet-saving’ in a world with billions of humans and more coming.

I don’t want to replace everything I worked hard to get for everything I’m supposed to want.

It’s not the inventors anyway, not their fault that everything still useful and appreciated is thrown out with the bathwater. It’s the industrialists. I just wish that when manufacturing gets a hold of new inventions, they don’t re-purpose every single factory and re-program every single assembly line and get rid of most of their human hands and minds except for the product marketers. But they are prey to or slaves of ‘the economy’ or ‘the marketplace’ or even ‘the stock market’, which get their grubby, greedy hands on everything.

I wish they didn’t eliminate every invention that came before, or make it so marginal that I have to be rich to indulge my ‘caprice’. I know how to use a pencil and paper, I don’t NEED a stylus and a screen, or a bank of public-access images. But how long will it be before some genius behind a sales counter in an ‘art store’ will look at me like I’m some kind of archeologist looking for an artifact if I ask for paint in tubes or bags of clay?

 I just wish that, with my privacy, I didn’t also have to give up my choice. I don’t want to be driven underground or be pushed aside because I don’t want ever new machines to ‘facilitate’ (or direct) all aspects of my life. As the movies warn, androids or mega-machines will perhaps inherit the earth; I just isn we didn't make it so speedily easy for them to do so. Not all of us want virtual lives; some of us LIKE actual living. 

Opening Galleries

The Dealer

photo collage C. Ascher

Why do people who are not artists or who know very little about art’s history, practitioners or techniques want to open art galleries? I have over time observed that there are two motivating factors: 

1) they love art as a superior endeavour, think that artists are ‘special’ humans and want to be part of their world, and/or 

2) they imagine that they will make great profits with little effort. 

Many in both of these camps fail. They either become quickly disillusioned with artists, often not the most reliable or easy people to deal with, or they find that despite the huge amounts of effort on their part, the money flows in completely the wrong direction.

The thing with art galleries is that their owners have to build interest, not only in the work and the artists they display, but also in the gallery itself. The essential ingredients are time, consistency, lack of pressure and increasing trust. These are all difficult things in this age of fast, variable and stressful. It takes patience, and alas, it takes a budget that can sustain something that will for a long time not necessarily be profitable, if it even pays for itself, or that may draw limited numbers of very demanding visitors, even if they are appreciative. (A public of family and friends is perhaps encouraging, but long-term, unless they are rich and collectors, or are actively engaged in promotion, they don’t really affect the gallery’s success).

All I can say when asked my opinion is this: If you believe in the art and in the artists you show and follow their evolution over a sustained period of time, if you don't need them to draw extra customers or to generate income, if you can spare the time and the space and schedule thoughtful, competent and engaging exhibitions, then your reputation as a curator or dealer will grow. Art audiences are demanding, they need to have informed, informative, stimulating and open discussions about what they see even if they are “expert’ – sometimes especially then. You must be able to provide them.

 I usually tell people it takes three to five years for a community to become truly engaged with a gallery and its artists. I also emphasize that places that try to razzmatazz, that is, galleries that resort to doing all kinds of 'entertaining' things to draw attention set themselves up for huge expenses for little gain. They end up constantly having to outdo themselves to keep the audience coming and burn out pretty quickly. In fact, they run the danger of drawing the 'wrong' audience for art because art isn't 'entertainment' and art isn’t about ‘instant gratification’. What art is, well, that’s open to discussion.

I Love "Em But!

Weight of the World

photo collage C. Ascher

I’m experiencing some difficulties due to a temporary problem with structural integrity. It’s making me out-of-character jumpy. I have one cartilage-less knee that needs replacing, another feeling abused and acting up in solidarity, and a shoulder that wants to freeze because it resents the extra workload. They conspire to keep me up at night, sometimes solo, taking turns to yell and scream, sometimes throwing temper tantrums all together. Not one is the forgiving kind; not one accepts to be eased with pills, massages, hot water bottles or snacks.

Last night was the worst. I spent long, tortuous hours failing in my attempts to find a position that might please even one of the complainants. I ended up pacing the halls, moving from couch to chair to couch, standing at the windows staring out into the darkness, envious of all those people sleeping in the still, quiet houses I saw.

As if all that were not bad enough, there was this bird, see. I love birds. This one sat somewhere right near my house, seemingly just outside my window. A small bird, I think, and it chirped. It didn’t sing, I swear it was tone deaf. It chirped, chirp, chirp, chirp, pause, chirp, chirp, chirp, pause chirp, chirp, no pause chirrrrp, chirp, chirp, chirp, pause … It didn’t do this at sunrise. It didn’t do this while other birds were around to answer it. It didn’t do this because it stood any chance at all of attracting a mate. No. It began sometime around three am and continued manically on and on until I imagined grabbing an elephant gun and going to find it.

Where are cats when you need them?

It must have sensed my mood, because just as, in desperation, I stuffed my ears with enough bathroom paper to look like a rabbit, it stopped. I didn’t believe it at first. I was sure it was part of a diabolical plot to drive me to distraction. With trepidation, I pulled out the big plugs of paper. Silence It as 4:15 am. If it hadn’t been for my joints I might have gotten some sleep.

There is nothing for it but to turn the whole thing into some kind of artwork. I just have to be able to think. And my joints have to let me.

Getting Ideas

Caring

photo collage C. Ascher

       I had a goldfish when I was young; actually it was a blackfish. It was one of those feathery-finned ones with a long, undulating tail and big, bulging eyes. It was very pretty. It lived by itself in a round bowl that had two flat sides and that sat on the kitchen counter. The fish would spend its time swimming back and forth lazily along one wall then the other of the bowl. The only thing that seemed to animate it was the food I sprinkled in dry slivers on the surface of its water.

I concluded that food was its life force, almost convinced by everything I learned in school that it was ‘just a fish’, incapable of any awareness other than hunger; everything else was ‘just instinct”.

I say I was almost convinced of its mindless status because there were moments when I felt guilty about it. It was alone. Didn’t fish belong in schools? And it seemed distressed when its water got cloudy, swimming closer and closer to the surface until it hung there by the mouth trying to suck in fresh air. I would clean the bowl then and note how it would dart to the opposite wall from where I stood when I bent down to examine it as if it were angry at me and wanted to avoid me.

My blackfish didn’t live too long. After one of my infrequent bowl cleaning jobs I noticed one of its eyes was bigger than the other. A fungus, I was told. The fish died and it disappeared down the toilet. I was reassured by my adults that such fish are ‘delicate’ and ‘they don’t live long”, that it ‘died of old age”. These were comforting thoughts. Still, I decided, no more fish bowls for me!

I didn’t think much about fish other than when I consulted a menu as I grew into adulthood. Not until I came across another fish, this one a real ‘gold’ fish, a small carp, in another bowl on a kitchen counter.

A friend and I had traveled from home to go do research in another city. We enrolled in a course meant to teach realistic oil painting techniques of the old masters. My friend was focused on learning the techniques; I wanted to assess the teaching method and the qualifications of the teacher in view of hiring him to do a workshop. It was a two-week course. Not inclined to stay in a hotel, nor in fact able to afford it we looked for and found a house to rent. The owner left on vacation with his children and we settled in.

The first thing I noticed the next morning at breakfast was a putrid smell. That’s when I realized that the bowl on the counter wasn’t for rooting plants but was a fish bowl. It was so filthy the water was brown, and it stank. At its surface I could see what looked like a hole opening and closing. It was a fish half on its side trying desperately to get some air. I had to do something.

I was meticulous about cleaning the kitchen sink before gently transferring the poor fish into clean water. I had to scoop it into my hand out of the dirty water to do so; it was like handling jelly. The fish’s scales were slimy like the water. My friend, looking over my shoulder said, “Don’t bother, it won’t survive,” then, looking at the fish bowl, “Oh gross!”

It took me many trips to the toilet to dump disgusting, smelly water, much time rubbing slime off the glass bowl and off the plastic … and rubbing the bed of gradually colourful stones to clean each one thoroughly. As I worked, I thought of my long ago fish. I thought of solitary confinement, I thought of torture, I thought of mindless neglect by people convinced from childhood that not all living things ‘feel’, ‘think’ or ‘act’ like us and therefore don’t deserve care and attention. We’re taught these things though our religions, our sciences, or social conditioning, and we as a result go about exploiting, abusing and degrading everything around us – and sometimes are inspired to do the same to those who are different than us.

It seemed indeed that my friend was right. When I gently returned the goldfish to its now sparkling clean bowl, it barely moved. I’d carefully run my finger along its body to at least loosen the slime, and though its scales showed red and white again, I wasn’t sure it would benefit from my handling. It was such a tiny little thing. Yet, day after day I sprinkled small amounts of food onto the water’s surface, and every other day I refreshed the water. Over the course of the next week, I saw the fish begin to right itself. I saw it move down from the surface to poke among the stones, I saw it begin to swim with more and more energy. I was deeply relieved.

“Look at that,” said my friend one morning when I joined her in the kitchen for breakfast.

“What?” I asked, having just woken up in my upstairs room and stumbled down the stairs still half asleep.

“The fish. That’s so weird!” she said. “Go out and come back,” she commanded. I did as I was told. “Well that’s something!”

“What?” I asked again, slightly irritated.

“It reacted when you came into the kitchen. Like it knew you.”

So we tested the theory. When she came and went from the room, or went up to the bowl to look at the fish or touched the glass the fish did its normal fish thing, it just swam around indifferently. However, when I left the room and returned, it seemed to be waiting, facing the door. If I approached the bowl, it swam toward me, and if I touched the glass, it poked it as if it kissed the tip of my finger. It responded to me and only me, even when others came to visit us.

My only regret in returning the house to its owner and his children a week later was leaving the fish in their so-called care. If I could have stolen the fish, I would have; I felt like a traitor, because leaving, I knew what would happen to it.

Well. I listen now as people still go on with “It’s just a dog!” or “It’s a chicken / cow / pig / rhino, people need to eat!” or “It’s a just a beluga!” They are convinced that we need spare them nothing, that the creatures who share our lives don’t ‘feel’, ‘think’ or ‘act’ ‘like us’. I think: Would it really be any different if they did?  WE act like us; is that such an enviable, superior thing?

There’s an artwork in there somewhere. I’m working on it.

Home Sweet Home

Re-entry

photo collage

So here I am facing a usual problem. It’s morning. I’ve been up since 6 am but I had dogs to care for, e-mail and social media messages to respond to, a lesson to plan and of course, I had to get ready. Now I have maybe two hours ahead before I have to head off to work at noon to run an art technique practice session for a group of ten participants, for which I continue planning as I write. My studio is downstairs, waiting for me to start working on a new series of clay sculptures. Trouble is, when I start making even the most simple, I’ll need more than two hours.

I suppose there are artists who can deal with four or five different responsibilities without losing the rhythm and energy needed for their art-making work. They can return to their studios after teaching or doing office or lab work and just pick up where they last left off, no re-entry, no decompressing or debriefing necessary. I just don’t know any. I have to re-connect with myself as an artist after I’ve been a teacher, a curator, or anything else requiring my non-artist attention. Just about all the artists I know have to as well.

The re-entry methods are varied among artists, but they are usually ritualistic. Head full of images and energy fired up to deal with the demands of life outside the studio, artists need a way back into their ideas. In my case, I have to find ways to calm my over-other-stuff-stimulated brain, to re-direct my nervous energy, to quiet the movie-worthy special effects of immediate memory and to refocus on being an image-maker. Quiet is essential for this.

When I’m finally in my studio, a Zen-style meditative period involves not stillness but movement: I have to re-connect with my studio. For me, it is a place, but it is also a kind of entity, a presence much like water is when one is swims in the ocean or a mountain is when one climbs up to sit atop it, or like music is when one dances. I enter my studio and my first act is a kind of Walkabout, simply appreciating the fact of the space. My next turn is to make sure it is clean, aired out, well lit and that materials and equipment are where they need to be.

Invariably, my next contact is with my tools. Taking them up is like returning to old friends. I touch them one by one - how I especially love the feel of wood on my fingers! - even as I call to mind the gestures they allow me to make by extending my reach or by enhancing the sensitivity, dexterity or strength of my fingers. It’s reassuring to know they are ready to get to work.

Maybe next I’ll go through my sketches and plans. In between series of images there is always a choice to be made. Despite being engaged in other activities. I will often be moved by an idea I have to record or lose. Over time, a collection of these amasses, each waiting for its turn at life. If I’ve not come into the studio with a specific one in mind, a review of my sketches allows me to remember what inspired them and what I intended for them. Choosing one idea to follow is both difficult and exciting because even the best planned has a way of mutating as it evolves.

Next I touch the clay. Having moved into this new studio not so long ago, I’m not equipped anymore to mix my own recipe, so I purchase it in boxes containing two twenty-five pound blocks of it kept moist in plastic. It needs care. The kneading process, called wedging, is both physical warm-up for me and a way to strengthen the clay. There is sensual pleasure in the feel of it, an excitement at the possibilities its malleability suggests. This is true despite the fact that it is extremely difficult to wedge since I broke my wrist and it didn’t get reset properly (the dangers of stepping out of the studio onto the ice coating my world). Oh well. Pain is now just another intimate part of the creation process.

As I prepare the clay, my focus is on visualizing how I will transform this amorphous mass into a variation of the image I’ve imagined or sketched. There is a plot to that story, a setting, a variety of characters in minor roles, transformation, conflict and climax of the action and finally either a heroic or tragic ending. I will successfully support the clay through its many stages from dough to rock-hard sculpture, from a shapeless mass to a work of art, or it will collapse halfway or blow up when i put it in the kiln for its first firing.  Call me a romantic, but luckily, I’m not very good at creating tragedies.

The trick to all this is to have the time to go from re-connecting with the idea, the material the gestures and the tools to finishing the work. That takes a lot longer than two hours.