Substance and Spontaneity

When I began to make art the way I discovered and since have engaged in regularly, I had many thoughts about the process as it was something completely new to me. It was not in fact based on the intention of making art as I had done up to that point. The art seemed as a by product of the process, an artifact, but also a necessary part in focusing on what transpired through me. Since then I have learned to elicit what comes away from any art surface, which has made the effort even more suspect as an artistic or creative process. But even when I first began the experience had me question and redefine the artistic process as far as I had thought of it up until then, what art had to do with what I was doing.

What I thought about most profoundly in the beginning was of the substances which I was manipulating. It was obvious to me that I was not doing what I was for an intended effect. The image was one I was discovering, not deciding upon, as spontaneously as the occurrence of marking the page was for me. If there was no intention per se of an image to be created then I saw what I was doing was interacting with substance so substance itself was the meaning of my work. Even though during that time I mostly used (and still do, but not exclusively) traditional art materials and supports, usually ink and paper, the artistic process in which I found myself had me think specifically of the interaction of substance itself, and of my facilitation of this in a very direct and unencumbered way.

As my participation felt so minimal in what I was doing I could understand what I was doing as not so different from the interaction of substance in the world around me. I could distinctly see the connection of what I did to what everything was did everywhere. I was rather incidental in the process. I thought about early forms of human expression, using red ochre to mark special or sacred places and settings, of people covering their bodies and faces with mud, of little figurines of clay, and of the story of Adam being fashioned himself of stuff from the clay bed. I began to ponder a meta-theory of the function of art in history. What I came up with was this (taken from an email dated 9/1103):  "All efforts at art making are a reenactment of the transformations of material done by the world."

The effect of this thought when worded in my mind in this way had a seriously profound effect on me. I began to cry profusely. When I to wrote it out in an email to share the idea with a friend (see above) I began to cry again. And whenever I tried to express this verbally to anyone over the span of a few months I could not hold back the tears, so much so I was reluctant to speak of it, the effect it had on me was so great. I do not get the same reaction in my life now on contemplating this idea, but the poignancy of the concept has been impressed on me from it being so emotionally framed despite and beyond it seemingly being so completely intellectual. It is a contemplation on art I will not forget and which I have been investing in further over time.

On a personal level what this means for me doing what I do, especially when I do not actually produce any physical results from the effort, is the intrapersonal interaction of the stuff of by being, what must be interacting to cause the response that has me move so spontaneously and alter my perception of my surroundings so dramatically. In this way I can define my art as the manipulation of the stuff inside me, whether seen or not, but the interaction of which must be happening for me to experience what I do. This as a re-enactment of the world around me is a pretty heady thought, one which has many implications the least of which I have contemplated. But which upon further investigation surely would include insights on the fellow beings who share this world with me.